For more information contact Ruth Somerville or Spencer

Fitz-Gibbon at the Green Party national press office,

0207 561 0282

1 The Decision

As the Green Party’s representative on the council’s cabinet, Cllr Dowding was at the meeting on 29 October 2002, when the urgent report marked as "exempt" was discussed. The report contained a request from British Energy to defer its November 2002 monthly rate payment on the two Heysham nuclear power stations by three months, until February 2003.

The request meant that Lancaster city council had to pay the rates money (£1.77m) out to the national pool (ie the government) three months before receiving it from British Energy.

The report stated that granting the deferral would amount to the loss of interest of £18,000. However the recommended option in the officer’s report was to accept the deferral and provide the assistance as a one-off agreement. The report stated that: "the continued good will between the Council and its largest ratepayer would be augmented."

As an "urgent" item, the report was first distributed as the meeting started, amid a pile of other urgent items. Gina Dowding maintains that there was no opportunity for her to discuss it properly with colleagues or to see whether or how the report could have been made "non exempt".

At the time, the Lancaster cabinet should have had 10 members based on proportional representation of the five political groups on the city council. However, as Labour had not taken its three seats, and as one councillor had died, the meeting had six members. Two members, including the leader of the council, declared a prejudicial interest and left the room. Of the four remaining members, the Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Morecambe Bay Independent members all voted for the rate deferral. Only Cllr Dowding voted against.

2 The Case

Gina Dowding is accused of breaching Section 3a of Lancaster city council’s code of conduct which was adopted in February 2002. Lancaster adopted the Model Code of Conduct issued by the Secretary of State as a result of the Local Government Act 2000. The code states that:

" a member must not

1. disclose information given to him in confidence by anyone, or information acquired which he believes is of a confidential nature, without the consent of a person authorised to give it, or unless he is required by law to do so."

Gina Dowding was reported to the national Standards Board for England, the enforcement body for the code, who conducted an initial investigation. They have now referred Cllr Dowding to a case tribunal to be heard by the Adjudication Panel for England on 6 November at the Lancaster House Hotel in Lancaster.

There is no explicit reference in the national code of conduct for councillors to "act in the public interest". There was reference to this in the previous code which was replaced by the Local Government Act 2000.

Since being referred to the Standards Board, Gina has been re-elected to the city council (in the local elections of May 2003). She received nearly 60% of the vote despite there being five candidates contesting the seat.

If the Adjudication Panel finds that Cllr Dowding has breached the code there are three official courses of action that can be taken against her:

1. Disqualification for up to five years.
2. Suspension or partial suspension from the council for up to a year.
3. Reprimand. The code does state that the Adjudication Panel may decide to merely reprimand the offending person, although this is not provided for by statute.

Gina’s barrister, Hugo Charlton who is registered leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, will argues the case on procedural, technical and ethical grounds.

Ethical:

(1)That Cllr Dowding was acting at the very least in the spirit of the code of conduct. The ESO (ethical standards officer) dismisses this line of defence in this latest response. She has already provided information about the rationale behind the code of conduct and the Government’s seven principles of public life, which include openness and transparency. In addition the Nolan Committee report on standards in public life (1994) had some useful stuff in it. Nolan said

· "Your over-riding duty as a Councillor is to the whole local

community", and

· "Holders of public office should take decisions solely in terms of the public interest."

In the light of this guidance others may well join us in the view that these maxims dictate the primary role of a Councillor, and should therefore be the first consideration in the discharge of an elected member's responsibilities.

Procedural:

1) that the leader of the council, who introduced the item, should have declared an interest before marking the item as ‘urgent’.

(2) that this request should never have been considered as an item of Urgent Business as the request from British Energy came in to the Council very shortly before the Cabinet meeting requesting their 1st November payment to be deferred. This could have been returned to BE suggesting that they ask for 1^st December payment to be deferred. This would have allowed proper consideration of the request. It was not the for Council’s benefit that it was considered urgent

Technical

1. That the item was marked as ‘exempt’ and not ‘confidential’. There is no specific reference to ‘exempt’ information being confidential in the code.

3 Ongoing

3.1 Investigation into bail out of British Energy’s financial crisis

Before the Lancaster decision, British Energy had received a Government loan of £650m. Dr Caroline Lucas MEP (Green Party, South East England) is pursuing with the European Commission the matter of whether this constitutes unlawful state aid. The decision by Lancaster city council’s cabinet to defer British Energy’s business rates was also referred for consideration.

In July this year, the European Commission provisionally ruled that both the government loan and the rate deferral (by five local authorities altogether) was unlawful. The Commission has now set up a full inquiry. It is unclear how the information regarding the rate deferral by Lancaster city council or any other of the five local authorities would have come to light had Cllr Dowding not made the information public.

On 8 October 2003 Lancaster city council was notified of receipt of a cheque from British Energy for £27,000 to cover lost interest for allowing the deferment nearly a year earlier. The cheque arrived the day a motion proposed by the seven-strong Green Party group on the council was due to be discussed, to ask the council to request back-payment. British Energy said the extra £9,000 paid was due to the fact that they worked out the interest on European interest rates rather than UK rates. This arrived just as the motion was about to be discussed.

For interviews or further information please contact:

the England & Wales Green Party press office, 020 7561 0282