A LABOUR councillor has used a public meeting to air out her grievances within the party, including the revelation that none of her colleagues had received the final partnership agreement between Labour, LibDems and independents in South Lanarkshire.
The unofficial coalition between Labour, Tories, LibDem and independent councillors last month was described as “a sad day for democracy” by minister and Clydesdale MSP Màiri McAllan. The council voted to confirm Labour as the minority administration despite the SNP winning the most seats and most votes.
Instead, Labour won the support of the Tory group, who had seven seats, and the LibDems in order to form their own administration.
Councillor Monique MacAdams used the second meeting of the new administration on Wednesday to request a copy of the agreement propping up the administration, which was announced a month ago, and ask whether internal group documents were legally binding.
When asking the Labour Provost councillor Margaret Cooper to see the final document, the East Kilbride West councillor said: “The Labour group had been sent a copy of the draft partnership agreement that was between the LibDems, Labour and the independents but we’ve never received the final document that was signed, could that be provided to everybody, please?"
Cooper replied: “That’s a political matter Councillor McAdam, and I’ll refer that to Councillor Brown, Councillor Fagan and myself for later discussion and we’ll get back to you on that."
The South Lanarkshire SNP group reacted to the embarrassing public moment.
They said: “A Labour councillor used the meeting to publicly ask for a copy of the 'partnership agreement' that's propping up their coalition administration. It appears Labour's calls for openness and transparency don’t even apply within their own group. What chance does the public have at knowing what’s going on?"
The SNP asked that the final agreement be supplied to all councillors as members of the public are rightfully frustrated at the nature of this administration.
Later in the meeting, MacAdams asked several times whether her lack of consent to be on two committees would make her nominations illegal. This started a heated debate between administration and councillors, leading to the meeting running over, another break being given and a proceeding committee being postponed.
Provost Cooper had to repeat the ruling that the issue was not a matter for a full council discussion multiple times before saying that she would no longer take any points of order on the issue.
