THE Forest of Dean District Council has voted to continue holding secret pre-meetings before Scrutiny meetings.

I proposed that they stop this immediately on the grounds that, of all functions of council, Scrutiny should be conducted in the public eye.

The Tories, the chair of Scrutiny, and a few sycophants, voted to amend my motion in such a way as to render it worthless. They contrived to stipulate that these meetings could only arrange matters of the order of questions, procedure, protocol and emergent issues in closed session.

All these could be discussed in open session but they crave their secrecy!

In other words, it's all the same as before. Nothing has changed. The Scrutiny committee will continue to hold secret meetings away from public view.

Scrutiny in the Forest of Dean is a carefully controlled process designed to tell the public only what the cabinet wants to be revealed to public gaze.

– Don Pugh (Labour), Yorkley.