ACCORDING to Benjamin Franklin, there are only two certainties – death and taxes. The latter will surely rise dramatically as we struggle to support our public sector whose remuneration at our expense far exceeds even that of the banks.

Not only are these employees paid for their work, with bonuses for success, they are rewarded for error. Following his failure to detect problems at Northern Rock, a Financial Services Auth­ority director resigned, quite properly. Do not imagine, however, that he left empty-handed – that is not the way of the public sector. He received more than £500,000 in compensation for loss of salary, bonuses and his position, plus £36,000 pension contributions. This is not by any means a unique example, many of which only come to light through publication of annual reports and critical investigations.

These payments are not reserved for national government alone but examples are equally difficult to uncover locally, as such matters are often hidden behind the procedure known as 'exempt minutes', a nifty dodge that allows councils to exclude the press and public from hearing any discussion of matters considered to be embarrassing. I understand that recently at the FODDC  exempt minutes included the disclosure of the expensive re-printing of tourist brochures due to officer error, despite an earlier statement that the council could not afford this and a 'staff issue' which revealed action by an officer that led to payment of an out of court settlement to another employee to avoid the district council being taken to an industrial tribunal. 

As we, the tax-payers, fund the remedying of these errors, why should we not know the details?

Exempt minutes were intended to protect matters of a sensitive business nature, such as discussion of tenders and contracts. Latterly they are being used to protect officers from embarrassment, while not only is the public uninformed but our elected representatives, the councillors, seem also to be deliberately kept in the dark.

It is time that this procedure was radically reformed. Exempt minutes should be reserved for the very few items that are genuinely commercially sensitive and a full discussion, in public, allowed for everything else.  Tax-payers pay the piper so why is it deemed unnecessary for them to know even the name of the tune, let alone call it? – Dr Daphne Pearson, Redbrook.