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Letter sent to West Briton by Tim Thomson
Many people were shocked to discover that Councillor Alec Robertson, after first leading a Council which stated that it would ‘robustly defend’ itself against Sita’s appeal regarding the St Dennis incinerator, then wrote a personal letter to Secretary of State Pickles urging him to uphold the appeal.
It is of course to be expected that Mr Robertson should echo, in his letter to Pickles, that well known Tory cry, that he had inherited the situation from his predecessors. (If he didn’t like his inheritance, he shouldn’t have taken it on!)
I am puzzled, however, by this paragraph in the letter, ‘I and my cabinet Colleagues are unanimously of the view that the appeal needs to be upheld and strongly urge you to uphold it’.
The letter, starting ‘Dear Eric’, and signed ‘Alec’, not only suggests a whiff of party political collusion, but also sought to influence the decision at a time when we had been informed by the Inspector that after the Inquiry was complete no further input to the process was permitted.
However, what concerns me more is this claim of unanimity amongst the cabinet that the appeal should be upheld. If this was so then some of his colleagues were saying one thing in Cabinet and another outside. I wonder if there is a record of a vote on the subject. But to go to the extreme of spending many millions of pounds defending a position at an Inquiry, whilst simultaneously undermining that position in a letter to the Secretary of State, seems to me to be a singular misuse of public funds. If the cabinet universally supported Sita’s project, why did they commit to spending all this tax payers money in a ‘robust defense’ of the original planning decision, especially at a time when funds were so short.
The letter from Councillor Robertson to Eric Pickles reveals one of the inexcusable sins of modern politics – inconsistency. We might want to add such things as lack of probity, and a failure to consider the overwhelming view of the residents of Cornwall, particularly at St Dennis.
I believe that any MP caught in a similar act of double-talk would be obliged to resign from any Cabinet post he might hold. Can Councillor Robertson do any less?
Tim Thomson
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