By Isle of Wight Observer
After spending more than two and a half hours, much of it in acrimonious debate at last weeks’s full council meeting, IW Councillors turned to discuss something they could all agree on.
A proposal from Cllr Karen Lucioni said that the Island’s council should sign up to support the Local Government Association’s ‘Debate Not Hate’ campaign. The campaign is aimed at wiping out abuse and intimidation aimed at local politicians, which is said to deter people from standing for election. However, the debate took an unexpected turn when some councillors said that the abuse they see in the council chamber is worse than any they experience at the hands of the public.
Cllr Matthew Price described how he had seen “atrocious behaviour in this chamber, some of the worst behaviour I have ever seen. Some of it is inexcusable. I don’t behave like that so I don’t see why anybody else has to behave like that. I’m a grown up.” He added that the way some councillors speak to staff is the “worst behaviour of the lot”, adding that staff couldn’t answer back.
Cllr Julie Jones-Evans also said that she had received abuse from fellow councillors, “so it was not just from the outside but the inside.”
Cllr Clare Mosdell, Conservative group leader, revealed that she gets regular abuse from the public but hoped the campaign wouldn’t turn out to be “fluff and flannel”. She complained that there was no support from the council, and councillors were just told to expect it, and they had to deal with it without support, even if it made them ill.
Cllr Chris Jarman, leader of the Empowering Islanders group, agreed there needed to be robust processes in place within the council and matters raised previously had not been dealt with properly.
The council agreed unanimously to support the campaign.
There was no time left to debate another motion about the levels of sewage discharged into the seas around the Island, put forward by Cllr Michael Lilley, which will be carried forward to a future meeting.
