Councillors' pocket money
Sir: Councillors in receipt of attendance allowances (introduced some time after the 1973 elections for the reorganised local authorities were over) appeared, so far as the Department of the Environment in 1974 was concerned, to be classed as 'self-employed'. Then, from April 1975, councils were required to pay 8.5 per cent insurance contributions in respect of councillors' attendance allowances.
In other words, councillors are now the virtual employees of their council and another little burden has been placed on the ratepayer. Allowances can be drawn only on the basis of an employer-employee relationship by virtue of bureaucratic fait accompli. The alternative is not to claim. The Association of District Councils does not seem to have been in favour of the innovation and it is perhaps telling that their views were overruled.
Well before the measure, an official form received here simply described my Council as my employer. Asking for an explanation, I was told, in essence as I understood it, it didn't really mean what it said. For a kind of confusion attaches to the subject : according to para 123 of the Redcliffe-Maud Report there should be no change in the present law disqualifying elected members of a local authority for employment by it.
Presumably, under the arrangement, claiming councillor-employees who are not re-elected qualify for benefit. As a late byproduct of re-organisation unemployed councillors as an official category are thus likely to arise in due course. More important, does one detect an unfolding pattern in apparent muddle ? II faut vouloir les consequences de ce que l'on veut. In the sense that the scheme, firmly fostering collectivism from the top down, never intended councillors to be anything else but employees of the nominees and appointees who make the decisions in their steering committees.
Previous page
