The Investigating Officer may sum up the Complaint.
The Respondent Councillor (or their representative) may sum up their case.
Minutes:
The Investigating Officer (Melvin Kenyon) summed up the Complaint as follows:-
“The matter of capacity for me, on the balance of probability and the evidence available is not in question. I think Councillor Turner himself believed that he was a representative of the Council. Everyone who attended those meetings of the SIG believed him to be a representative of the Council. The Council paid the subscription fees to the SIG and Councillor Turner claimed expenses from the Council for his attendance, on occasion, at SIG meetings. Now these two meetings were virtual but we know that he previously claimed expenses. We could get into a semantic discussion about what “the Council” means, but it does seem to me that paying the subscription fees, sending Council Officers along with Councillor Turner when he attended meetings, paying his expenses when he claimed them, does indicate some kind of acceptance on behalf of “the Council” (whatever that means), of Councillor Turner being ‘in capacity’, quite apart from the fact that he agrees that he was in capacity.
I have set out the fact that based on the evidence available and the balance of probability there are four breaches of the Code, I won’t repeat them, we’ve heard them several times over. What I will say finally is this is not about Councillor Turner’s service as a Councillor over the years or his public service more generally. This is about issues more generally within those two SIG meetings that arose. Those are set out in my Report. I’ve drawn conclusions on the basis of the evidence available to me and I have concluded that Councillor Turner breached the Code of Conduct. Thank you.”
Mr. Ian Taylor then summed up the Respondent Councillor’s (Councillor Turner) case as follows:-
“We’ve heard the four allegations. I won’t repeat them again for brevity. I’ll go straight to the meeting on 5th June where the Investigating Officer’s conclusions were that in behaving as he did Councillor Turner breached the Tendring District Council Code of Conduct by showing a lack of respect by attacking in a personal way two of the persons attending that meeting and, more generally, by failing to respect those attending the meeting and, in behaving as he did, he brought his own role as a Councillor into disrepute.
So the dispute here is how did he behave? How was his behaviour so reprehensible as to meet the criteria for this allegation? He’s acknowledged himself that he’s enthusiastic about this subject. He’s acknowledged himself that he was not fully aware of the purpose of this meeting. But nobody at any stage claimed a personal attack. There were no records of the meeting or a recording. These are all just people’s personal remembrances given some considerable time later. I think it was three months or more before this complaint was officially made.
Nick Hardiman, who was the Environment Agency representative there, said that he ‘does not remember some of the things that were said, but at the time thought, well that’s just Councillor Turner. I know that he does not like or agree with and hasn’t signed up to the Shoreline Management Plans. He appears to be a Climate Change sceptic and dislikes some of the things that we are trying to do in the plans. His attacks have tended to be against the plans themselves.’ I think that’s a clear statement from this Officer that he didn’t feel personally attacked, it was about the Plans that he was representing. I know there are further comments from Mr. Hardiman in the Investigator’s Report that says that if there were a more junior officer there they may not have liked it but I’m robust enough to do so. Well that’s why, in my experience, you don’t send junior officers to attend meetings that are at a high level. The point is that there were senior officers there and they should be robust enough to engage in a discussion of serious importance.
The claim that Councillor Turner irritated other people as evidenced in the chat room use at that meeting is something that I’d like to dispute. The message that was conveyed in the chat room was basically just a reminder to Councillor Turner or anyone else that it was intended to be a training session. They did not say anything about how rude or this is unacceptable or outrageous or offensive. It merely said this is a training session. This is where we are trying to get some perspective on what was actually said at this meeting and how offensive it was.
Councillor Turner has acknowledged that he is extremely concerned about the Environment Agency’s Shoreline Management Plan. I would think it incumbent upon all of us from this area to be concerned about the Shoreline Management Plan, which essentially says ‘we will wait and see what happens and we might do something if it occurs, which for those of us who have been involved in commemorations for those who have died in this area as a result of the Sea coming in, I think it’s abit more incumbent on us to take this a bit more seriously.
I don’t believe for one second that there’s evidence to support that Councillor Turner overstepped the mark at this meeting. He misunderstood its purpose. The people running the meeting handled it badly and they were frustrated because they’d arranged a one hour meeting for a training session, always risky in my experience but nevertheless. There were no complaints arising from this meeting at the time. It was done and dusted on the 5th June. No reference was made to it until three months later.
I’d like to move now to the 29th June meeting. Again, the Investigating Officer stated that based on the evidence Councillor Turner breached the Tendring District Council Code of Conduct by attacking a representative of an external organisation in a personal way. Well, there’s no evidence to support this. As we discussed earlier in the questions, Ross McLeod representing that outside body specifically says: “he didn’t go so far as to attack me personally”. I’m not sure how you can reconcile those two things. Saying that Councillor Turner attacked someone personally when the very person he is supposed to have attacked specifically says that he wasn’t attacked personally. I don’t know where we go from there because it is just wrong.
World Drowning Day – this is where those who involved themselves in the investigation collectively went into ‘shock, horror’ and claimed what had been said was ‘outrageous, I’m offended, I’m upset’ and some of the people involved in this went as far as accusing Councillor Turner of being racist, and using racist language. I don’t get it. It’s not there is it. He didn’t attack anyone personally. Attendees don’t recall clearly what was said. But on a balance of probabilities supported by the facts here two statements did match and that was that Councillor Turner said “It’s not that they [South Asian or Afro-Caribbean communities] can’t swim but more that they don’t want to.” Which was then paraphrased as “can’t float, won’t float” kind of thing. That in itself is not a racist statement and to imply otherwise is deeply offensive to Councillor Turner and to everybody else. For clarity, Councillor Turner is not a racist. In fact, he supports minority groups a great deal and he did on this specific occasion. He was the only one advocating an urgent need for those communities to learn to swim in greater numbers because they die in greater numbers by drowning on the coast. There is nothing more unedifying than seeing a group of wholly white people playing the racial discrimination card to support their own ends rather than support the people they claim to be protecting. The Black and South Asian communities require protection, they need to be encouraged to learn to swim, their children and young people die disproportionately. The statistics are really alarming. In America 80% of black people don’t swim. In this case Councillor Turner was very clear on this. There is absolutely no evidence to support the claim that racist comments were made by Councillor Turner.
In conclusion, the Investigation Officer’s findings in relation to this is disputed in the strongest possible terms. It’s a crucial fact that the personal remarks seem to be the ones that tip Councillor Turner’s behaviour over the edge in terms of whether his behaviour was acceptable at these meetings. I don’t think that there is any evidence to support that. I think that there is a collection of statements made by people who can’t recall clearly or exactly what happened. There is no supporting of that. There is no recording or decent minutes of these meetings to support that. What Minutes there are have been made later to try and bolster the case. In fact, Councillor Turner is owed an apology. He should be congratulated for raising a difficult issue. Uncomfortable truths are never good to hear. You may not like it but they need to be said sometimes. It takes someone like Councillor Turner, a Councillor of great experience to have the courage to do that. I think that it’s a shame that after all the years that he did spend attending this committee that nobody felt the need to have a quiet word with him or to instigate some mediation. Instead, he’s been hung out to dry for something that he didn’t actually say. He made no racist comments whatsoever and all he did was engage in decent debate. If anything we learn as a country it is if liberty is to mean anything or democracy is to mean anything then it is the right to say something that people might not want to hear. In this case that’s all that Councillor Turner did. He frustrated people, he irritated people but he didn’t do anything to breach the Members’ Code of Conduct. There is no evidence in this investigation report to suggest that. I conclude my summing up. Thank you.”