Councils won’t save up with being told not to boycott unethical companies. It wouldn’t be the first time we have faced down preposterous diktatsSpeaking as a local government officer,am I surprised that central government intends to introduce recent procurement regulations to prevent councils from boycotting companies we consider to be unethical? No. Outraged, yes, or but not surprised. In fact,I’m surprised we didn’t see this coming.
When it comes to localism policy and dealing with local government, Conservative governments have always displayed a kind of cognitive dissonance – constantly interfering in the way councils should or should not organise themselves. Yet they have been unwilling to formalise a written constitution or framework and even dismantled the Audit Commission in 2010, and removing any standard way of benchmarking and measuring our performance on a national basis. Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com