Hall-ed Up Before Standards
A county councillor accused of making threats against a BBC journalist will come before an extraordinary meeting of the council’s standards committee next Thursday morning.
They are meeting for a members code of conduct hearing relating to Councillor Brian Hall, who has admitted to making “wild and outrageous” threats against a journalist for the BBC’s Dragon’s Eye programme.
Dragon’s Eye journalist, Simon Morris, alleges that Cllr Hall breached the county council’s code of conduct by making threats of violence against him.
The local government ombudsman has investigated the situation and concluded that the comments made by Cllr Hall were “inappropriate and likely to bring the office of member into disrepute.” Thus contravening paragraph 6(1)b of the county council’s code of conduct which states:
“Members must not in their official capacity or otherwise behave in a manner which could be reasonably regarded as bringing the office of member or the authority into disrepute.”
The ombudsman then referred the matter to the monitoring officer of Pembrokeshire County Council for consideration by the standards committee.
The incident in question occurred at a launch at St David’s National Parks Visitor Centre at a BBC Wales reception for Pembrokeshire: Land of Dreams.
BBC executive, Huw Roberts, joined a conversation between AM Glyn Davies and Cllr Hall.
During the six minute conversation county councillor for Pennar and cabinet member Hall said that if Mr Morris ever went to Ireland he would not be coming back and that he had several friends in Manchester who could break Simon Morris’ arms and legs.
Both the AM and the head of marketing said they were struck by the vehemence of Cllr Hall’s statement and neither man thought it was made in jest.
Both Mr Roberts and Mr Davies mentioned the threats to Simon Morris who believed that Cllr Hall might have carried out these threats.
In his defence Cllr Hall has said that the threats were made in jest during a “jokey” conversation.
“I cannot believe that anyone could have taken what I said seriously because what I said was so wild and outrageous,” he wrote to the ombudsman. “They were made, however, in the context of this rather light-hearted conversation.”
He also said that he and his family had been harassed; subjected to a barrage of aggressive telephone calls and he had been hounded by camera crew at 6am in the run up to the Dragon’s Eye programme.
The standards committee will have to decide if Councillor Hall did or did not follow the code of conduct and if not, whether a penalty should be set and what form that should take.
Source: Pembrokeshiretv.com (21/11/2006)
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