Committee on Standards in Public Life: Local government ethical standards: report
R19-3
Response position Rejected
Published January 2019
Response position and delivery status are recorded separately. Acceptance does not establish implementation.
Recommendation (the Committee's words)
Councillors should be presumed to be acting in an official capacity in their public conduct, including statements on publicly-accessible social media. Section 27(2) of the Localism Act 2011 should be amended to permit local authorities to presume so when deciding upon code of conduct breaches.
From: Committee on Standards in Public Life, Local government ethical standards: report, January 2019
Government response
Government response (the government's words)
The government’s view is that it is for individual local authorities to consider if their code of conduct is adequate in addressing the issue of inappropriate use of social media.
As the government outlined to Parliament in March 2021 on tackling intimidation in public life: ‘It is important to distinguish between strongly felt political debate on the one hand, and unacceptable acts of abuse, intimidation and violence on the other. British democracy has always been robust and oppositional. Free speech within the law can sometimes involve the expression of political views that some may find offensive’: a point that the government has recognised in a Department for Education policy paper. But a line is crossed when disagreement mutates into intimidation, which refuses to tolerate other opinions and seeks to deprive others from exercising their free speech and freedom of association.’
It is important to recognise that there is a boundary between an elected representative’s public life and their private or personal life. Automatically presuming (irrespective of the context and circumstances) that any comment is in an official capacity risks conflating the two.
As the government outlined to Parliament in March 2021 on tackling intimidation in public life: ‘It is important to distinguish between strongly felt political debate on the one hand, and unacceptable acts of abuse, intimidation and violence on the other. British democracy has always been robust and oppositional. Free speech within the law can sometimes involve the expression of political views that some may find offensive’: a point that the government has recognised in a Department for Education policy paper. But a line is crossed when disagreement mutates into intimidation, which refuses to tolerate other opinions and seeks to deprive others from exercising their free speech and freedom of association.’
It is important to recognise that there is a boundary between an elected representative’s public life and their private or personal life. Automatically presuming (irrespective of the context and circumstances) that any comment is in an official capacity risks conflating the two.
From: HM Government. Source document ↗