Your front page recently reported that a disciplinary panel cleared Mayor of Barnet Councillor Hugh Rayner of all the complaints investigated by the council’s disciplinary processes (‘A private matter’, Barnet & Potters Bar Times, September 11).

How sound these decisions are is brought into serious question by the lack of independence of the panel, which included a majority of Conservative councillors. That lack of independence brings the whole process into disrepute. This new system replaces an independent body that oversaw standards in public office, and further erodes our politicians’ already threadbare accountability.

What really compounds the sense of disillusion in Barnet’s democracy is that regardless of the questionable legal technicalities of the decision, the mayor stays in place. The fact that everyone in the chamber continues to permit themselves to be presided over by someone tainted by an investigation, oblivious to how that taints all of them, and by extension all of us, leaves us aghast.

Barnet’s already poor reputation (see Private Eye’s Rotten Boroughs column), is worsened by this. Disillusion with politics is at an all-time high. Being supported in clinging to office regardless of the bad smell that clings to the mayoralty makes Barnet Council ever more noisome.

Barnet Alliance for Public Services