Your reports into Barnet Council’s lack of access to professional legal advice is typical of the decimation of ethical and good government encouraged by the blind doctrine of supposed cost-effectiveness with disregard to ethics or competence epitomised by the reckless outsourcing of legal services — in this case to Harrow Borough Council.

Your earlier report of the whitewash by the monitoring officer of Mayor Hugh Rayner’s role in participating in council meetings without declaring his interest is a typical example of the result of this blindness.

The mayor is welcome to Any Questions at Friern Barnet Community Library whenever he chooses, to put his point of view about the ethics of a landlord not declaring his interest in a council debate at which decisions were taken on housing policy. His right of reply is crucial to the democratic process.

The Barnet Council motto, by the way, is still “Putting the Community First.”

Keith Martin

Friern Park, Friern Barnet