THE Leader of the Labour Group at County Hall has spoken of his frustration after efforts to discuss a localised track and trace system were timed out by a Conservative motion on the ‘Waterways of Worcestershire’.
Councillor Robin Lunn (Lab, Redditch North) said: “We had put forward a simple, straightforward motion which was probably of interest to plenty of people about the above subject.
“That ‘this Council calls on the government to commit to a fully funded, locally controlled system of Track and Trace, involving all aspects of the local health service’.”
He added that the motion was sparked after news from James Jamieson, the Conservative Leader of the Local Government Association, who reported that in the week to October 30 Track and Trace had got in contact with 59.9 per cent of the people they needed to.
“Mr Jamieson described this as ‘very worrying’ especially as by contrast where local Public Health teams were involved it was 97.7 per cent. Therefore I thought we can do this much better locally,” said Coun Lunn.
However, he didn’t reckon with the waterways of Worcestershire.
“Due to the Council’s constitution for motions we were fourth on the list and we did not get past a Conservative motion about the Waterways of Worcestershire and an Independent/Green motion about the workings of council meetings, which ironically was trying to address the issue which our motion fell foul of,” he said.
“As the first two motions took an hour-and-a-half we were timed out.
I remarked that 99 out of 100 people would have been more interested in Track and Trace than the two which were discussed and to not discuss such an important matter of life and death issue was deeply depressing.”
