East Lothian Council’s leader has promised his local authority will declare a nature emergency within weeks after his initial bid was blocked by opposition councillors.
The Labour-led administration says they were "extremely disappointed" after a motion making the declaration was unable to be heard at the first full council meeting last week following the summer recess.
East Lothian’s only Scottish Green Party councillor and SNP councillors voted against suspending standing orders to allow the ‘urgent motion’ to be heard after objecting to being given less than 24 hours notice of it.
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In a joint statement issued after the meeting, the SNP group and Greens councillor Shona McIntosh dismissed the Labour motion for "paying lip service" to the current crisis.
And while they agreed with the call for the local authority to make the declaration, they believed it required cross party debate which had not been allowed ahead of the motion being drawn up.
Councillor Norman Hampshire (Lab), council leader, said the motion was submitted late due to "detailed discussions with council officers”.
He said: “The Labour administration were extremely disappointed that the SNP group and the Green councillor refused to support the Labour group motion to declare a nature emergency.
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“We decided it was a very important issue for East Lothian so we brought it forward as an emergency motion.
“The nature emergency has been declared by national and international conservation organisations like WWF, The Wildlife Trust, RSPB and many other councils.
“Local authorities across the UK have an important role in shaping our future communities and our environment.
"We have a duty to continually consider ways we can protect and improve our natural environment when future development takes place so that our nature can survive and flourish.”
Mr Hampshire said the motion would now be brought to the next meeting of the full council next month.
He said: “Despite the delay in declaring the nature emergency, the Labour administration is committed to working with our officers on our new nature strategies that will protect our natural environment and we will bring forward our motion at the next council meeting and declare a nature emergency in East Lothian.”
The urgent motion put forward by the council leader last week on behalf of the Labour group set out the “alarming extent of the global nature and biodiversity crisis” and demanded for “urgent action” to be taken to reverse it.
It called for reports from council officers on how policies already in place were working to tackle the crisis, comparing the declaration of a nature emergency to the council’s declaration of a climate emergency in 2019.
Council standing orders do not allow for motions to be brought before elected members without due time given for them to be considered.
The Labour group asked the meeting to suspend standing orders to allow their motion to be included on the agenda, despite not giving them the time required, but needed two thirds of councillors to back the move.
All six SNP councillors and Councillor McIntosh voted against the suspension, leaving just 12 supporting it – too few to approve it.
Following the meeting, Councillor Lyn Jardine, SNP group leader, said: “Council standing orders are designed to ensure the democratic process is fair and enable effective representation of community’s concerns.
“While Councillor McIntosh and myself were only elected just over a year ago, we appreciate that giving our cross-party colleagues an opportunity to contribute effectively to discussion and to shaping the final wording of motions is critical to ensuring policy development is paid more than lip service.
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“The SNP group looks forward to having the same opportunity to shape East Lothian Council’s commitment to tackling the nature emergency at a future meeting.”
The opposing councillors said that while they wished to stress that they supported the council’s desire to declare and act on the nature emergency, “motions of this sort are most useful when they make specific pledges or commitments that lead to good quality action.”
In their joint statement, they said: “Opposition councillors had less than 24 hours to consider this important topic.
“It is the joint view of the SNP and the Scottish Greens that this is not enough time for proper debate and scrutiny of this issue.”
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