Where should the balance lie between an elected official’s right to private life and adherence to a statutory code? Sultana Tafadar looks at the Livingstone case
The decision of the Adjudication Panel (the panel) for England in the case of Ken Livingstone on 24 February 2006 (see Decision APE 0317 at www.adjudicationpanel.co.uk) sparked a debate which, according to Livingstone, struck “at the heart of democracy”. The panel found him to have been “unnecessarily insensitive and offensive” in comparing a Jewish newspaper reporter to a Nazi concentration camp guard, when
approached on leaving a reception he had hosted for a friend at City Hall. The panel concluded that his conduct was in breach of the Greater London Authority’s statutory code of conduct and directed that he be suspended for four weeks.
The verdict of the panel, an independent judicial tribunal established to adjudicate matters involving the conduct of local authority members, was set aside and the suspension was quashed in the High Court in Livingston v Adjudication Panel for England [2006] EWHC
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