Letter: Attempts To Make Resignation a Point of Principle Are Risible

Published on: 28 Aug, 2019
Updated on: 28 Aug, 2019

Cllr Susan Parker

From George Potter

Lib Dem borough councillor for Burpham

In response to: GBC Executive Shock as GGG’s Susan Parker Resigns Over ‘Conduct’ Claim

The council statement says: “The contents of the email contained personal data about a member of the public. Because of this, and the confidential nature of the enforcement case itself, we have to report this as a data breach to the Information Commissioner.”

This reaction by Cllr Susan Parker is ridiculous. Data protection is a serious matter and the council would not have reported a breach to the ICO [Information Commissioner’s Office] unless it had very good reason to believe a breach had occurred.

If Cllr Parker is unable to accept that a potential GDPR [General Data Protection Regulation] breach needs to be investigated then I think it’s very appropriate she has resigned. No one forced her to do so, however, and therefore her attempts to make this a matter of principle are pretty risible.

It’s also disappointing to see Cllr Parker making claims, in her letter, that simply are not true.

For instance, every group on the council had the opportunity to put questions to the second QC and GGG specifically asked about whether the Local Plan could be overturned and the QC answered that question.

Yet now Cllr Parker seems to be claiming in her letter that this never happened.

I’m not on the Executive so I can’t comment as to how much of the rest of her letter is true or not, but I have to say I’m sadly unsurprised to see her indulging in Trumpian, fake news and fact-free politics.

It is, however, a shame that rather than doing this over a point of principle or an important policy, Cllr Parker seems to only be throwing her toys out the plan because GBC dares to want to investigate a potential GDPR breach.