Conservative London Assembly Members Thomas Turrell and Keith Prince today staged a walkout from City Hall's Environment Committee after its Chair, Green Party AM Zack Polanski, blocked Bromley Council from giving evidence on river maintenance because they planned to send a male representative.
In an extraordinary development, the committee Chair abandoned plans to invite Councillor Will Rowlands from Bromley Council to speak about river maintenance challenges on the basis of wanting to hear from a female speaker, instead offering the slot to an Inner London borough that would send a female representative. This decision came despite Bromley being London's greenest borough and home to several major tributaries flowing into the Thames. Outer London Councils typically receive less funding than Inner London Councils to maintain the quality of the Thames and other rivers, but before now have not had the impact of this smaller funding on maintaining rivers assessed.
The walkout occurred after it emerged that the Chair had explicitly rejected Bromley Council's proposed speaker due to their gender, rather than their expertise or relevance to the topic under discussion.
In a statement, Thomas Turrell AM said:
"This is environmental governance being sacrificed on the altar of woke politics. Bromley Council, which manages more green space and waterways than any other London borough, has been silenced simply because their expert witness was male. Meanwhile, Outer London boroughs continue to receive less funding than Inner London for river maintenance, but apparently, their experience doesn't matter if they can't meet the Chair's gender quota.
The Environment Committee exists to scrutinize real environmental challenges facing London, not to play identity politics. This decision shows a complete disregard for the serious issues facing Outer London boroughs struggling to maintain vital waterways with inadequate funding."
Keith Prince AM added:
"Today's events demonstrate everything that's wrong with City Hall under Sadiq Khan's leadership. Rather than addressing the genuine funding disparity between Inner and Outer London boroughs for river maintenance, we're seeing committee chairs more concerned with the gender of speakers than their expertise or the communities they represent.
We walked out because this meeting ceased to be about environmental protection and became about virtue signaling. Our constituents deserve better than this ideological posturing."
