Ian Onions - Politicians in purdah

The annual period of purdah at the Council House is upon us.

It's that time when some councillors - confronted by hacks like me - often throw their hands up in the air and say: "I'm not answering any questions! We're in purdah!"

Well phooey to the political connotation of purdah, the six-week period in the run up to elections when the council - not necessarily councillors - should remain strictly impartial.

It's all too often used by councillors as an excuse to dodge important issues, leave everything to the civil servants and sit back and do nothing.

And now I'm wondering whether the word purdah should be dropped and replaced with a different term - maybe we could call it the "switch-off period" or "duck everything period".

In Wales, the word purdah has already been dropped. But the Welsh Assembly has done it for reasons of political correctness. They now only refer to the "pre-election period".

In Persian, "purdah" literally means curtain and refers to the practice of preventing men from seeing women.

It takes two forms - physical segregation of the sexes and the requirement for women to cover their bodies and conceal their form. Purdah exists in various forms in the Islamic world and in India.

So what does purdah mean in the world of politics?

If you try to understand the guidance given by the Government, then you'll end up trying to undo a typical Whitehall spaghetti of words.

Anyway, here's a taste: "At all times, regardless of an election, there is a prohibition of political publicity.

"The council's generated and funded publicity must be, and must be seen to be, politically neutral.

"Anything that could reasonably be regarded as giving a political candidate or their supporters or party an advantage in the election is not politically neutral."

Just to give you an example of how extreme the guidance can be taken (there are pages of it), the satirical programme, That Was The Week That Was was taken off the air by the BBC in 1964 because executives were worried that it might affect the outcome of the General Election.

Here in Bristol, I heard of an example the other day when a pressure group asked for help from the council (i.e. council officers' time and therefore council taxpayers' money) to help publicise a public meeting in which two ward councillors - one of whom is seeking re-election - were being invited.

The decision from the council was "No" - it couldn't be seen to unduly publicising an event at which a candidate would be attending.

If the candidate themselves wanted to publicise the fact that they would be attending, then that would be up to them.

Anyway, you can see how easy it is to get confused about all of this.

And I suppose you can understand some councillors getting freaked out by it.

But there are a couple of easy solutions. The first one is to scrap the purdah period altogether.

Is it really going to affect the way I vote if some council officer has knocked off 150 photocopies of a flyer for some public meeting?

Surely we've moved on a bit since 1964?

Councillors are using council officers' all the time - does it really make that much difference during the run up to an election?

The second solution is in the Government guidance itself. It says that councillors can use the council's publicity machine in "exceptional" circumstances.

Maybe if hacks like me claim exceptional circumstances whenever we approach a councillor, then we're home and dry!