Senior local councillor in Lancashire forced to apologise for mosque comment

Finance spokesman and standards committee member Cllr Neil Slater admitted his claim was ‘factually incorrect’.

The apology on Thursday night followed his comments at a March ‘Call In’ meeting of the council to debate a 7.5 per cent rise in the service charge for stallholders at Blackburn Market.

Cllr Slater told it that in his opinion ‘the mosques run this town’.

Call-In committee chairman and 4 BwD Audley and Queens Park’s Cllr Salim Sidat and his group leader Cllr Mustafa Desai complained about the comment to the council’s monitoring officer Asad Laher.

At a preliminary meeting between Cllr Slater and deputy director for legal and governance, the senior Tory denied any suggestion of being racist but volunteered to apologise publicly for the incorrect statement that ‘the mosques run this town’.

Mr Laher then consulted with one of the independent members on the standards committee and Cllr Sidat and it was agreed that Cllr Slater would make an apology to Thursday’s Council Forum thus avoiding a full standards committee inquiry.

During that apology Cllr Slater referenced the accusations of ‘racism’ heaped upon his Tory group leader brother John Slater and his wife and fellow West Pennine ward councillor Julie over their long campaign to expose the danger of gangs, often but not always of South Asian heritage, grooming girls for sexual exploitation.

This led to a Conservative group motion to January’s Blackburn with Darwen Council Forum calling for a national inquiry which was defeated although the government has since ordered just such a full statutory probe.

Cllr Neil Slater told Thursday’s Council Forum meeting, turning initially to his brother and wife: “As working on standards, I was reported on two counts on a Call-In.

“The first count, obviously because we are Slaters, the first one would be we’re racist.

“As soon as we have a conversation that is heated that’s what you always debate on.

“For them it was the grooming gangs, for me it was about other things to do with the town.

“I was found not guilty on that account and congratulations for all the work you did on actually getting the grooming scandal done at government level and now we’re having a national inquiry.

“So well done to you two.

“On the second count I was found guilty of making a factually incorrect comment which caused offence to the chair of the Call-In committee.

“And that was that ‘the mosques run this town’ which is factually incorrect as was pointed out by Asad and by the Independent member.

“For now Labour run this council not the mosques.

“So for any offence I caused I apologise.”

Cllr Sidat said: “We did not accuse Cllr Neil Slater of being racist just of making a factually incorrect statement.

“I am of course completely happy with his apology.”