In view of the recent media coverage, Cllr Owen Lister has resigned as the Deputy Mayor with immediate effect.Cllr Owen Lister has also resigned from the Conservative Group, and is now an Independant Councillor whilst he waits for his case to be dealt with by the national standards board, who will meet in approx three months.Cllr Owen Lister fully disputes the recent allegations.Cllr Owen Lister will continue to represent the residents of Abbey Meads on local issues will the normal full vigour and energy which has helped make him a popular local Councillor.
Statement from Councilor Owen Lister
Many of you will have read either in the local or national papers lurid opinions regarding what is alleged to have been said by me at a meeting of the Children's Act Scrutiny Task Group on the 8th. September. At a meeting on the following day I was asked to sign an apology for the offence that I had apparently caused but to say no more until the Standards Committee had considered the matter. This I agreed to do.
Over a week later and as a result of the activities of some Labour councillors the story broke in the Press, both locally and nationally, and as a result I was able for the first time to refute the allegations that had been made. Sadly the damage had been done and it is well nigh impossible to undo it, and as a result I have been suspended from the Conservative Group on the Council pending the decision of the Standards Board.
It is in these circumstances that I feel that I owe the electors of Abbey Meads Ward an explanation as to how all this has happened.
At the meeting on 8th. September, to which I have referred we were informed that arrangements had been made to send some 3 or 4 severely disabled children to a "home" in Cornwall. I was appalled to learn of this separation of these children from their parents, particularly their mothers with whom there was almost certainly some bond, and I stated that "they might just as well be guillotined" to illustrate the finality of this severance, by over 100 miles, from their parents.
No one present questioned this statement, and it was not until the following day that at a meeting with Cllr. Bluh that I learnt that my remarks had been interpreted as meaning that I was advocating the killing of these children.
In retrospect I can understand how this misinterpretation of my remarks may have come about, though I am astonished that anyone should seriously imagine that I was advocating the murder of these children, and astounded that I was not questioned about this at the time if that was what people really thought that I meant.
With this in mind may I explain in some detail the thinking behind my remarks, and in doing so the experience on which they were based. For many years prior to my retirement I was medical officer to a home for mentally sub-normal adults, and one of the striking features of this experience was how seldom, if ever, these people were visited by friends or relatives. They had been tucked away in a secure environment where they could do no harm for the remainder of their lives. I often wondered how I might view the situation if I were one of them, though it is not easy to put oneself in the mindset of a mentally sub-normal person. In addition I happen to know a particularly severely disabled girl who is cared for devotedly by her parents here in Swindon.
These children mostly have very limited, if any, means of communication whilst their knowledge is almost impossible to assess but is essentially limited to their experience of life, which is limited to the environment in which they live and contact with their carers and in particular their mother. The quality of their lives is essentially conditioned by this very limited experience. The older the children are, the greater their experience within these very limited parameters. Moving such children from a caring environment that they have come to know is a traumatic event for them, the more so if contact with the cares that they know is ended. This, sadly, is the inevitable result of moving such children over 100 miles from their homes, as their carers change and they miss the carers they have known, particularly their mothers.
Transfer to a "home" over 100 miles away not only produces a physical separation from their parents but a devastating blow to the quality of their lives, which seems to me to be maximally undesirable. I do not doubt that they will be well cared for in their new home and that in time they may develop some bonding with their new carers, but the distance from their parental home makes for a most undesirable severance from their parents.
In the days that have followed I have received a good deal of "hate mail" and have replied to all who gave their addresses, setting out the true facts. I have also received a number of messages of support from a variety of sources (some very unexpected), which has been very heartening and much appreciated.
On mature reflection it seems to me that my apology and resignation as Deputy Mayor together with my offer of resignation from the Group without any explanation by me for what had actually happened, has tended to confirm that I was indeed guilty of advocating the killing of these disabled children, an idea that is totally untrue and repugnant to me.
It seems to me that the real villains in this matter are members of the Labour Party who have spread this story to gain some political advantage and blacken my name without any thought of the upset that would be caused to thousands of parents of disabled children as well as some disabled children themselves.
After over 40 years in medical practice, caring for people, I can assure you that I neither believe in, nor advocate the killing of disabled children, or indeed anyone else . To those of you who have been upset by what you have read I can only offer my sincere apologies.
Dr. C.O.Lister
4th. October 2005