RARELY can members of Nottingham City Council have participated in a more serious debate.

Councillors listened, mostly in silence, to the details, some previously unspoken, of the widespread abuse of council house allocations between 2003 and 2005.

Opposition members said the number of cases pinned down by the Audit Commission may have been small but they demonstrated a culture in which rules were poorly defined or disregarded, and the possibility was that the abuse was extensive.

The opposition were passionate and mostly effective, but Liberal Democrat Councillor Alex Foster, stole the show.

He did not make a speech but performed a reading. His text was the auditor's report highlighting nine cases of serious abuse.

Mr Foster stilled the chamber. He spent 10 minutes reciting almost every line. After each case, he said cooly: "A public record of clear wrong doing; but no public record of any action taken."

It fell to council deputy leader, Councillor Graham Chapman, to respond for Labour.

He said there was not enough evidence to censure those responsible and claimed his opponents believed there was a conspiracy between the police, council, auditor and Labour, which was not credible.

But the words rang hollow against Mr Foster's recital of the evidence of "clear wrong doing".