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Exposed: The Ex Met Police snapper’s website offering “cash for celeb scoops” to public officials

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Matt Sprake: Trying Out the PM’s chair in the Cabinet Room in the 1990s while on the Met Police pay roll. Pic courtesy his Facebook page

Given the Leveson Inquiry is in full swing  can  you imagine this appearing on  a website supplying the national media – from the People to the Press Association?

” Do you know of a story, a scandal, something that made you interested, chances are that a newspaper will pay for that information.  Do you know where a prominent person is living or what they get up to, is a celebrity having an affair that you know of, do you know anyone who’s on reality TV?  You can earn yourself good cash now by calling 01277 (deleted) 24 hours a day and remember, nobody ever needs to know it was you that told us!

All sorts of people have been paid thousands of pounds by us for giving information that leads to a picture being sold or a story being written, are you a doorman, police worker, civil servant, probation officer, prison officer, nurse?  Make some extra money without anyone ever knowing…

Never go direct to a newspaper, come to us, it’s what we do, we are better positioned to get you much more cash. ”

The full story  on this is available  at http://www,exaronews.com   and on the Independent at http://ind.pn/M48suc. Since the disclosure the website has been rapidly redesigned and the page taken down but the website page is captured on the exaronews.com website.

Part of his agency’s website is devoted to its “surveillance photography”, offering a menu of services, including “covert foot follows”, “covert vehicle follows” and ”remote technical surveillance”.

“You can utilise the very same skills that are used by the security services and the police,” clients are promised.

“Our surveillance team has worked for and been trained by various police and government surveillance agencies within the UK. If you need it photographed without being seen, we are your experts.”

So what is the  explanation of the managing director  of  http://newspics.co.uk ,  ( one Matt Sprake, whose company is owned by his wife, Marion, described in her Companies House return as a banker.

According to him  the wording on his agency’s website was “just advertising” aimed at the “general public”.

He said that he would have removed it by now but for the fact that his website is “broken” and cannot be edited because the company that created it went bust.

“We are in the final stages of a company redesigning our website,” he said. “If there was a way of changing it, believe me, I would.” That seems to have  happened remarkably quickly after  the story was published.

On the social-media website, Myspace, he puts his income at between £100,000 and £150,000 a year.

Sprake continued: “I used to work for a specialist department at the Met in Scotland Yard looking, basically, at terrorism work. The level I was working at involved very covert stuff.

“I got out after 10 years. You are limited on the number of years you are allowed to do, so I am now doing other work. But I have still got all that training that is very handy to have.”

He also claimed his staff adhered to the Press Complaints commission code and his site promised to do surveillance work which would be covered by the Code.

The PCC were not so impressed – a spokesperson pointing out the code covered editors of papers not agency photographers.

I tried to contact Trinity Mirror publisher of The People- whose editor has already given evidence to Leveson . Their pages are all over his website including the page offering cash to public officials. But answer came there none.

One cannot  wonder why the reputation of the media is at such a low with such behaviour. If Sprake is telling the truth, it seems to me the height of folly and hubris  in these troubled times to put this on a website. If he is not this is exposing something else that is not particularly savoury and very worrying for ethical standards in the media and the people who are supplying him.

Q:Who’s afraid of the big bad Fox? A:The Charity Commission

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Liam Fox:Back in the News Pic courtesy:Metro

So Liam Fox is back from the political dead after having to quit as defence secretary.  How interesting! It comes after a little noticed report  from the Charity Commission into the affairs of  his doomed charity, Atlantic Bridge.  Conveniently it closes down any further investigation into his dubious past.

Remember this was the charity that promoted the Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan view of Anglo-American relations and gave a Margaret Thatcher Freedom medal to Henry Kissinger.

 The Charity Commission would never have looked at it if it had not been the persistence of Stephen Newton the Labour blogger who lodged a complaint. The charity run by Mr Fox and his best man, former special adviser,Adam Werrity ( remember him too?) was found not to be a charity, not have charitable purposes and was also operating in breach of Parliamentary rules from Liam’s office in the House of Commons.You might have thought after the furore  over the Smith Institute which was dragged through a formal inquiry for being too close to Gordon Brown,you would get  a devastating critique from them. You’d be wrong.

The report reveals that because it was a faux charity – HM Revenue and Customs demanded that some £50,000 in back tax, which according to the Financial Times, was paid by Tory donor.billionaire City trader Michael Hintze. See http://on.ft.com/N5zxqS as part of a £53,478 loan to the charity from his hedge fund company CQS.

However the Charity Commission did not believe any of the trustees or for that matter their advisory board were culpable so it could not recover the money from them. As the report says: “in taking such proceedings it would need to be clear that the trustees were sufficiently culpable in law to make good the loss and the proceedings were in the public interest.”

It added that there was ” no evidence the trustees acted in  bad faith” and “no compelling evidence of deliberate wrongdoing.” It accepted the evidence from the trustees that they just thought they were acting lawfully and its was perfectly proper to set up a charity to pursue the political objectives of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.

Of course it could just be that  Professor Patrick Minford of Conservative Way Forward, Lord Astor of Hever, a hereditary Tory peer, and the lobbyist Andrew Dunlop a former advisor to Margaret Thatcher, were a load of naive gits who didn’t have a clue how a charity works or an inkling of charity law. And of course their board of advisers was not stuffed with clever worldly political activists – it  was only composed of William Hague, George Osborne and Michael Gove.

And Liam Fox is so innocent he seems to have forgotten to declare some other US lobbying appointment in his ministerial interests, according to revelations in today’s Political Scrapbook.http://politicalscrapbook.net/

Curiously Dame Suzi Leather . chair of the Charity Commission, could have referred the matter up to Dominic Grieve, the Attorney General, to rule on whether there was a case to answer. But conveniently for  Dominic he was not placed in such an embarrassing position.

Of course it was different for the Smith Institute – everybody knows that Gordon Brown and Ed Balls  were  through Wilf Stevenson (now Lord) manipulating charity law and unlike Liam Fox had to be taken to task in much stronger terms. 

Job not well done, Dame Suzi. But I am sure you will be up for peerage as soon as your appointment ends, as a thank you for saving the present Establishment a lot of angst.

Guido Fawkes/Harry Cole v Tom Watson/Sunny Hundal: The changing blogosphere

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Paul Staines – aka Guido Fawkes – poshed up for Leveson inquiry. Pic courtesy: intimes.co.uk

Two and a half years ago when this website was set up  blog hits were at best in hundreds worst in tens.

Now blog hits are best in thousands and worst in hundreds. But last week saw a significant turning point. Not only were they a record number of hits that week -but  more important  it is where they were coming from.

Two of the biggest hits in the past – the post on whether Labour could be go bankrupt because of interest payments to Blair’s donors- and Maude’s Madrassa- the story of Francis Maude’s letting arrangement to Tory special advisers – hit large numbers because they were mentioned on Guido Fawkes (Paul Staines) website. I admit the initial success of this ex Guardian hack’s website was boosted by the  free market Tory right.

 Last week the blog revealing  the leaked memo (first and only in full on  http://www.exaronews.com ) from Nick Chapman, chief executive of NHS Direct, admitting they couldn’t get contracts and the excessive strip searching of Afro-Caribbean women  and abusive and appalling treatment of a gay man at  Gatwick Airport were ignored by Guido.

Tom Watson MP in reflective pose.Pic courtesy: The Guardian

Yet because  the NHS Direct memo taken up on Twitter by Sunny Hundal (of Liberal Conspiracy) and Tom Watson MP ( with 25,000+ and 83,000 followers each) the NHS Direct blog – over 5000 and still rising –   is now the first blog beating the Labour Party crisis blog on 4,345. The Gatwick Airport blog -on 2120 was also boosted by appearing on Political Scrapbook and taken up by the Pink Paper and the international gay community.

To me this tells me two things. The right wing’s  dominance of the blogosphere is at an end- it is now a healthy level playing field between the right and left fighting over the political issues of the day.

 Second it raises an interesting thought. If the growth of the blogosphere  fuelled by Twitter and Facebook continues like this over the next two years – are the Leveson# hearings on media control an irrelevance?

The irony is that new formal controls over the official media be in place on a declining industry  while the  expanding blogosphere will become the place where issues are debated. Tom Watson’s followers are almost the equivalent of the number of Independent readers and Guido Fawkes at 75,000 is not far off. I have a far more modest 3142.

I suspect no politician  – Tory, Labour, UKIP or Liberal Democrat – would dare impose controls over the  blogosphere. To do so would risk a Tahrir Square style rising from both Left and Right.

Exclusive: Shame of Gatwick’s “strip search ” security staff who target blacks and gays

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An inappropriate strip search – picture caption: Pbase.com – not at Gatwick

An extraordinary damning report revealing appalling practices by UK Border Agency staff at Gatwick Airport has gone almost unnoticed and unreported in the run up to Britain’s plan to welcome millions of people from abroad to celebrate the Olympics.

It reveals that overzealous, badly trained and unsupervised staff appear to be singling out Afro Caribbean women for unjustified strip searches and humiliating gay people in public at Gatwick’s North Terminal.

While government ministers, pop stars and airline staff are being allowed to leave and enter the country completely unchecked. through the VIP Sussex  Suite, putting border security at some risk, the cavalier way staff have treated the general public defies belief.

The findings are from no other impeccable source than John Vine, independent chief inspector of the Border Agency,whose highly critical report can be found here. (http://bit.ly/MIMZS6 ).

 It revealed that Afro Caribbean visitors to Britain have been subject to unjustified and possibly illegal strip searches . The searches were spectacularly unsuccessful in finding any illicit goods– with 96 per cent yielding nothing.

The report says  far more women seem to have been targeted for strip searches than men. Twice as many African and Afro-Caribbean people were searched compared to white people. “We found that 16 out of the 24 identified strip searches undertaken involved women. Given that only 30 of the 108 passengers subject to person searches involved women, this indicates that at least 54% of the female passengers stopped and searched were strip searched compared with between 11% – 20% of the men subject to a person search.”

He comments:“Indeed, even in the majority of the identified strip searches conducted (14 out of 24) there did not appear to be a sufficient basis to justify any type of person search, let alone a strip search.

He goes on: “The failure to observe the correct recording procedure can render evidence inadmissible in court and mean officers could face charges of assault in relation to the conduct of person searches.”

 “The extent of any discriminatory practices should be investigated and action taken to ensure officers both understand and comply with the Agency’s duties under the Equality Act 2010.”

As bad were the treatment of gay people. The report describes how one gay person was stopped and had his luggage searched in public and with other passengers passing by.  A request for a less public search was refused twice.

The report is worth quoting in full: “The contents of the passenger’s bag were then openly displayed including photographic equipment. The officer subsequently left the passenger to undertake background checks and later emerged signalling that the passenger could continue on their way. The officer then commented to another officer that the passenger was HIV positive; the colleague then advised that the searching officer should use stronger hand gel. These comments were made within earshot of the passenger and indeed other passengers in the channel.

When subsequently asked why this passenger had been stopped immediately after this interaction, the officer commented that the passenger‘looked like he might be involved in paedophilia’ and then went on to say that ‘the presence of the camera and the fact he had a boyfriend confirmed this’ (no photos were examined).

Notebook records of this exchange were not kept. The inspector describes this as” inappropriate and  unprofessional.”

You might say this is an understatement. Compare this to other parts of the report which reveal a casual attitude to people bringing in cannabis and a lack of consistency over allowing people with  excess cigarettes and alcohol to  bring it into the country. And aircraft are rarely searched – despite one being discovered with cocaine hidden in its panels.

Real Queues at Gatstrip -sorry Gatwick Airport. Pic Cap: The Guardian

Mark Serwotka, general secretary of Public and Commercial Services Union, said: “Some of these findings are very troubling, and it is not the first time John Vine has criticised UKBA, but they are symptomatic of the parlous state the agency is in as a result of massive cuts to staff. UKBA has been left unable to cope, and not just with the queues for passport checks, but with the wide range of services it operates and if further planned cuts go through the situation will get even worse. To prevent this, the government must put a stop to these cuts and start properly investing in staff and the vital services they provide.”

Frankly this is not all that is wrong. It is time the Government got a grip of what looks like a disgraceful racist and homophobic situation at Gatwick before lots of other people are treated like this  – apart from the VIPs of course who are NOT subject to such  treatment.

 There is also  evidence of similar problems in a more recent inspection of Heathrow Terminal Three. The report says: “Person searches were not considered to be justified and proportionate in 31 of the 46 (67%) cases that we reviewed…The finding that unjustifiable strip searches may be taking place at Terminal 3 replicates our inspection findings from Gatwick North. This indicates that this problem is not isolated to one terminal and as a result we believe that Border Force needs to take action to address this issue promptly.”

If  you are reading this and have been treated either to a unwarrented and illegal strip search, homophobic reactions or found that Gatwick  or Heathrow adopted a lax attitude to border controls, contact me at david.hencke@gmail.com and it could go much further than just a report on this website.

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Given David Gauke’s appearance in Parliament today

davidhencke's avatarWestminster Confidential

Today the website graduatefog reports that David Gauke has been reported to HM Revenue and Customs for being in breach of the minimum wage legislation for offering an unpaid ” training post” in his constituency. As readers of this blog know this is not the first time he has had advertised for a six month unpaid vacancy. So perhaps HMRC should take other recent appointments into consideration.+
Since this blog appeared Mr Gauke has attacked as ” morally repugnant” people who pay cash to builders, cleaners etc. if they beleive it is part of tax avoidance. But presumably this does not arise for his interns – as they work for free anyway.

After a Budget that gave  tax cuts for the rich and pay freezes and job losses for the poor, step forward, David Gauke, Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, forced to answer questions on the pasty tax U turn today. He is…

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Scrap red tape, silence a whistleblower

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Whistleblowers under threat

 MPs begin to debate the government’s new  Enterprise and Regulatory Reform bill today (monday). Buried in this legislation in Clause 14 is a plan to limit people with employment contract disputes using the whistleblowers law.

The reasoning behind it is explained in the latest House of Commons Library report on the bill. It says:

“In March 2012, the Department issued its annual employment law review which stated: It has come to light through case law that employees are able to blow the whistle about breaches to their own personal work contract, which is not what the legislation (Public Interest Disclosure Act (PIDA)) was designed for.

Clause 14 would ensure that only disclosures that are in the public interest would attract protection under the whistleblowing provisions of the Employment Rights Act,1996.”

Superficially this sounds quite reasonable.  Whistleblowing legislation should not be used for personal contract disputes. But the way the government is going about this it could sound the death knell for potential whistleblowers just at a time when they are most needed.

Think for one second. A company gets a complaint from a whistleblower about a  nefarious practice. What better way to frighten a whistleblower than by going to the courts claiming this is not in the public interest and demanding a hearing before a judge. The company can then rubbish the whistleblower using the absolute privilege afforded by court hearings for maximum publicity  by claiming the complainer is  a bad worker, in breach of contracts etc – damaging the whistleblower’s reputation.

 There then follows a long dispute about what should be a public interest test – since this until now is only used in Freedom of Information Act disputes in tribunals – with different  judges  defining it in different ways. As Lord Touhig, a whistleblower champion said in a Lords debate: ” This would make a field day for lawyers.”

But there could be another agenda. The government’s fast track privatisation programme for public services has already led to  whistleblowers revealing bad practice as shown in the recent private hearing of the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee. There I am told two Tory MPs put pressure on the committee not to hear in public whistleblowers’ allegations about bad practice in A4e, the private work provider, which has £200m of Department of Work and Pensions contracts.

The next day the Daily Telegraph leaked some of  their evidence and Chris Grayling, the minister for work but one suspects sympathetic to  A4e, used an appearance on BBC Newsnight to cast doubt on the motives of the whistle blowers.  Has he got DWP files on them I wonder or did A4e brief his press office or special adviser?

Now the Guardian’s splendid Rajeev Syal is reporting that Osita Mba, who blew the whistle on former Revenue chief  Dave Harnett’s secret  tax deal for bankers Goldman Sachs, has found himself being investigated by the criminal investigations unit of  Revenue and Customs. (see http://bit.ly/Mo5oXF )

It seems to me that people should back the campaign by Cathy James, chief executive at Public Concern at Work (http://www.pcaw.org.uk )  to stop this piecemeal change. At the very least the clause should be redrafted to define what should be excluded as a personal contract rather than submitting everything to a public interest test. Otherwise the public have every right to believe that the government has something very different in mind. 

Ed Lester to quit head of Student Loans Company

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Ed Lester to quit on January 31; Pic cap courtesy of Daily Telegraph

Ed Lester, the civil servant whose tax affairs led Danny Alexander, Chief Secretary to the Treasury to order a  Whitehall wide inquiry, is to step down from the job next January.

The official who took over £182,000 a year in salary and pension without paying tax or national insurance at source is to leave when his current contract ends on January 31 next year. The SLC is already advertising for a successor.

Full details of the decision are in my piece on the http://www.exaronews.com website. Suffice to say since the story broke earlier this year Mr Lester has had to go straight onto the public pay roll and can no longer be paid through management consultants, Penna, to his own personal service company, Placepass, based at his home on an island on the Thames near Marlow.

His company is in the process of being closed down and now 2400 other civil servants and senior NHS executives  paid off pay roll may have to become direct employees by September. A review announced by Danny Alexander to Parliament will also mean that the following tax year people who hold controlling posts in private industry will no longer be able to do this either.

All these changes came from one well placed Freedom of Information request which exposed Mr Lester’s tax arrangements which had even been approved personally by Mr Alexander and  David Willetts, the universities minister. Mr Alexander has admitted to me he didn’t even realise the tax benefits when he approved the post.

 To his credit since then he has ordered the review and been shocked by the findings. But I am expecting a strong reaction from business when  it sinks in what has happened.

Update: In a statement issued today (Saturday) about his decision Ed Smith, chair of the Students Loans Company, said: “Ed Lester’s was appointed as interim CEO of  Student Loans Company in 2010. In that time he has turned the company around and his leadership has been outstanding. He is highly regarded by the Board, BIS and colleagues across the Higher Education sector. “Following the period as interim CEO, Ed was offered a fixed two year contract as substantive CEO from January 2011. This contract is due to expire in January 2013 and Ed has always made clear his intention to move to a new role at that time. As recruitment to such senior posts in public sector can be elongated, we have started the process to recruit Ed’s successor now to ensure they are in place prior to him leaving.

“Ed’s planned departure from Student Loans Company has always been a matter of public record. It is in no way linked to the tax arrangements in his contract agreed by BIS, HM Treasury, HM Revenue and Customs and the Head of the Civil Service.”

Privatising the Police:The scandals behind the bidders

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G4S – coming to a police station near you.

Would you trust a private company as much as you would a police force to protect you? Would you believe they follow the same  ethical standards and probity?  Would they train and pay their staff properly?  You could be about to find out as the West Midlands and Surrey police forces start to contract out service provision.

I have just completed a report for Unite the union on some of the companies bidding for £1.5 billion of work with the backing of Theresa May, the Home Secretary. If you link to http://bit.ly/KGVE7I  and download the report you can see my findings on some of the bidders.

A lot are covering up a load of  dark secrets and unethical and immoral practices outside the UK.

If don’t care a damn what happens to Palestinian prisoners on the West Bank in Israel or can’t be bothered that US troops breathe in toxic fumes from burn pits in Kabul or that companies use tax havens to avoid paying out medicare to staff, then you won’t mind what happens to your local police force in Birmingham or Guildford.

Take G4S for example. they have had to admit in their annual report that the need to train people to understand human rights. Evidently their Israeli subsidiary  staff prisons where they practised torture on their Palestinian inmates.

And if you are working in Britain, no prob that the company has axed its final salary scheme for all its employees while lining up a £403,000 a year non contributory pension for its chief executive.when he reaches the ripe young age of 60.

Or that former London police chief,Lord Condon is getting £123,000 plus a year plus his allowances in the House of Lords to promote police privatisation and rubber stamp top salary deals for his fellow directors.

Take another company KVR, best known for building Guantanamo Bay. Not quite as well-known for making sure its 21,000 staff in Iraq need not be covered by Medicare by using a Cayman Island tax haven to avoid having to provide it..

Or in blatant disregard to health and safety they face legal action for burning toxic materials in open tips on US bases in Kabul. So what if troops die from cancer, they are lucky not to be shot by the Taliban instead.

And then they are two home-grown companies. Blue Star, which provided two weeks training for auxiliary firefighters to protect your homes in London, in case the Fire Brigades Union goes out on strike.

And finally Reliance, run by Tory donating Brian Kingham – nice £6m house in Carlyle Square in  Chelsea – finances his company through a rather interesting family  trust – not tax avoiding again, surely not?

Obviously we are going to have a wonderful new era with privatisation – as we ditch ethics for profits.

Exclusive: How you got state funded work experience in a strip club with A4e

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From the dole queue to the strip club; Red faces at A4 e and the DWP

The leaked internal audit report into the failings of  A4e featured on BBC Newsnight last month missed an extraordinary bombshell. .

The work provider company run by Cameron’s former work Czar, Emma Harrison, was actually placing claimants to work in night clubs and strip clubs when fun loving Labour minister James Purnell, was works and pensions secretary.

A detailed examination of the audit report reveals that X in the City – a Liverpool lap dancing club – favoured by carousing Premier  League footballers – took at least one person from A4e.

The full story is revealed in my piece for Exaro News, the investigative website.at http://www.exaronews.com

The lap-dancing and strip bar made headlines earlier this year after the Manchester City striker, Mario Balotelli, was fined a week’s wages for breaking a team curfew while visiting the nightspot less than 48 hours before a crucial Premier League match against Bolton Wanderers.

The bar advertises lap dances at £5 a time, and offers a ‘VIP’ deal in private rooms where a half-hour lap dance with champagne costs £50.

The report also reveals that two other claimants were placed in night clubs in Norwich. A4e declines to reveal how many other people got jobs in sex and night clubs at the time in 2009.

The whole matter is also  a bit of an embarrassment for Christian Iain Duncan Smith, the current works and pensions secretary,who has imposed an all out ban on allowing A4e or anyone else telling people to work in lap dancing joints.

At the time of the placement according to his department the ruling was: ‘Jobcentre Plus will no longer advertise jobs that involve the direct sexual stimulation of others because publicly-funded services should not be a conduit to this work. The ban would cover jobs such as lap dancers, web-cam performers and strippers. However, Jobcentre Plus will continue to accept other vacancies in the retail, manufacturing and distribution sectors of the industry. A cleaning job in a lap dancing club could still be advertised, for example.

There is a final irony in all of this. The auditors don’t know whether the person placed there –  one Jamie Nolan – ever took it  up because they were too shy to go in and investigate.

The report says:“It was not possible to conduct a visit to ‘X In The City’ to verify the documents…This employer is a lap-dance bar and was not open during the hours of the audit.”

It was a case of  No sex please, we’re auditors. And the manager of the club claims he can’t remember either. Wow what a mess!

Coleman Update: Final Humiliation – Now facing the sack by true blue Barnet

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A report tweeted by the editor of the Barnet Times series is forecasting final doom for Brian Coleman tonight Thursday)- when his own Tory group removes him from his Cabinet  environment portfolio. (see http://bit.ly/Jhqe8h)

This means is less than seven days his income from the taxpayer will be slashed from over £120,000 – to just £12-14,000 a year. For the very first time his income level may justify his subsidised fixed rent two bedroom flat he rents from Finchley Methodist church charity.

He still keeps the chairmanship of an important Barnet Council committee on the budget and spending – but he will no longer get his £38,000 Cabinet salary.

Boris Johnson seems to have taken the sensible decision to keep him away from the London fire authority after his big defeat at the hands of the electorate which saw Andrew Dismore defeat him by 21,000 votes.

How  the mighty are fallen – Thank God for democracy and transparency.