Category Archives: Whitehall

How government cuts led to blunders in complex criminal compensation awards

Posted on by
carole oatway chief executive of the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority

Carole Oatway, chief executive of the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority

CROSS POSTED ON BYLINE.COM

The government’s obsession with cutting Whitehall  staff is always portrayed by ministers as getting more ” value for money” and greater efficiency. No doubt it will be said again when the remorseless reduction continues over the next two years.

Yet this year’s  crop of annual reports has produced  a vignette from one Whitehall body that nobody knows much about which rather disproves this case.

The Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority is not well known but for those who suffer serious injury it is vital to ensure they receive some compensation for an injury that is no fault of their own. They include British victims of terrorist attacks including recently those injured in Paris and Tunisia and the families of those killed.

Most of its payouts are routine based on a tariff which was already reduced to save public money by Chris Grayling when he was justice secretary.

But for 10 per cent of claimants their cases are complex and they need a detailed assessment by Whitehall staff. It is these that have gone wrong.

As I wrote in Tribune this month the situation through staff cuts and people quitting the agency because of stress caused by their workload. The agency admits it itself.

It’s annual report for the last financial year says: “This issue … is the consequence of an exceptional level of staff turnover in 2015-16, that has resulted in a reduced level of resources  across increasing workloads. This situation is now being rectified with a major recruitment exercise underway.”
The errors were originally found when the National Audit Office, Parlia­ment’s financial watchdog, ran a spot check on payments made to victims in complex cases.
The worst case involved a significant overpayment of £69,023 on an award of £356,964 due to a maths mistake by a caseworker.
Another case revealed a potential underpayment of £15,118 on an award of £69,976 on a case involving two linked claims for dependency.
Other mistakes included under­pay­ments of £80 on a £395,727 award, £1,463 on a £113,071 award, and over­payment of £42 on a £445,355 award.
The NAO investigation triggered an internal inquiry by the agency which found even more errors. The CICA has now ordered a review into its practices.

The report says : “CICA tested a further 98 complex cases, based on a random sample selected by the NAO, and found 17 errors; 8 overpayments and 9 underpayments. These included three errors over £10,000 and four errors of under £80 on sample of cases with a combined value of over £5 million.”

The CICA took its time to reply to me and had to be pressed to admit that while it was refunding those who had been shortchanged it had no power to claim back money it had overpaid. Good news for those who got more cash but hardly an efficient way to run a service.It also stressed that it was only a relatively small number of people and not a huge part of its budget.

But this is not the point. For the individual suffering some damaging injury an underpayment of £15,000 is not a sum of money they won’t miss.

There is also a much wider point. Civil service cuts have also led to people being underpaid benefits, short changed on taxes and the bad handling of cases by public bodies. Cuts being imposed next include the Equality and Human Rights Commission losing lower paid case workers – meaning it will either cut the number of cases it handles or open the risk of stressed staff making mistakes. None of this seems to affect the higher paid.

The government should realise that it can’t magic savings in public services without any consequences for the general public. Something I suspect they won’t want to know as it damages their belief  that austerity doesn’t matter.

 

 

 

 

Alexis Jay: A game changer appointment for the Child Sex Abuse Inquiry?

Posted on by

 

Alexis Jay at the Rotherham inquiry Pic credit BBC

CROSS POSTED ON BYLINE.COM

The very fast decision by Amber Rudd, the home secretary, and Theresa May, to appoint Alexis Jay, as the new chair of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse is a very positive move.

After three attempts to appoint leading lawyers  to run the inquiry have all failed, it was a breath of fresh air to decide that a non lawyer could take on the job. Amber Rudd used powers under the Inquiries Act to appoint an existing member of the inquiry to take over the job.

The appointment  shows ministers are thinking ” out of the box” after running into problems – two caused by perceived conflict of interest – over the three previous chairs, Dame Fiona Woolf, Baroness Butler-Sloss and Dame Lowell Goddard.

I fully expected  politicians to try and get another lawyer to run the inquiry – because of the legal minefield surrounding  child sex abuse claims – but I am glad they didn’t.

Indeed it is a shame they did not think of appointing Alexis Jay in the first place to counteract the legal dominance of the inquiry.

Alexis Jay will bring a more human face to the inquiry and will have empathy for the traumas facing child sex abuse survivors. As a former social worker she may at last take seriously the problems of support for survivors – which should be one of the mainstream concerns of the inquiry  and has been sadly lacking until now.

But there are also other big advantages.

Her appointment means there will continuity and the Amber Rudd’s commitment to the inquiry couldn’t be clearer.

As Amber Rudd said:

Let there be no doubt; our commitment to this inquiry is undiminished. We owe it to victims and survivors to confront the appalling reality of how children were let down by the very people who were charged to protect them and to learn from the mistakes of the past.

Any new person coming to chair the inquiry would have needed time and space to read into events and there would have been an inevitable delay to further progress. This will not happen now.

It also means that the driving force of the future inquiry will not be a lawyer – which is my view is a good thing and puts it closer to the model adopted by independent panels.

Hillsborough for example was not chaired by a judge – and its impact on raising issues such as the  re-opening of the inquest into the deaths of the Liverpool football fans – has been enormous.

She  also has enormous experience in the issues of child sex abuse – and contrary to issues raised by survivor  Andi Lavery – there seems to be little potential for conflicts of interest.

Her letter to Amber Rudd dealing with  conflicts of interest also reveals  the breadth of her knowledge of the issue. As well as her inquiry into the appalling sexual abuse scandal in Rotherham  she had done similar work investigating child sexual abuse cases in Scotland.

As chief inspector for social work  in Scotland from 2005 to 2011 she investigated child sex abuse under the direction of ministers and  also took  a wider role in advising ministers on social work policy. As Scotland is outside the terms of reference of the inquiry, there is no conflict of interest here.

So what is the downside. She will need a lot of legal advice on how to handle some of the most difficult cases of child sex abuse -I am thinking of the judicial challenge to the investigation into Greville Janner – as the most pressing example. In a way this will enhance the role of Ben Emmerson, the inquiry’s QC and his team, as they will be crucial in defending the role of the inquiry to investigate this.

Secondly she may have to take some hard decisions about what to pursue and what to decline to investigate because of the massive amount of paperwork from the 13 streams they are already investigating. Otherwise it will become unwieldy.

I still  think the panel as whole is unbalanced in one respect – it has no dedicated investigator to cross all disciplines. The decision to drop having a journalist – Sharon Evans was the chosen person but it fell apart- on the panel was a bad idea. Lawyers are brilliant when they have got all the facts and can cross examine people about them – but they are not natural investigators and do not have the journalist’s mind to think ” out of the box”and make  connections.

I am not making a bid for myself – I am already on one national independent panel inquiry – but I think the issue should be re-examined and they should attach an investigative journalist to the inquiry.

Otherwise at this stage one can only wish Alexis Jay well in her new and demanding job.

A very legal coup:How Theresa May’s triumph meant Lowell Goddard’s demise

Posted on by
Theresa May

Theresa May,  then home secretary,  now prime minister.Pic Credit: conservatives.com

Unexpected political events can have unforeseen circumstances. The surprise coronation of Theresa May as Britain’s Prime Minister is one of them. Winning power because of Cameron’s failure to persuade the British people to remain in the European Union, she took office much earlier than expected when her gaffe prone rival Andrea Leadsom stood down.

It appears May’s sudden elevation and departure from the Home Office was the catalyst  that allowed some seasoned plotters unhappy for some time with Lowell Goddard’s performance as chair of the  child sex abuse  inquiry to act.

If Cameron had won the referendum and Theresa May was still home secretary it might well not have happened. For Theresa May could hardly accept the resignation of the third chair of a troubled inquiry within two years.

Piecing together what happened is not an exact science and not without its problems but it all points to a clever legal coup.

ben emmerson

Ben Emmerson:  Pic Credit: UN

The most powerful figure in the inquiry  apart from Goddard is Ben Emmerson, the QC to the inquiry. Nothing would have happened without his blessing and he must have been involved in her departure He is a formidable human rights lawyer, highly intelligent  and an award winning barrister from a highly political chambers, Matrix, whose former partners included Cherie Blair. He also has an ego the size of The Shard and is remarkably focused to the point of being perceived as a bit of a bully.

The irony about his role in the departure of Dame Lowell is that he was the one who introduced her to the Home Office in the first place.  He was the one because of his connections with the UN human rights body knew of her reputation in the human rights field .

He also rescued Theresa May at a time when two previous chairs, Dame Fiona Woolf and Baroness Butler Sloss, had to quit because of perceived conflicts of interest. At the time it seemed a brilliant move – removing any connection with the British Establishment when Establishment figures faced allegations of child sex abuse.

So what went wrong? According to different sources two things. Dame Lowell came into conflict with her own legal team about the scope and direction of the inquiry until the differences could not be resolved.

And the hard pressed secretariat became demoralised by the sheer scope and size of the different strands of the inquiry which promised to swamp their work and bury them in mounds of paper.. One source talked about absenteeism and low morale.

The decision to model the inquiry on the Australian child sex abuse investigation might have seemed a good idea at the time. But it is now clear that Australia is not England and Wales. The long running Australian inquiry has fewer numbers of people, fewer institutions and the population  is much lower than England and Wales.

I suspect that one of the issues that any new chair will have to examine is how to give the inquiry more focus. This may prove to be unpopular with survivors.who are already unhappy that some institutions are not being covered and will be worried that it could be used to cover up abuse. But to have any hope of meeting a timetable the inquiry cannot be opened ended. Nor is the issue of support for survivors being addressed either.

So who will get the new job. Some see the move as a clever ploy by Ben Emmerson to take over the chair himself and appoint a new QC to the inquiry. I am not so  sure he will want to be tied down for five years.

Some survivors want Michael Mansfield but this seems unlikely according to my Whitehall sources..

lady justice hallett pic credit BBC

Dame Heather Hallett – powerful candidate. Pic credit: BBC

CROSS POSTED ON BYLINE.COM

 

My money is on Dame Heather Hallet – as being the most attractive to the PM who is bound to have a say alongside Amber Rudd, the home secretary.

A grammar school girl ( though an article  interviewing her suggested they did her no favours suggesting she would make a good domestic science teacher) and well grounded in the legal profession ( husband, Nigel Wilkinson is a mercantile judge and one of her sons, a barrister) she is a powerful contender.

She also showed considerable empathy as a coroner handling the  inquest into the 7/7 terrorism bombings and a fair amount of guts in investigating the scandal of the Blair government giving licence to IRA killers on the run  to avoid prosecution.

Whether she will want it is another matter.But whoever it is they will have to be very strong minded and an expert on English law. The first test will be the attempt by the Janner family to throw out any investigation into allegations against Greville Janner. The family are adamant that child sex abuse survivors have fabricated the allegations against him and therefore it should not even been considered  by the inquiry. This is why they want a judicial review not just to stop a ” trial “but I gather to reject any suggestion that such things ever happened.

All the survivors have been assured at a meeting with the remaining panel members ( but minus  Ben Emmerson) last week that the inquiry will continue. But how it will continue will depend on the next chair.

 

On the way: Multi million pound fines for Brexiteer Andrea Leadsom

Posted on by
andrea leadsom

Andrea Leadsom Pic Credit: BBC

CROSS POSTED ON BYLINE.COM

It is probably an extreme irony that Theresa May has dumped  leadership rival Andrea Leadsom right in the slurry with the job at the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs(Defra)

For the Eurosceptic Brexiteer is going to have to eat a lot of humble pie and hand over more money than any other minister to the European Commission long after the United Kingdom has quit the European Union.

Her appointment coincided with the latest accounts from Defra with a caustic comment  from the National Audit Office once again qualifying them because of their incompetence in handing out £2.3 billion of subsidies to British farmers.

But this rap on the knuckles means more than that – as it sets up the UK to have to pay a fortune in fines to the EU. I have written about it in Tribune here.

As the article reports:”Failures under Labour and coalition governments to administer properly a previous farm subsidy programme have already led the Commission to fine the UK £661m.
“But this year’s failure to deliver money to farmers on time – with well over half receiving late payments – has already led to over £65m being set aside for fines in the last financial year.”

As Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office, said: “The Department continues to struggle with managing the complex CAP (Common Agricultural Policy) scheme in a way that ensures accurate, timely payments to farmers. As a result, it has incurred EU penalties of £65.8 million related to the CAP scheme in 2015-16, and estimates that it owes 13,000 farmers a total of at least £25.3 million.

“Exit from the European Union will not, in the short term, reduce these penalties. The Department therefore needs to ensure its strategy for tackling these challenges is effective.”

This means that Leadsom and her Eurosceptic farming minister, George Eustice, are going to face a double task until 2020.

First they are going to have to continue sorting out the ministry’s failure to pay farmers on time  while having to devise a national British system of supporting farmers which is bound to be controversial.

The NAO are estimating that if anything the level of fines could go up because of the complexities of the payments.
The ministry is promising a new strategy to sort out the problem – saying it expects payments to be better in 2016 than last year. But to do this it has – already according to the accounts – incurred a £6m increase in its pay bill by having to employ temporary staff to sort out computer failures and mistakes and delays in payments to farmers.

It is going to more than of just passing interest to see how the pair cope with such a mess.

How the NHS wasted £16m of your money on a botched privatisation that collapsed within months

Posted on by
portrait-meghillier

Meg Hillier MP:,chair of the Commons Public Accounts Committee, condemned the failings in the scheme

CROSS POSTED ON BYLINE.COM

New ways of  helping the elderly and mentally ill survive in the community and not continually end up in hospital is a cornerstone of government policy.

So when a limited liability partnership offered a cash strapped  NHS commissioning group an initiative which promised better services for these people and could save them £178m over five years it sounded too good to be true.

The trouble is it was. As a devastating report from the National Audit Office reveals today the £800m scheme  ran into trouble just four weeks after it was launched and collapsed seven months later. You can read the full story on the Exaro website.

The scandal of the £800m scheme run by UnitingCare Partnership for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough clinical commissioning group may not be an isolated instance.That is why sources at the National Audit Office have highlighted it in their report – because it exposes an alarming lack of financial expertise inside the NHS and a flawed system to monitor whether projects like this are financially feasible  andcan  be properly checked.

The promised aim of the project was to establish  tapering payments to the partnership – with £152m up front and less money later, ¬ so that the financially challenged commissioning group could put money to better use.

But within four weeks of starting the contract the partnership was asking for an extra £34m, blaming a delay by the commissioning authority in starting the work. When the money was not forthcoming the scheme collapsed after eight months and the NHS was forced to provide services directly.

The NAO report reveals that despite employing reputable financial companies and lawyers, basic errors were made – including a failure to realise that sub-contractors could not recover the VAT from the partnership – a cost that had not been factored into the contract.

Auditors also report that nobody had overall oversight of the contract.

No wonder both Amyas Morse, the head of the NAO, and Meg Hillier, the Labour chair of the Commons Public Accounts Committee have been withering in their criticism.

Amyas Morse said: “This contract was innovative and ambitious but ultimately an unsuccessful venture, which failed for financial reasons which could, and should, have been foreseen.”

Meg Hillier said: “The result is damning: a contract terminated before the ink had even dried out, at an unnecessary cost of £16m.”

What is disturbing is that the NAO point out that Monitor, the body which checks health bodies, had no locus to check whether the scheme was viable and NHS England were too remote to act.”

The report says: ““No organisation was responsible for taking a holistic view of the risks and benefits of this approach, or considering whether the anticipated longer‐term benefits were sufficient to justify additional short‐term support.“

What is really disturbing  is that £16m was wasted -plus £8.9m  on setting up a complex tendering operation and start up costs.

Far better to have spent this extra money on patient and community care – instead of throwing our money down the drain on a scheme that anyone would have thought to be too good to be true.

 

Chilcot and The Blair Rich Project

Posted on by
Blair Inc paperback

Blair Inc: paperback version. Pic Credit: John Blake Books

CROSS POSTED ON BYLINE.COM

On Wednesday the  report into the Iraq War  will finally be published and Tony Blair’s role will be finally dissected by a top former civil servant, Sir John Chilcot.

Tonight (Monday)  at 8.0pm  I will be appearing in a Channel 5 documentary called The Blair Rich Project which will look at how  Tony and Cherie Blair have amassed so much wealth since he left office in 2007. You can link to it and view the episode here. 

The programme includes a number of stories which are covered in our book Blair Inc. The book came out  in paperback last week  and is co-authored by me,Francis Beckett and Nick Kochan.

The programme looks at the Blairs’ property empire, his deals abroad and both he and Cherie’s fascination with amassing wealth.

The book to remind you covers Blair’s former role as Middle East envoy, his failed bid to become European Union president, the Blair Faith Foundation, his deals with other  countries where he has been an apologist for dictators  and also includes a chapter on his close ally and friend Peter Mandelson, his lobbying empire and his relationship with Russian oligarchs. There is an attempt to prise open his far from transparent companies where he amasses his wealth.

As Blair faces questioning over his role in Iraq it is worth reminding people how far the Blairs have come since he left office nine years ago.

 

 

Why treacherous Michael Gove can’t be trusted with your money at Number Ten

Posted on by
Michael Gove

Michael Gove Pic Credit: Channel Four

CROSS POSTED ON BYLINE.COM

The extraordinary treacherous act by Michael Gove in ditching Cameron and then dumping Boris Johnson  to try to be Prime Minister has obscured another damning trait in this discredited Tory star.

While the sound and  fury surrounding the Referendum campaign dominated the headlines Whitehall quietly produced a damning finding which questions the competence of Michael Gove to stand for  high office anywhere.

Before he moved to the Ministry of Justice, where he undid some of the nasty work of Chris Grayling, Gove was secretary of state for  education.

In the run up to the  Campaign Whitehall belatedly published the Whole Government Accounts – an international accounting standard record of every pound spent of taxpayer’s money and the value of the assets held by the British government.

This report was late because of the failure of one Cabinet minister – Michael Gove – to be able to  account for a staggering £33 billion -yes billion- of public money and assets while he was in office. That’s equivalent to half the education budget or THREE years of our contributions to the European Union.

As the findings by the National Audit Office says in Whitehall officialese:

“The 2014-15 Department for Education (DfE) accounts were qualified on the basis of incomplete and inaccurate valuation of academies’ land and buildings assets.

“ In 2014-15, the number of academies continued to increase from 3,905 to 4,580, but the DfE has not addressed the difficulty in maintaining oversight over them. As a result the scope of this issue has grown to £33 billion during the year and is likely to continue to be a source of continued qualification within the Whole Government accounts (WGA ) until there are changes in the oversight and accountability regime for academies. “

The findings means the department has no accurate record of the billions of pounds of school buildings and property they have handed over to private academies and free schools in the rush to create so many academies. The man who rushed through this in such a cavalier fashion was Michael Gove.

Whoever is the next Prime Minister is going to have a head for figures to negotiate one of the most complex series of deals to disentangle ourselves from the EU and be responsible for signing off tens of billions of pounds of complex trade deals across the world.

If Michael Gove gets to  Number Ten job it would be like handing over the running of the country to a reckless  irresponsible teenager who ran up huge debts on his parent’s credit card  but couldn’t properly account for what he had done.

Gove obviously has no responsibility, interest or understanding of how to control our money. He is entitled to his ideological commitment to creating academies but in his enthusiasm for this controversial policy he is leaving a trail of muddle and mess in his wake. In my view this makes him totally unsuitable to hold this top job. This of all times is no place for incompetents.

The woes of the first 48 hours of Brexit

Posted on by
Palace_of_Westminster_at_sunset

Parliament at sunset. Pic credit: LSE blog

CROSSPOSTED ON BYLINE.COM

So Britain has had its ” independence  day ” as Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage would have it. And what have been the repercussions.

In 48 hours the pound has dropped to its lowest level since 1985.

Stock markets across the world from London to Wall Street have all fallen.

The Prime Minister has announced his intention to resign before the party conference triggering a Brexit leadership contest.

Jeremy Corbyn is facing a leadership  challenge from his own MPs reinforcing the split between the Parliamentary Party from huge swathes of the membership. The shadow cabinet is now splitting as well with eleven resignations so far tonight.

Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish first minister, has said that it is ” highly likely” there will be a fresh referendum on independence from England after Scots voted in every constituency to stay.

Sinn Fein has called for a border poll as a move to a united  Ireland. Meanwhile it is pointed out that all Northern Ireland’s citizens are entitled to a Republic of Ireland passport which guarantees them free movement and jobs in Europe.

Spain has made it clear that all citizens of Gibraltar – who voted heavily to remain – could have Spanish EU passports  if they took over joint sovereignty of the Rock. This means it could trigger a fresh crisis.

The promise of £350m a month for the NHS if the leave campaign one  has mysteriously disappeared.

Britain’s taxpayers have begun a new bail out for the banks with £250 billion of our money earmarked to defend the pound.

The result has been however been welcomed as an ” historic opportunity” in Iran. See this report in a  US pro  Jewish and Israeli website here. The Islamic state also thinks it is a good idea as they see great opportunities for dividing Europe.

In the last 24 hours the situation has worsened.

In Berlin the six founding fathers of the EU  met and decided they would not wait for a leisurely departure from Britain but ask the country to prepare to go this week.

Jonathan Hill ( Lord Hill) the British commissioner responsible for capital  and financial markets announced his resignation from July 15. He was the lynch pin for the EU’s relationships with the City of London. See a report here. he is being replaced by a Latvian with strong support for the Euro.

A major rating agency Moody’s has changed Britain’s credit rating to negative while also ruling that the Euro’s credit rating is positive – widening the gap between the two currencies.

Some British people living in Brussels ” in the know”  started applying for Belgian EU passports to ensure they had freedom of movement to apply for jobs in Europe. I wonder why?

What seems certain is that in short term prices are likely to go up but that is no problem for those Brexit supporters. some of them were celebrating their new freedom to buy bendy cucumbers without interference from Brussels.

I wonder how they will feel when Independence Day comes around next year.

David Cameron outside Downing Street. Picture courtesy: Guardian
Jeremy Corbyn: Labour leader. Pic credit: Labour List

 

 

 

 

How Gove is dumping one of Britain’s worst courts on Labour’s Greater Manchester

Posted on by
Manchester Crown Court. Pic credit: courttribunalfinder.service.gov.uk
Michael Gove: Facing a High Court challenge over selling services to the Saudis

CROSS POSTED ON BYLINE.COM

Michael Gove, the justice secretary, is planning to dump on the citizens of Greater Manchester responsibility for running one of the worst funded and performing courts in England and Wales.

It is being packaged  under the slogan ” Northern Powerhouse” but it amounts to making sure Labour has to take responsibility for the court at a time when the government is planning even more cuts to the judicial system which is already in chaos. I have written about this in Tribune magazine.

Already a damning report last month from the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee  has accused the ministry of bringing the criminal justice system to breaking point after slashing 26 per cent from its budget and closing courts across the country. Another 15 per cent of cuts are proposed between now and 2020.

The report revealed for the first time how the impact of the cuts had on individual crown courts revealing the best and worst performers in handling trials in a system now bedevilled by delays, lawyer shortages, and inefficiencies. A backlog of more than 50,000 cases has built up.

On average only around a third of trials in Crown Courts went ahead as planned on the day they were due to start. One in 10 cases were not ready and were postponed to another day. Currently, 24 per cent of cases are withdrawn on the day they are due to start, most commonly because the defendant pleads guilty on the day.

In Greater Manchester, only 18 per of cases went ahead on the day (the only worse place was Lancashire with 16 per cent); 21 per cent were withdrawn on the day after the defendant pleaded guilty and more than half, the joint highest in the country, of cases (55 per cent) are put back because they cannot start on the day scheduled.

MPs tried to get information from the government on how the new devolved package to Greater Manchester would work but were told “there is quite a lot of detail to be worked out” even though the move had been included in the March Budget statement by George Osborne, the Chancellor.

To my mind this suggests that the proposal is nothing more than a” back of the envelope ” job by the Tories who have  not thought out what exactly this will mean. Any sane person would have a plan in mind before making such a radical change. But then that is hardly surprising given the mess Gove has left behind  at the Department of Education by rushing through plans for academies without checking financial controls.

Greater Manchester need to be on their guard that they are not being offered a poisoned chalice by the government – and need to negotiate very carefully what exactly is being offered by Gove to run this part of the judicial system. Otherwise they find themselves the whipping boy for failed Tory policies and  be conveniently blamed for the cash starved judicial system.

Racist and Cruel: The nasty world of the Equality and Human Rights Commission

Posted on by
Rebecca Hilsenrath: chief executive of the Equality and Human Rights Commission and leading the programme of staff cuts Pic credit: Douglas-Scott co.uK
David Isaac: Chairing a fractured organisation with staff and management now at loggerheads.

CROSS POSTED ON BYLINE.COM

The body that is supposed to protect the rights of  ethic minorities, the disabled and women from discrimination and unequal pay is about to behave like some of the worst employers it likes to attack.

Faced with an edict for cuts from wealthy Cabinet minister Nicky Morgan (  a former corporate lawyer with  City  firm  Travers Smith whose partners earn £935,000 a year) millionaire chairman David Isaac  ( a partner in law firm Pinsent Masons) is about to sack some 30 of the lowest paid workers at the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

The decision borders in my view on being  racist and cruel since the very victims will, according to the unions who have access to the redundancy list, be black and/or disabled and have difficulty getting jobs elsewhere. I have written about it this week in Tribune magazine here.

The people administrating the cuts are all wealthy people – either on ” off pay roll ” contracts worth up to £900 a day so they can minimise the tax they pay to the government or highly paid executives like Rebecca Hilsenrath ( £105,000 a year as chief executive – a pay rise of £10,000 in the last year but £30,000 a year less than her male predecessor) after she moved from being chief legal officer for the EHRC. She lives I notice in an expensive part of Hertfordshire like me. She seems to have moved a long way from her commitments given in this interview with a recruitment magazine three years ago.

They will, of course, be totally unaffected by any cuts and will continue to live a very comfortable life. This will be a world away from the people they want to sack who  are already suffering from the cruel policies of this government.Employers will not want the bother of giving disabled people  a job if they can get a fit person to do it.

The policy also has a much wider effect since these people are the very  workers who take up nitty gritty case work that can bring justice for ordinary people who face discrimination on racial grounds,unequal pay,  sacked for being pregnant, or for being gay. In other words it is bad news for ordinary people trying to get justice ( the wealthy friends of the lawyer chairman  and chief executive can afford to employ a lawyer).

Two unions at the EHRC – Unite and the Public and Commercial Services union – are furious about the redundancies which are part of an overall cut of 20 per cent (may be 30 per cent)  being imposed by Nicky ­Morgan, Education Secretary and Minister for Women and Equalities.

In a letter to Maria Miller, chair of the Women’s and Equalities Select Committee, Unite national officer Siobhan Endean said the cuts would turn the EHRC into a “remote, inaccessible think tank.”

She added:  “It is difficult for us to see how the commission can implement a new operating model and fulfil its functions effectively on £16.8 million a year when the Government concluded in 2012 that it needed £30 million a year.”

Of course the Commission disagree . A spokesman said:

“While we do not comment on the detail of leaks, our business plan sets out our intention to develop and implement a new operating model this year which will ensure we have the right structure, people and processes in place to deliver our ambitious plans to tackle discrimination and promote equality of opportunity and human rights.

“We know already that we will need to make significant savings. It is important we involve staff as early as possible. Responsible leadership is about facing up to future challenges not ducking them. Our operating model can help us deliver more impact as well as help us manage difficult change.”

Nice sounding words but I don’t believe them. I think the EHRC is becoming part of the new nasty Britain. It will issue fine words but do nothing practical about the plight of people  because it won’t have the staff to do it. It is all part of turning the country into a place where the wealthy feel comfortable and the  rest have to scavenge to survive. The only added twist is that the well paid people at the top of this pyramid at the ECHR are being paid out of ordinary people’s taxes.