Category Archives: Whitehall

Misusing deregulation to smash journalists’ freedom

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One of the most precious freedoms for journalists is the protection of their sources. Now it appears the Cabinet Office is using an obscure bill – as part of the government’s drive to cut “red tape”- as cover to erode that freedom.
By changing the rules to allow the police to go to court to obtain reporter’s notebooks, pictures and computer files- without facing an open challenge from newspapers, TV, or even individual freelance journalists themselves – they are placing that protection in serious danger.
No wonder the Newspaper Society is up in arms and media lawyers are raising very serious questions. There is an excellent and elegant argument on the Inforrm blog by Gill Phillips,the Director of Editorial Legal Services at Guardian News and Media, about the dangers.
She rightly concludes: “This appears to be yet another backdoor attempt to limit and restrict essential and hard-fought journalistic protections.”
Bloggers should also be aware of this as it could affect them – and they will be much more vulnerable to a police raid- as they would be in a weak position to defend themselves. It is worth reading Vox Political’s blog on this point and taking action.

The official response according to my former colleague Owen Bowcott in the Guardian has been muted.
He reports :A Cabinet Office spokesman said: “Every measure in the deregulation bill is intended to remove unnecessary bureaucracy. Clause 47 would bring the Police and Criminal Evidence Act into line with other legislation in this area and would allow the criminal procedure rules committee to make procedure rules that are consistent and fair.

” However, the government has noted the concerns raised about this issue and Oliver Letwin is happy to meet with media organisations about this before the bill goes to committee.”
I think the government should go further and drop this now. It can hardly save much money and I think their motives in introducing this are questionable and undo good work under the Defamation act and by the Information Commissioners’ Office to protect journalists from interference by the police and the state.

The Duck House: From MPs expenses to Whitehall farce

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ImageThe MPs expenses scandal exposed by the Daily Telegraph nearly five years ago  did more to damage the reputation of Parliament than anything else in recent history. There were hardly any MPs who had not put in some dodgy  or dubious claim and the repercussions are still being felt today as an ex Labour minister starts a six month jail sentence.

This spirited production of The Duck House now running at London’s Vaudeville theatre captures the panic felt by MPs at the time but  turns the whole proceedings into a series of jokes and a Whitehall farce in the tradition of Brian Rix before he became Lord Rix and a great campaigner for the mentally handicapped.

 Ben Miller, as the greedy money grabbing turncoat Labour MP,Robert Houston, with thousands of dodgy expenses receipts heads a cast often caught with their trousers down.

His wife  Felicity,is played by Nancy Carroll, a woman who can’t wait for hubbie’s defection to the Tories and gives a wonderful performance showing how inadequate she would be as an Mp’s secretary even if he is claiming for her. While their son James Musgrave, gives a remarkably good performance of as a gangly student staring at his laptop for much of the performance repeating the word ” fuck” as he reads his latest threatening emails  from the hoods because he can’t meet his gambling debts

There is also a  very loyal  Russian cook, Ludmilla, played by Debbie Chazen, who ends up campaigning for UKIP after being exposed for being employed without a work permit. Life has imitated art tonight (Feb 8) when Mark Harper, the immigration minister, resigned after it was revealed that he was employing a cleaner who had no right to stay in the UK permanently.

Then there is the straight man – David Cameron’s go between – Sir Norman Cavendish, played by Simon Shepherd. He is the man who gets covered in manure  as he negotiates Robert Houston’s switch from New Labour to the Tories. He is also found to have a secret life meeting a modern Miss Whiplash who improbably is also the girlfriend of the MP’s son. This might need updating now- Westminster gossip has  it that it is some  young Tory government advisers who like to visit Madams at the moment.

Spiced with a few up to date jokes – including a risque reference to David Cameron and Rebekah Brooks,( hacking trial lawyers please note,) the show is more farce and political banter than a contribution to the current debate.

Don’t go if you expect to be enlightened about MPs expenses, though all the examples are based on fact. Do go if you want a rollicking, funny, evening and enjoy farce. The subject was MPs’ expenses but  they could put together a farce on anything.

The review on this blog follows free press tickets. The theatre staff are also very helpful to disabled people providing transport to get wheelchair bound people  down to the stalls. Unfortunately they do not have a disabled toilet but have made arrangements for people to use one at a theatre next door.

 

 

 

 

Half Revealed: The NHS fat cat executives and their pay offs

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ImageThe  Department of Health is refusing to disclose  the names half the  very senior people who have received big pay-offs as part of this year’s re-organisation of the National Health Service..

Nine months after the last Primary Care Trust and Strategic Health Authority closed down in England the ministry is stalling on releasing the names of people who have walked off with payments of anything between £100,000 and £600,000 plus.

A report by me and Frederica Whitehead in Exaro News  shows that 44 very senior people – chief executives or directors – have received £12.2m in redundancy payments- an average of £277,000 each.

The National Audit Office said in a report in July on NHS reforms that the payments went to board-level managers in strategic health authorities (SHAs) and chief executives of primary care trusts (PCTs).

According to the NAO, 10 SHAs and 151 PCTs were scrapped in March under Hunt’s reforms to the National Health Service, and new commissioning bodies created.

Exaro today publishes details of the 23 top officials named by the Department of Health, along with the NHS bodies that employed them and their redundancy payments.

They are released as a result of the assiduous work of Conservative MP, Stephen Barclay, a member of the Commons Public Accounts Committee, who quite rightly pursues whether taxpayers money is being spent properly.

But the ministry is refusing the publish details of the remaining 21 – saying it is up to those who received the largesse to decide whether they should be named and the payments revealed.

 Mr Barclay rightly thinks this is unacceptable – in any big company or in Whitehall – these figures  for senior people would be published as part of an annual report.

 I agree. At a time of big pay restraint, shortage of money for services in the NHS, is it right that say in the North of England some £3m should be set aside for redundancy and early retirement of just 12 individuals?

Again a two tier system is in operation and the ministry is aiding and abetting it by allowing those in receipts of large sums of taxpayers money to escape being held to account.

 

 

Phone Hacking Trial: Brooks asked to authorise cash payment to “serving police officer”, court told – Martin Hickman

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This latest disclosure shows Rebecca Brooks being asked to authorise payments to a serving police officer while editor of The Sun and allegations that the Sun had bribed a Ministry of Defence official to get premature disclosure of the deaths of serving soldiers in Afghanistan. In one case Rebekah Brook’s lawyer pointed to a MOD press release before they published the story.

INFORRM's avatarInforrm's Blog

Rebekah BrooksDay 26: Rebekah Brooks was asked to authorise a cash payment to a “serving police officer” while she edited Britain’s best-selling national newspaper The Sun, the phone hacking trial heard yesterday.

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Whitehall’s nasty agenda:Impoverish the low paid, reward their bosses with riches

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The Student Loans Co headquarters in Glasgow

The Student Loans Co headquarters in Glasgow

The government has always claimed that the main reason it is holding down pay in Whitehall, schools and the NHS is because the taxpayer can’t afford it and we need to cut the deficit. Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister responsible for Whitehall’s industrial relations, claims to have safeguarded the very lowest paid and attacked perks given to richer civil servants. The ex banker is on record as saying ” It is absurd to expect that people can be paid the same amount in the public sector as they are paid in the private sector.” This reference is to the higher paid where he is pledged to end perks. It was made in 2011 just at the time when Ed Lester, head of the Student Loans Company, had secured a very lucrative deal where he avoided paying tax or national insurance at source on a £223,000 a year package.
Now in the very same organisation a new drama is being played out which also proves the government is lying about its intentions to protect the lowest paid and curb bonuses for the rich. I have written about it in Tribune.
The Public and Commercial Services Union, which represents Whitehall’s lowest paid, put forward a rather interesting negotiating ploy for 2014. They suggested that his successor, Mike Laverty, forgo a £25,000 a year bonus on top of his £160,000 salary and taxable expenses of £30,000 a year. Instead it suggested that the bonus be redistributed to the staff,benefiting the lowest paid.
The union had calculated that, if all the money available, including a below inflation rise and one off £265 payment (worth £595) for those earning less than £21,000 a year and a one-off £560 payment to those over £21,000, all 2400 staff could get an increase of more than £600 incorporated into their salaries. The few very lowest paid would get a £960 pay rise to take them up to the nationally-recognised living wage. It would benefit people working in Glasgow, Darlington and Colwyn Bay.
But it is understood that the Cabinet Office blocked this move and are insisting the bonus is paid to one person instead.
Now it is not known whether Mike Laverty, the present chief executive of the SLC, would have agreed. But he is unusual in that he returned some £80,000 to the Treasury last year from a previous redundancy deal when he got his new job. This is almost unknown among senior mandarins.
Unfortunately he is so media shy, he seems worried, like his predecessor,to talk to me. I can’t think why.
However what this sorry saga exposes is that the lower paid are not having to take a pay freeze to save taxpayers’ money to help bring down the deficit because such a deal would hardly have cost the taxpayer another penny.
What it does show is that the government WANT to keep the lower paid poor and reward the rich – probably because those at the top in the private sector are seeing their salaries soar during the recession.
The results can already be seen in the prosperous parts of the country with the rich looking for things to spend all their money while the poor economise or go into debt.
I was behind a well paid young couple in Berkhamsted Waitrose at the butchery counter who were ordering fillet steak – not for their own dinner- but to feed their dog. The complacent man boasted that he wouldn’t normally be at Waitrose because he regularly got the fillet steak for the dog at Harrods food hall.
I have no doubt Francis Maude – if it is he who approved this – is happy for the rich to buy fillet steak for their pampered pets this Christmas, while the poor juggle the cost of the fuel bills to cook their Christmas turkey. He has created a system where this happens every day.

New year and a new defence for bloggers over defamatory comments

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The law offering a new defence and a remedy for bloggers besieged by defamatory comments from unknown sources will come into force on New Years Day 2014.
The regulations highlighted in a previous blog on this site have now been approved by both Houses of Parliament and will form the first move under the Defamation Act affecting websites.
The law will also set out a procedure on how complaints should be handled and also put an onus on the person complaining to explain what grounds they have for a complaint.
The changes on the law are outlined pretty comprehensively on the Inforrm blog which also includes a comment from a sceptical blogger about how useful they will be.
The new law was welcomed in the Lords. In a debate Lord Lester waxed lyrically about them. He said ” my noble friend Lord McNally [the Lib Dem government minister] is like Moses in the splendid portrait, bringing down the tables of the law to the Israelites, in seeking the approval of the House to the regulations what he is doing is important not only in this country but throughout Europe and in the wider world.”
Other peers admitted they knew nothing. Labour’s Lord Beecham said “when it comes to the world of computers, information technology and social media, I confess to being an utter novice. At risk of being labelled a Marxist by the right-wing press or Conservative Central Office, I recall some words of Marx—Groucho, I hasten to add, and not Karl. In one of his films, which might have been “A Night at the Opera” but I would not swear to that, he is seen poring over a map and declares that a child of five could understand the map. He continues: “Bring me a child of five”. I am tempted to make the same request when confronted by matters of the kind encompassed by these regulations.”
At least one peer was honest!

Why Tom Watson is dead right to call for child abuse FBI

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Tom Watson MP: campaigning to get child sexual abuse cases investigated: Pic courtesy The Guardian

Tom Watson MP: campaigning to get child sexual abuse cases investigated: Pic courtesy The Guardian

Tom Watson, the MP who raised the historic child sex abuse issue that could involve politicians in the Commons, has this week called for the setting up of child abuse FBI.
In an article in the Sunday People and also on The Needleblog the MP forcibly questions why the National Crime Agency has failed to arrest any paedophile connected with an international ring or amorphous group.
Mr Watson told the Sunday People: “We’ve got an international policing operation that has netted hundreds of alleged paedophiles and the UK has failed to act on intelligence.

“This is completely unacceptable. It shows why we need a dedicated national team whose sole aim is to investigate allegations of child abuse.
“I think we need a proper team of officers who have investigative capabilities as well as powers of arrest.
“There are police officers who have been calling for it for years.”
Mr Watson’s call comes after the shocking news that ‘Project Spade’ had arrested hundreds of paedophiles -100 in Canada, 76 in the US and 164 in other countries
Almost 400 child sex slaves were freed and 341 alleged paedophiles arrested as part of the swoop.

I am not surprised about this. After observing the painstaking work the Metropolitan Police Paedophile Unit has done to unearth historic child sexual abuse cases dating from the 1970s and 1980s and the long time it is taking achieve results, I am not surprised.
The number of police officers working on this scourge is frankly pitifully low and I am amazed they have got as far as they have. The expertise in this area other forces have outside London is not brilliant either – and they are dependent on outside help.
But child sexual abuse does not always take place within the UK – indeed with the internet there is growing evidence that child sexual trafficking crosses the world. But I doubt David Cameron will want to commit any more public resources to stop it – he prefers to leave it to pressing, as he did today, for Google and Microsoft to take the lead in tackling child sexual abuse.

The next NHS scandal: Taking cash from the deprived and handing it to the affluent

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Sunderland Clinical Commissioning Group- the biggest loser of NHS funds in England

Sunderland Clinical Commissioning Group- the biggest loser of NHS funds in England

Next April NHS England plans to take away money from some of the most deprived parts of the country and give it to areas that are the most affluent.
An arcane formula that decides how much your local NHS clinical commissioning body has to spend on you is expected to be changed by removing a weighting that automatically gives a bit of extra cash to areas of social deprivation. It will also mean that less money will go to areas where people die younger and more to areas where people live longer.
I am indebted to research by the Royal College of Nursing who have recalculated the effect of the change and I have already written about it for Tribune Magazine.
The political implications of this change- just over a year before the next general election are enormous. While NHS England is obviously not a branch of Conservative Central Office, its decisions will be remarkably helpful to the coalition government.
Without spending an extra penny it will appear that there is more spending on the NHS in many Conservative and Liberal Democrat marginals by election day and far less spending in many Labour strongholds where there is more social deprivation.
As the table illustrates the changes at the top and bottom are going to be dramatic.
Losers and Gainers; Health spending per head

Losers and Gainers; Health spending per head


Translate this into Westminster politics this means extra help for Tory and Liberal Democrat seats in the south. Gainers include Tory strongholds in Royal Windsor, Ascot and Maidenhead – the latter the seat held by Theresa May, the home secretary; South East Hampshire, Eastbourne, Hailsham and Seaford ( Liberal Democrat seats); the West Sussex coast, Gosport and Fareham and Newbury.
Most useful is Reading North and West, which includes a Tory marginal, and has an extra £98 per person to spend; Dorset (£89) which is both a Liberal Democrat and Tory area, and South Gloucestershire, part of the Cotswolds, which gains £86.
While the losers with the exception of Carlisle ( a Labour Tory marginal with a 853 Tory majority) are all Labour.Worst affected will be Sunderland which will lose health care spending worth £146 per person. Nearly equally badly affected will be South Tyneside, Newcastle West and Gateshead.
Also if you take the latest Office of National Statistics life expectancy figures you will live much longer in Dorset than in Blackpool.
In 2009–11, male life expectancy at birth was highest in East Dorset (83.0 years); 9.2 years
higher than in Blackpool, which had the lowest figure (73.8 years).
• For females, life expectancy at birth was also highest in East Dorset at 86.4 years and lowest in
Manchester where females could expect to live for 79.3 years.
• According to 2009–11 mortality rates, approximately 91% of baby boys and 94% of girls in East
Dorset at birth will reach their 65th birthday. The comparable figures were 77% and 86% in
Blackpool and Manchester respectively.
No wonder the RCN is furious. As Glenn Turp, regional director for the RCN Northern region says: “The North East and Cumbria suffers from some of the worst health inequalities in the country. NHS England should be aiming to reduce inequalities in health outcomes, not make them worse.
“Given the size of health inequalities in this region, I believe that NHS England should actually be increasing funds to the areas with the worst outcomes. However, NHS England’s own data shows these proposals will do the opposite.”
Of course this figures are not yet in stone. But taken together with welfare cuts, big drops in the standard of living for the majority,and slashing support for the disabled – NHS England is merely helping the wealthy and rich in Windsor, Maidenhead and Hampshire villages get better NHS services all paid by the taxpayer at the expense of a Sunderland council tenant. All helping the coalition win the next general election.

New law to protect bloggers from defamatory comments on their sites

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The government has just tabled draft regulations under the new Defamation Act to protect English and Welsh bloggers from being sued if people put up unwanted libellous comments on their websites.
I am indebted to Rupert Jones,a Birmingham barrister who specialises, among other things, in media law for drawing my attention to draft regulations which have been tabled by the Ministry of Justice. The regulations have to be debated by a committee of MPs and peers before becoming law. As far as I can see these regulations do not apply to Scottish or Northern Ireland websites.
From my reading as a journalist it allows bloggers 48 hours or two working days after a complaint has been received to contact the person who put up the comment and make a decision whether to take down the comment. It also allows – if both sides agree – for the person complaining about the comment to be put in touch with person who posted it.
For WordPress users like myself this is particularly good news. Under present arrangements I can moderate comments from new people who want to debate issues. But I cannot stop existing commentators putting up a new comment which is automatically published at the same time as I am alerted by WordPress.
Luckily all people commenting have to leave an email address – even if they are not using their real name – where they can be contacted.
The regulations also allow a ” get out” clause for websites carrying comments from people who cannot be traced – to remove the comment within 48 hours as a strong defence against anybody suing them for carrying an anonymous comment. There is also a lot of leeway for the courts to extend the 48 hour period to cover disputes.
All this is welcome news given my last report about the mad decision of the European Court of Human Rights to allow people to sue websites for comments from anonymous people even after they had taken them down.
Luckily I am told Britain does not have to follow the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights – unlike – and this has confused some people – the European Court of Justice, which is an EU institution.
These new rules – if followed by a website – will make it much more difficult for an intransigent complainer to win any libel action in the UK. And if they want to take it to the European Court of Human Rights they will have to go through the whole British justice system which will cost them a fortune.
So there is some good news to protect bloggers from comments they have never made.

Unlawful: Auditor’s verdict on council staff using taxpayers cash to sue bloggers

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blogger jacqui thompson Pic courtesy: carmarthenplanning.blogspot.com

blogger jacqui thompson
Pic courtesy: carmarthenplanning.blogspot.com

A decision by the Wales Audit Office in the last few days should send shivers down the spines of senior council staff thinking of using taxpayer’s money to silence bloggers.
The audit office have ruled that Carmarthenshire County Council acted illegally by indemnifying its chief executive,Mark James,in a libel action involving local blogger,Jacqui Thompson.
She has been involved in a long running libel case – which is due to go to appeal – over corruption allegations in Carmathenshire Council. Mr Justice Tugenhat ruled that she had run a “unlawful campaign of harassment, defamation and intimidation” against senior officials through her blog posts. The situation escalated when she was arrested for filming a council meeting on a mobile phone.
She has been ordered to pay £25,000 damages to Mr James and is facing bankruptcy after facing a £230,000 in legal costs run up by the authority in fighting the action. The court ruling was seen as having a chilling effect on the right of bloggers to criticise and comment on local council affairs.
Even Eric Pickles, the communities secretary, expressed concern over this ruling – though it is outside his jurisdiction in devolved Britain to act.
Now Anthony Barnett, the Wales Audit Office auditor has ruled – see BBC report – the indemnity of £23,217 is unlawful. For good measure has says a payment of over £16,000 in lieu of a pension to Mr James is also illegal.
His draft report says “I draw attention to the matters disclosed in note 6.50 to the accounts in relation to (i) remuneration totalling £16,353 paid to the Chief Executive in lieu of employer pension contributions; and (ii) £23,217 of expenditure incurred in granting an indemnity to the Chief Executive to bring a libel counter-claim against a claimant. These transactions are considered to be unlawful.”
Carmarthenshire County Council are furious and say they had taken legal advice that it was perfectly OK to use public money for staff to become involved in suing bloggers.
Its spokesman made it clear in a statement to the BBC: “Regarding the issue of the indemnity to an officer of the council to take action for libel, we would like to make it clear that we consulted the Wales Audit Office prior to the decision being taken in January 2012 and that it has taken almost two years for these concerns to have been expressed,” a spokesman said.
“We have discussed the matter with them on several occasions and in August of 2012 they indicated, in response to questions from a third party, that they agreed that the council had the legal powers to grant the indemnity.
“It is disappointing that they have now expressed a different view so late in the day, and too late for the council to act upon it.”
The consequences of this ruling are two-fold. It must question whether the council should continue to provide an indemnity to Mr James in the current appeal.
It also sends a much wider warning to senior council officials – that they should think more than twice before using public money to pursue people who are critical of them. I don’t know the rights and wrongs of the issues in her blogs, but I do think a public authority should not use public money to crush them. This is a victory for those who support free speech and unfettered debate on matters of public interest.