Rebekah Brooks’ PA seems to have told quite different stories to the police over the crucial removal of her boss’s notebooks just before the News of the World closed!
Day 77:
Rebekah Brooks’s PA today admitted errors in her account to police about the removal of seven boxes of notebooks central to a charge of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice against her and her former boss.
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Rebekah Brooks PA’s defence about the sudden removal of all her boss’s notebooks is interesting. It is all about taking out her beauty column notes to make more space for Rebekah’s archive!
Day 76:
Rebekah Brooks’s PA was urgently trying to contact a News International archivist on the day the News of the World’s closure was announced because she wanted to withdraw boxes containing clippings about her career in the beauty industry, the hacking trial heard today.
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NHS bosses: subject to tax avoidance inquiry
The tax avoidance scandal that shook up Whitehall is soon to spread to the NHS. As reported earlier following the exposure of Ed Lester, the former head of the Students Loan Company, for channelling his salary through a personal service company to avoid paying national insurance and tax at source. The practice was still going on in Whitehall two years after the event and 125 civil servants who quit have been reported to Revenue and Customs.
Now the NHS is to face the same scrutiny. Reports in Exaro News and Tribune last week highlighted the issue – with the findings now likely to be sooner rather than later.
An inquiry has been ordered by Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, after Danny Alexander, Chief Secretary to the Treasury requested it.
Some two years ago a lesser inquiry – just into board members of NHS bodies – revealed some 28 out of 84 people were on this bandwagon. Earlier examples included Robert Clarke, finance director at NHS Professionals, which supplies temporary workers to the health service, was paid at least £534,000 over three years through a personal-service company.
Another former chief executive of NHS Professionals, Neil Lloyd, was paid £631,000 off payroll over three years.
This time the Health Department sounds uncompromising. A spokesman said:
“Tax avoidance will not be tolerated, and there is no excuse for it in the NHS, or any other part of the public sector.”
The Trust Development Authority, which provides guidance on governance to NHS trusts, is working with Monitor, which regulates the running of health bodies, to carry out the investigation to ensure that the use of off-payroll contracts is in line with guidance.
targeted is anybody earning over £58,200 a year or has been in post for more than six months and being paid through a personal service company.
In my view it cannot come soon enough. Tax avoidance deprives the Treasury of cash that could be used for better public services. Tax avoidance in the cash strapped NHS is actually depriving hospitals and communities of vital cash. All these people also earn a fair whack. They are not those forced to take a one per cent pay rise and see their living standards go down. On the contrary through tax avoidance they get richer on the backs of others.
Iain Duncan Smith’s endangered speciesthe free bus pass
George Osborne has made a lot of noise about how pensioners with spare cash are going to get a fabulous deal under the Coalition – high interest pensioner bonds and the chance to spend, spend their pension pot.
All this is seen by political commentators as a brilliant move by the Chancellor to get the grey vote out for the Tories next year – with many of the measures timed for the election.
He also made it clear that pensions were going to be exempt from the new welfare cap – which will hit everyone else from lone parents, the disabled.and the working poor on housing benefit.
Sounds too good to be true for the elderly. And guess what, it is.
Hidden in the specialist publication The House Magazine today is an interview with Works and Pensions Secretary, Iain Duncan Smith by journalist Paul Waugh. And he asks: What’s your latest thinking about benefits such as winter fuel allowance and other universal, non-pension benefits for the elderly?
The answer is : “The Chancellor has made it clear that they go into the [welfare] cap. So straight away they will be looked at in the same way as other benefits. Whether we have a specific view on those is a matter for the manifesto. It’s already very clear that they will be part of the overall balance of expenditure within the department for the benefit cap.”
So this broad brush promise on Budget Day is not true. Bus passes, TV licences, fuel payments, all available universally will join the rest of the benefits facing the chop.
What he doesn’t say – but everybody in Westminster knows – is that the scale of cuts planned after the 2015 will make the last five years look like tiny by comparison. So it is my bet that we will see the end of free bus passes and most fuel payments – because the size of cuts required will dictate it. And if you take the fact that Labour under Ed Balls is already committed to means testing fuel payments and the Liberal Democrats under Nick Clegg want to do the same to free bus passes. there is no escape.
And the poorer elderly will find their social care all but disappear – as a fresh wave of local government cuts come into force.
Great policy from the coalition. Splash out your pension fund on a Lamborghini – but if you can’t afford to pay the full bus fares take up your zimmer frame and walk!
The second defendant to suffer stress in this trial.
Day 74:
Former News of the World journalist Clive Goodman was taken to hospital today, minutes after he was due to continue giving evidence at the phone hacking trial today.
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Exaggeration can be a journalist’s foible.
Day 73, Part 2:
At the phone hacking trial today Clive Goodman admitted exaggerating the importance of his stories, but denied being “over-dramatic” or “florid” in his dealings with the News of the World executives.
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An amazing new fact : Clive Goodman, who received E215,600 over a five and a half year period to pay his contacts,managed not to draw a single penny from his bank account for two years between 2004 and 2006. He denies pocketing any of the contacts money for himself. All I will say is that sadly I have heard ( not to do with this case ) of this practice among a few journos in Fleet street.
Day 73:
Former royal editor Clive Goodman today denied pocketing cash payments from the News of the World meant for his sources.
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So Clive Goodman has now implicated THREE News International executives for involvement in phone hacking and the Crown Prosecution Service for not wanting to prosecute them. Extraordinary claim against Coulson that he could arrange for Goodman not to go to prison. Goodman was later jailed for four months. Wow!
Day 72: The Crown Prosecution Service had evidence incriminating three News of the World executives in phone hacking seven years ago – but made a decision to limit the case to the paper’s royal editor Clive Goodman, he claimed at the Old Bailey today.
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East Coast trains at Kings Cross. Pic courtesy:; http://www.rail.co.uk
A blunder by the Department of Transport has allowed two top state rail bosses to repeat a tax avoidance scheme which should have been outlawed in Whitehall following the exposure of Ed Lester, the former head of the Student Loans Company.
The deal allowed the highly paid chief executive, Michael Holden, and his finance director, David Walker, to avoid having tax and national insurance deducted at source from the state-owned Directly Operated Railways, which is responsible for the East Coast mainline. They are now on the pay roll and are currently paid £244,000 and £171,000 a year respectively. Originally it appears the money was paid into their two personal service companies run with their wives.
A full report in Exaro News today names the two top officials cited in a written Parliamentary statement from Danny Alexander, Chief Secretary to the Treasury last week which revealed that 128 civil servants had been caught on ” off pay roll” contracts that should be have been full-time employees, Some 125 former civil servants who quit have now been reported to Revenue and Customs.
But the Treasury has put the blame on the other three on two ministries, Transport and the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and has fined both ministries over £500,000 between them for the lapse which they should have put an end after six months.
Michael Holden. chief executive of state owned Directly Operated Railways
He describes himself on his Twitter account as: “A bit grumpy, mostly old, but all man, busy with railways, being dad and lots of other stuff. Looking for that elusive work-life balance thingy.”
On his Linked-In page, he says: “I lead the UK government’s business unit capable of running rail franchises when no tendered franchise can be put in place.” He runs a personal-service company, Coledale Consulting. He describes it as: “Railway-management consultancy specialising in strategic advice to railway companies. Clients include infrastructure providers, train operating groups and companies, and client side including government. UK, Ireland, Sweden.”
David Walker appears to be a less flamboyant and is not on Twitter. He has interesting links with Romanian as well British railways..
The third case uncovered by the Treasury was at the Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency (AHVLA), which hired Claire Evans off payroll as director of corporate services in October 2012.
Her annual salary last year was between £140,000 and £145,000.
Again, the Treasury said that the AHVLA was too slow to put Evans on the payroll.
The biggest offender for off pay roll contracts is Vince Cable’s department of business,innovation and skills and its agencies – accounting for almost half the 125.
interesting disclosure from Clive Goodman that Andy Coulson actually authorised payments to hacker and private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire. Even more interesting is that he says emails authorising this would not exist now except for a decision to download them himself in 2006.
Day 71: Andy Coulson personally authorised cash payments to the News of the World’s private detective which led to the phones of three royal aides being hacked, a court heard today.
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Westminster Confidential 