Investigators under investigation: Met Police inquiry into IPCC over Richmond abuse scandal

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IPCC: Under investigation by Met Police over handling of Richmond complaint

IPCC: Under investigation by Met Police over handling of Richmond complaint

Operation Fernbridge – the criminal investigation into a paedophile ring centred round the London borough of Richmond and the shady Elm Guest House – is now turning to the role of Independent Police Complaints Commission over the whole affair.

As reported by my excellent colleague for Exaro News, Mark Conrad,(see http://www.exaronews.com/articles/4936/met-investigates-police-watchdog-over-richmond-paedo-ring) in an amazing turn of events the  Met Police is now investigating the role of the police investigators.

The turn of events is extraordinary. A former local government employee at Richmond and GMB trade unionist put a complaint into the police some 20 years after the police raid on the Elm Guest House. The police while taking down the details did not appear to investigate.

So he complained to the IPCC who also appear to have dismissed the inquiry.He then used the appeal process to complain about the IPCC who again dismissed it.

To be fair most of the complaint concentrated on yet another hushed up  Richmond scandal – the physical abuse of elderly people at another care home – but there is a clear mention of child abuse in the first complaint to the police.

Now 30 years later ( and one has to be careful not to prejudice a future trial) there is enough evidence to justify the arrest of two people in connection with the child sexual abuse inquiry, it logically follows that the police certainly did not do their job and the IPCC appear to have been cavalier about doing theirs.

What is emerging is that the Conservative and Liberal run leafy borough of Richmond – which made the careers of three Liberal Democrat peers, Lord Razzall, Baroness Tonge and Baroness Hamwee – was behind the net curtains not a very savoury place. And it is clear that the authorities and the complaints procedure were found wanting. Watch out for more damaging revelations to come on Richmond once Exaro has fully investigated them.

Ed Lester gets new £135,000 a year Whitehall job

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Ed Lester heads the land registry whose HQ was sold for £37m recently. Pic credit: trevorcoultart.wordpress.com

Ed Lester heads the land registry whose HQ was sold for £37m recently. Pic credit: trevorcoultart.wordpress.com

No problem for top people – even in centre of controversies – getting a new job in Whitehall.

Ed Lester, the former chief executive of the Students Loans Company, whose tax arrangements caused a furore and led to a Whitehall wide inquiry, has been appointed by the  Department of Business, Innovation and Skills to head the Land Registry.

Not surprisingly there is no mention of his controversial past in the Whitehall news release .The same ministry who approved his appointment to the SLC on a deal which meant he received no deductions for tax and national insurance at source, has now appointed him to head the Land Registry – the body  alongside Companies House I used to trace his company and address.

Mr Lester will get a £135,000 a year – somewhat less than at the SLC – and he will pay tax and national insurance at source. He will be eligible for a 20 per cent performance bonus.

Business and Energy Minister Michael Fallon said:
“Ed Lester has the right skills, experience and ambition to meet the new challenges that face the Land Registry. His previous experience of running the Student Loans Company will help to ensure that the Land Registry can become a more nimble, digitally driven organisation.

He is taking on a tough job. The Land Registry  is in  the middle of a controversial plan to slim down its workforce and could eventually be seen as a candidate for privatisation. It has to improve efficiency by 60 per cent and cut costs by £40m a year over five years.

He is likely to find himself under close scrutiny and his decisions will affect every home and business owner in the country when they come to sell or buy a property.

Now Met Police target Roman Catholic Church in historic sex abuse investigation

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The Met Police  has launched a further investigation into historic child sex abuse – this time focusing on the Roman Catholic Church in England.

I understand from good sources that the Met Police are investigating the role of a Roman Catholic bishop – both involving allegations involving paedophilia and whether he protected Roman Catholic priests who were alleged paedophiles.

For legal reasons I cannot say much more since there is an ongoing criminal investigation under Operation Fernbridge where they have already been two arrests and a decision is expected this week by the Met Police whether to charge the two individuals  or extend their bail.

Quite separately I am also told the Met Police may start soon investigating other Catholic institutions in the UK.

A statement from the  Roman Catholic church said: ” “I am not aware of any generic police investigation into sexual abuse linked to the Catholic Church in the UK. Similarly, I am not aware of any investigation into a particular bishop. However, were there to be an investigation, clearly we would co-operate.”

There is a report by me and Mark Conrad, putting it into context with overseas investigations into the Roman Catholic Church on Exaro News at http://www.exaronews.com/articles/4928/met-s-paedophile-unit-starts-investigating-catholic-church-in-uk … and in the Sunday People at http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/catholic-church-uk-faces-child-1830837 ….

The new direction  I am told is very significant. More information on this will be put up in the next few weeks when I can get it verified and properly researched.

Leveson, “secret arrests” and the rights of suspects: a question of balance – Hugh Tomlinson QC

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This is the alternative view by media barrister Hugh Tomlinson,QC to my piece on why APCO should tighten its guidelines on releasing the names of those arrested.I put it up for debate for those who are interested.

INFORRM's avatarInforrm's Blog

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThe Mail on Sunday and the Daily Telegraph are alarmed about ‘secret arrests’ – which, as usual, they blame on Lord Justice Leveson.  The complaint concerns proposed new guidelines from the Association of Chief Police Officers under which “forces will be banned from confirming the names of suspects”. The Mail calls it “a chilling new threat to the right to know” and holds out the prospect of people being swept off the streets in the manner of North Korea and Zimbabwe. The Telegraph says that critics are condemning the proposal as an attack on open justice.

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Shamed by Japan: Britain’s pot holed roads to ruin

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Pothole in London borough of Haringey: Pic Credit: Alan Stanton -Creative Commons

Pothole in London borough of Haringey: Pic Credit: Alan Stanton -Creative Commons

You couldn’t make this up. Britain’s potholed and noisy roads have such a bad world-wide reputation  for damaging new cars that a Japanese manufacturer has  replicated a British road  to test them before they can be sold in the UK.

Yes Honda has built four miles of rough British road -including British road signs and a roundabout -in Takasu, Hokkaido in Japan because they cannot find a main road bad enough to test car suspension in the 5500 miles between Japan and London.

Evidently  Britain is unique in building roads with porous surfaces which mean that every winter  they crack, break up and create pot holes. Nobody else in Europe would dream of building such roads which are noisier and can’t cope with bad weather.

As  a spokesperson for Honda  put more diplomatically: “The road surface in continental Europe, especially in the North, are paved with hard material which doesn’t absorb water. This is because in severe winter, absorbed water in the material may freeze turn into ice and destruct the roads.

“In England, we don’t tend to suffer with this severe winter and so the surface is made with softer materials with many pores to absorb rain to prevent a slippery surface. As a result, UK roads have a rougher surface which creates more road noise than other European roads. What Honda wanted to replicate in Takasu was this type of road surface. Rough does not mean badly maintained or pot-holes. It means the different material.”

Honda has also created roundabouts because as Honda put it:” In certain rural UK areas, roundabouts create a situation where high stopping power, agile acceleration response and high manoeuvrability is required. There is no such situation in Japan as there are hardly any roundabouts.”

So now we know why we are having to put up every year with multi million pound bills, legal claims for compensation from councils. Instead we need to buy cars which have to be tested abroad on replicated British roads because they can’t find any like ours in  their country.

The full story is on the Exaro News at http://www.exaronews.com/articles/4921/japan-recreates-rough-uk-roads-in-test-track-for-new-cars . If you want to see the spiralling costs of pot holes see February’s Which/ magazine (http://bit.ly/11T0Lfn) . The outstanding bill for repairs is £12.93 billion.

Or if you are really fed up why don’t you e-mail the roads minister, Norman Baker at norman.baker@dft.gsi.gov.uk and tell him to start bitmac ( the replacement for tarmac) roads with surfaces that are bound to crack up every winter.

Why a dangerous police chief ban on announcing arrests will be an own goal for justice

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Suspects arrested already in former Elm Tree Guest House investigation Pic courtesy: Exaro

Suspects arrested already in former Elm Tree Guest House investigation Pic courtesy: Exaro

A furore has broken out rightly on  daft and dangerous proposals by the Association of  Chief Police Officers (Acpo) to refuse to release the names of people they arrest in the course of  criminal investigations. As the Mail on line reported this weekend (http://bit.ly/12BhfaN )  the proposal has been condemned as secret justice and produced angry responses from Index on Censorship and the Society of Editors. The police seem to be using Leveson as cover to do this.

But it smacks of the worst kind of justice where people disappear after being taken off the streets in countries like Russia, Zimbabwe and tinpot dictatorships.

But there is a practical aspect of this policy that has been completely overlooked. It is  because Acpo have taken the view that they are a news supplier which gives the media stories and  forgotten that it is two way traffic. The investigative media also uncover crooks and give the police grounds for prosecutions.

All this will fall  apart under this new directive from Acpo when both the police and the press are pursuing the same long term investigation and their paths cross. If the police don’t tell the press and the public who they have arrested they will be a very grave danger that when these people come to trial – the prosecution case will collapse because vital information to be revealed to the jury will already been published.

The reason is simple. At the moment if the police announce arrests have been made in a long term investigation – the media take a decision to no longer publish information about that individual which could prejudice their trial. But if the media don’t know or the police won’t tell them they have been arrested they can at the moment quite legitimately publish what they like within the libel laws.

Lord Justice Leveson: Used as excuse by ACPO Pic courtesy of Leveson inquiry website

Lord Justice Leveson: Used as excuse by ACPO Pic courtesy of Leveson inquiry website

The only way round this would be for the media to refer every story  that involves criminal activity to the police to check whether they thought of arresting anyone. This would amount to a police state – with the police telling editors what they could or could not publish.

This is not theoretical. At the  moment through Exaro News(http://www.exaronews.com)  a team of journalists we are involved in a very long and complicated investigation – over 40 stories so far – into an historic paedophile ring which operated partly through the London borough of Richmond and at Elm Guest House in the 1980s.

The police have arrested two people John Stingemore,  who ran Grafton Close children’s home in Richmond, and  Father Tony McSweeney, a Roman Catholic priest ,so far and are continuing investigations into other people, including highly placed VIPs, peers and MPs.

Anyone reading this blog or following Exaro  would have noticed there has been mighty little written about this two individuals since their arrest. It is not that we don’t know stuff about both of them. But we are not putting it on line because we KNOW from the police there have been arrested and we don’t want them to escape justice by wrecking a  fair trial.

But imagine we didn’t know. the whole police case  against them could collapse. No not too melodramatic.

What Acpo fail to appreciate is that investigative journalists  work like detectives. They gather information through painstaking inquiries, trace contacts from witnesses to victims and  often find out the same information  as the police about  suspects. Sometimes they are ahead, sometimes it is the police.

To decide not to announce the names of arrested suspects will in these cases be a spectacular own goal for the police. What we need is co-operation  and dialogue  not a wall of silence.

Exclusive: The shy mandarin who gave back half his redundo to the Treasury

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This is an unusual story for our time. Just when the snatch it all culture from money grabbing bonus seeking bankers and utility bosses, and golden goodbyes for multi billionaires dominate the media, someone has a conscience.

In July 2012 Mick Laverty was made compulsorily redundant when the government axed West Midlands Advantage as part of the government’s closure of  all  the regional development agencies. This little bureaucracy bashing exercise  supervised by Vince Cable, the business secretary, has led to an amazing £60m in payouts to the 2300 staff. According to a report from IPPR North (http://www.ippr.org/images/media/files/publication/2013/03/UKfirst-northern-FDI_Mar2013_10500.pdf ) it has contributed to Britain’s downturn outside the bloated London and the South East with inward investment dropping drastically,particularly in the North and Midlands.

Mick Laverty: the shy mandarin who gave back half his redundo; Pic reproduced with permission Student Loans Company

Mick Laverty: the shy mandarin who gave back half his redundo; Pic reproduced with permission Student Loans Company

Among the super size redundo package was an award of £14o,772 to Mick Laverty – and the last accounts of the agency record he got some £351,000 (including the redundo) in the last 15 months in the job.

At the time the Department of Business Innovation and Science said none of these highly paid mandarins were going to get any new jobs in Whitehall.

And yet just six months later he was appointed as the new chief executive of the Students Loans Company to replace Ed Lester – a name familiar to this website after his amazing deal where he avoided paying tax or national insurance at source led to a huge crackdown across Whitehall when Danny Alexander, chief secretary to the Treasury, discovered 2500 civil servants were doing the same thing.

And guess who approved his appointment none other than the Department for Business. Furthermore as is reported in Exaro News, his salary is £160,000 a year plus up to £25,000 in bonuses, some £45,000 more than his predecessor. See http://www.exaronews.com/articles/4902/ed-lester-to-depart-from-student-loans-company-this-month

But there is a rather nice silver lining – at least for the taxpayer. To his credit Mick Laverty decided to return £82,117  redundo to the Treasury entirely as a voluntary gesture since he is entitled to the money under the Civil Service Compensation Scheme. I tried to talk to him about it but he seems very publicity shy and wouldn’t comment. People around him say he believes it was the right thing to do as he was only six months without a job.

If only some of our other big fat cats in Whitehall,local government  and the banks thought the same Britain might be a fairer place. But sadly the National audit Office tell me that is very rare in Whitehall, they didn’t know of another instance.

Politics of the madhouse:Lunatic law to regulate the blogosphere

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Lord Justice Leveson: Blog Regulation was outside his remit

Lord Justice Leveson: Blog Regulation was outside his remit Pic courtesy: Leveson Inquiry website

Rushed legislation is bad legislation.  Proposals in the current crime and courts bill  to extend regulation to the blogosphere at the switch of a clause without proper debate or consideration  is daft and dangerous.

I have seen the detailed clauses put down for debate when Parliament returns this month – and frankly the only use for them is to swell the already well lined pockets of m’ learned friends. Taken together they are neither use nor ornament and if they became law all they would do is spread confusion and clog the courts with hours of pointless legal argument.

The aim is to try to bring the completely unregulated blogosphere within the new  regulated press and media. The proposal was neither sought nor demanded by Lord Leveson, whose inquiry concentrated on big media. Leveson probably didn’t understand the blogosphere and as far as I know isn’t on Twitter.

The amendments tabled in the House of Lords just before the recess on March 27 can be seen here (http://bit.ly/14AyRHO). It looks as though it is in  response to a letter from a number of bloggers from Paul Staines and Tim Montgomerie to Laurance Durnan and Sunny Hundal  to the Guardian  who objected to even more drastic measures (see http://bit.ly/XTs84y ).

But I still have enormous problems with the amendment. It is still not clear whether this blog should be covered by the law or not. On the one hand  it is primarily a news blog ( should be covered then) but written by one person ( shouldn’t be covered then). It involves some editorial control – either pre moderation or post moderation of comments – depending on rules set  by WordPress.com not me.(could be covered or not depending on your view.)

I can just imagine the arguments in a courtroom between lawyers on this blog and others. What will be the definition of incidental news ( how many stories do have to have to qualify) – what happens when a subject -like the current police investigations into paedophiles becomes news (do sites that write this up become news when it is the headlines, and not news when it is not).

When is a blog like  Broken Barnet  by Mrs Angry considered a community asset (exempt) or a news blog (not exempt). What is the definition of a small blog – one of the weird Lords amendments ( is it the number of hits, unique visitors, blog followers? Or as one person has suggested is it registered for VAT and does it pass the threshold for VAT?)

The main proponents for these new controls appear to be the Media Reform Coalition who have written this blog ( see http://bit.ly/13Mgr7S ) . They appear to be a self-appointed group of academics and lawyers. Their  argument is that I  should be registered to save exemplary damages being awarded against me by the rich and powerful and to avoid paying my opponents’ legal costs.

Since this blog appeared the Media Reform Coalition have today (Thursday) launched an on line consultation and more detailed explanation of the proposed changes. Those interested can find this at http://fb.me/2z6xrP6qz 

Sunny Hundal of Liberal Conspiracy says this is not the case and there will be  three weeks of consultation to try and get un registered bloggers the same privileges as those who are registered and define properly what is a small blog. (See http://liberalconspiracy.org/2013/03/27/bloggers-to-get-three-week-consultation-on-regulation).

It remains to be seen how successgful this will be.

In the meantime  I am not swayed by the exemplary damages argument – it costs £1600 alone just to take out a libel writ at that level – so it would be beyond most people’s means. And also I suspect that many small bloggers caught in this trap wouldn’t employ lawyers – they would be become litigants in person – and clog up the courts just as the famous pair who took on Mcdonalds.  And they won’t have the money to pay the other sides legal costs anyway – so whoever took them would end up out-of-pocket themselves. The case would also become a cause celebre.

My gut feeling is to rely on the new Defamation Act – which will restrict libel cases against anyone – as the  rich and powerful will have to show the story has caused major damage – not just any damage.  I think all sides would benefit if any proposals to include blogs were dropped from the remit of the regulator – until at least there is a considered debate. As I said making law on the hoof is a disaster. You have only to look at the Dangerous Dogs Act to see this. This is the equivalent of the Dangerous Bloggers Act!

How bungling ministers are closing down specialist help for child abuse victims

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Graham Wilner: Picture reproduced courtesy Rory Wilmer Photography

Graham Wilner: Picture reproduced courtesy Rory Wilmer Photography

Last week  I wrote a blog showing how David Cameron had failed to implement immediate help for people who witnessed child abuse. Downing Street responded by saying that there was £10.5m was available to help.

Not only has this proved to be wrong . But the situation  is far worse than I could have imagined. The government is closing down what specialist support that might be available just when the police led by the  Metropolitan Police Paedophile Unit are expanding their investigations so people all over the country  are being contacted about historic child abuse – whether over Savile or the Fernbridge and Fairbank operations or  further allegations against music schools or Roman Catholic priests.

Now I have learned from Graham Wilmer, pictured above, that we are just a week or so away from the closure a pioneering project in Merseyside, the Lantern project. This project ( see http://www.lanternproject.org.uk) is unusual since it is run by a person who was sexually abused in his youth. It is also a specialist site.

Mr Wilmer is alarmed about  the situation facing people now being contacted by the police who cannot get help. See my article in Exaro News (http://www.exaronews.com/articles/4909/child-sex-abuse-groups-offering-support-services-face-closure)  for the full story.

But his experience of government support under the coalition is appalling. First the funding of his centre was halted by the justice department under Ken Clarke. Then he was advised to apply through the Cabinet Office under Francis Maude who pushed him to the Big Lottery. But the Big Lottery would not fund him for bureaucratic reasons – and only the use literally of the old boy’s network – did he get any cash.  He rang Gus O’Donnell, then Cabinet Secretary, who used to be head boy at his old school to explain the situation. An hour later,he says, £29.000, was promised to the charity.

The money was given to put on a course to train health professionals in giving proper support to people who had been abused as children. But the NHS re-organisation under then health secretary Andrew Lansley, meant that the local primary care trust, was being abolished and did not send anyone on  the course. Its successor body may have some money under Jeremy Hunt next year, but by then the centre will be closed.

As he said: “We will be closing down in two weeks time. The outgoing government did promise to set up a national strategy which would include funding for child sexual abuse but this was cancelled by the new government.”

His will not be the only none. Fay Maxted, chief executive of the Survivors Trust, said: “A significant number are going to have to close as they are funded by private trusts and money from the lottery and this is not forthcoming.

So far from the government supporting victims and witnesses to child sexual abuse – they are actively  hindering any help. Cynics might think the ministers might not care because after all some of the alleged paedophiles are linked to the Tory  and Liberal Democrat parties in the past. I do not think this is case but people could be forgiven for thinking it.

This situation is a disgrace and the present coalition government has not got a grip on the scale of the problem. Hang your heads in shame Francis Maude, Jeremy Hunt and the present justic secretary, Chris Grayling. You don’t seem to have clue about what is happening.

Eric Pickles: No privatisation of the fire service

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Eric Pickles: Amazing no to fire privatisation

Eric Pickles: Amazing no to fire privatisation

Eric Pickles, the communities secretary,thisweek made an extraordinary statement for a Tory Cabinet Minister. He categorically ruled out the privatisation of the fire service in England. This has not been reported in any national newspaper or TV network.

Even more extraordinarily he made this statement in a very public place in front of  some 80 journalists from the Westminster elite body of lobby hacks as guest speaker  at a Parliamentary Press Gallery lunch. And only one, the questioner, Rob Merrick, a freelance parliamentary correspondent who writes for the Northern Echo and other regionals, bothered to report it.

Evidently such a statement is not regarded as news by journalists.

Yet it is significant. Mr Merrick had spotted that the government was using some obscure measure to  amend an act passed by the Blair government in 2004 to allow the core of the fire service – the  full-time firefighters – to be privatised.

The reason they were doing it was that Cleveland fire authority wanted to become a mutual – a half way house to privatisation – but had found it was illegal. The Tories ever keen to end the state look like ready to oblige.

First Mr Pickles denied that the government was going to privatise the fire service only encourage mutuals. But Mr Merrick came back and said the same change in the law could permit privatisation as well as mutuals. The in an extraordinary statement Mr Pickles said: ” If this is the case we won’t go ahead with the change. I repeat there will no privatisation of the fire service.” So he seemed to suggest that even Cleveland’s mutual plan could be dead in the water.

To me this was extraordinary . First one of the big privatisers in government had actually ruled out full-scale privatisation – not a normal statement from the Tory right.

Second the press -even on the old man bites dog scenario – thought this didn’t  merit any attention.

I know that no privatisation does not equate to no cuts – see what is happening in London and elsewhere now- and it does not stop some of the services being run by private companies. But it seemed that a very senior Tory had decided that they could not turn the whole system over to the private sector. Perhaps the Assetco scandal in London has made its mark. Perhaps they have decided that it is not worth a full-scale dispute between them and the Fire Brigades Union, led by Matt Wrack. But whatever a Rubicon was crossed and nobody reported it. But now he can held to account.