Hypocrisy and double standards: How a Tory flagship council denies the ” just about managing ” their new homes

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Nickie Aiken – Westminster Tory leader and a bit of a hypocrite over housing

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Today Philip Hammond the Chancellor made a big statement aimed to help the young get on the housing ladder with promises to build hundred of thousands of new homes and no stamp duty for the first £300,000 of the cost of a first time buyer home.

At the same time the Tory flagship council of Westminster has just decided NOT to make available affordable homes for young people which  it could provide by legally demanding a deal with a developer to provide cash and new homes for ordinary people in the centre of London.

The development around Baker Street by Portman Estates will allow the company to make a mint by building 51 homes, new offices and shops in a part of London where flats easily go for over £1m and much more.

By law Westminster could demand that nearly a third of the homes are made available at affordable (still high) rents to ordinary people and that the developers given £12.5 m towards the council’s own affordable housing fund – this is used often to export the homeless to other cheaper places.

In fact council documents show Westminster is about to agree a deal to accept the wealthy developer’s offer of providing just ten affordable homes ( under 20 per cenr) and contribute less than half the £12.5m the council could demand  from them = by agreeing to their offer of £5m.

You might think that this is well par for the course for the council that was famous in the 1990s for the ” homes for votes ” gerrymandering scandal under Dame Shirley Porter. They tried to move out poor families by letting new council homes to the middle class in Tory marginal seats.

But the new feisty leader Nickie Aiken  – she gave a good compassionate speech at the Tory party conference in a local government fringe – has made the point of NOT being another Dame Shirley.

She has told the Financial Times in June : “My view is that too many times we have not always pushed back enough in requiring affordable homes on-site, have buckled on viability or surrendered to the idea that brutal market economics simply denies housing opportunities for most people and that is just a harsh fact of life.”

And in case you missed it told the London Evening Standard  the same thing in January this year.  They reported : She suggested she would do things differently by no longer accepting “cheques” from developers in lieu of building more affordable homes.

“I can tell you there will be a lot more built under me than today.”

Well really – what a hypocrite – obviously not accepting cheques from developers meant they needn’t pay her so much to make even more money.

Councillor Paul Dimoldenberg, Labour’s Business, Planning and Public Realm spokesperson, said:

 “Once again the Conservatives prove that they cannot be trusted on delivering new affordable homes for Westminster residents. The Conservatives talk tough but roll over when developers plead poverty on major multi-million pound redevelopment schemes. The Conservatives are giving the go-ahead to more luxury housing and failing those in need of an affordable home in central London.”

If anything he was probably being too polite. The Tory leader is very keen to show a compassionate face for next May’s elections. The trouble is deeds count much more than words for the plight of young people who can’t get homes. Hypocrisy is not necessarily a good vote winner. I bet you don’t see this story in the London Evening Standard.

The full details  of the planning application and Westminster’s recommendation are here.

 

Exclusive: Are whistleblowers now too frit to reveal when NHS patients and care home residents are in danger?

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Dr Henrietta Hughes, 4 day a week National Guardian Pic Credit: CQC

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Tucked away in a recent National Audit Office report on the NHS and social care regulator, the Care Quality Commission, is the extraordinary statistic that the number of whistleblowers who tipped off the regulator fell by a staggering 16 per cent to 7452 in 2016-17. That is one in six fewer whistleblowers than the previous year. See paragraph 2.19 of the report.

The figure compares with 153,000 members of the public – an increase of one per cent – expressing concerns about services during the same period.

I have written about this in Tribune this week.

And the latest figures come after  a report by Robert Francis QC to Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary,which was highly critical of the way some had been treated after they made a complaint.

In 2015, Francis reported widespread severe victimisation of staff by senior management when they spoke up for patients. Francis recognised that sacked whistleblowers are blacklisted and recommended a re-employment scheme but nothing seems to have come of it.

His most substantial recommendation was for a National Guardian to protect staff. This led the CQC to create a part time post with no powers. The first appointee, Dame Eileen Sills, quit before starting.

Since then Dr Henrietta Hughes . a GP has been appointed  as National Guardian, on a four day week. And according  to the CQC  yesterday marked her first year as the National Guardian for the NHS with the publication of her first case review report and her annual report highlighting the work of Freedom to Speak Up Guardians.

The one case review she published covered Southport and Ormskirk Health Trust which  has the unenviable reputation for bullying and discriminating against black and ethnic minority staff , a dodgy appointments system favouring some people against others and an attitude of not bothering when staff raise concerns about patients. This might sound familiar incidently for those who have followed my articles on staff practices at the Equality and Human Rights Commission but we should wait for the employment tribunals to see what happened there.

Dr Hughes has recommended a series of recommendations to put matters right – 22 in all – and there is promise from the interim chief executive of the trust, Karen Jackson, to act  with a new senior management team. We shall see. Also this was a trial – how many reports are we going to get from her in future?

The National Guardian has also produced a series of high flown documents which sound terribly good in theory – but again I think we should wait to see what happens.

What has happened so far is that the appointment of a national guardian has coincided with a drop in whistleblowers telling the CQC when things are going wrong.

What we do know is that staff do lose jobs are blacklisted and get the reputation of being troublemakers. There is a  website which covers 11 such cases here. All designed I suspect to cover up an NHS and care system creaking at the seams and not being adequately financed. I hope Dr Hughes does not turn out to be a convenient fig leaf for a service in trouble.

 

Exclusive: How newly found “destroyed” papers revive the mystery of the notorious gay and paedophile Elm Guest House

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Elm Guest House: Run jointly by Carole Kasir

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UPDATE: Since this article was published a fresh source has come forward to my colleague Mark Conrad, who also wrote about Elm Guest House, showing that Carol Kasir was born Carol Linda Jones in the West Riding of Yorkshire on 4 July 1942 and was never born in Germany. She and her family grew up in south London. Carol moved to the USA with her mother when she was a teenager, but did not like the States and soon returned.There is no direct family link to the name Weichmann – Carol’s relatives think she made up the name, or adopted it to cover her background, before she married Harry. Harry would have thought her maiden name was Weichmann as it was declared on her marriage certificate.

Coroner’s papers covering the controversial inquest of Carole Kasir, the madam who ran with her husband, the notorious Elm Guest House in Barnes, south London. have been discovered after the police said they had been destroyed

They revive the whole business of whether the venue for consenting gay adults was  used as a haunt for paedophiles. I have written  today with Keir Mudie, the Mirror’s deputy political editor, an article about it in the Sunday People and it is also on the Mirror website here.

The verdict by the Hammersmith coroner way back in 1990 was that she committed suicide – and given two suicide notes were found – so it should have been a slam dunk case.

But other people who gave evidence thought she might have been killed because she was alleged to have kept records and photographs of some of the visitors who came there – one of whom the Met police confirmed was Sir Cyril Smith, whom even the biggest naysayers about VIP paedophilia, would have difficulty today making a case that he was innocent.

What is extraordinary is that the Met Police did a recent investigation – Operation Fernbridge-  into Elm Guest House  and a Richmond Council children’s home Grafton Close – that led to the conviction of a Roman Catholic priest Tony McSweeney and the arrest and charging of the deputy manager of the home, John Stingmore on child sexual abuse. Yet they told an MP Tom Watson, now Labour’s deputy leader, who raised questions about the case, that all the papers relating to Kasir at the inquest had been destroyed.

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The covering page of the” destroyed” inquest document

That is plainly not the case as these redacted documents show. I understand that more recently the police may have checked back though there is no evidence that they are re-opening the Richmond investigation.

McSweeney was not charged with anything about Elm Guest House only in connection with the children’s home and abuse at Stingemore’s flat in Bexhill. Stingemore was charged with one count involving Elm Guest House but he died just before the case was due to come to court. So it was never tested in court.

What the documents do show illustrates how difficult it is to investigate historical child sexual abuse and the mass of contradictions -surrounding the story.

They even go down to Carole Kasir’s name  in the document. The official record gives her name as Weichman and born on 4 July 1942 in Germany. Her marriage certificate I have  recently learnt has Weichman as her father and her estranged husband at the time  said her name was Weichman. But a close relative  who should know said her maiden name was Carole Anne Jones and she was born in London.

The documents also raise questions about her suicide and here even the accounts are contradictory. Her GP, David Walker, who she had been a patient at his practice for 14 years, reveals she did have a history earlier of suicide, was diabetic and had a drink problem. But he concludes that she was NOT the type of person he expected to commit suicide.

The toxicology report from New Cross Hospital confirms she died from hypoglycemia and an overdose of insulin. But the examination did not bother to check the syringes or phials or the contents of her stomach. No alcohol was discovered.

But the most contentious  and sensational evidence came from other witnesesses One insisted that he had seen a pile of photographs of prominent people and documents naming which VIPs came there  at her home and another claimed she was being pursued by the security services and the police.

One piece of evidence from the inquest  does chime with the Metropolitan Police’s answer to Channel 4 Dispatches  is the involvement of Sir Cyril Smith. The detailed evidence to the inquest included a story that the overweight MP broke her toilet and wouldn’t pay for the repair which added a further dispute. between him and her.

The inquest also took evidence from Richmond Council  where Mr Jeffries, director of social services, admitted that Stingemore was a paedophile convicted in 1983 -a year after he left Richmond Council.

But Terry Earland, the head of children’s services, suspected that boys were being taken to Elm Guest House from Grafton Close earlier under Stingemore’s care. This appeared not to be taken up by the then director of social services, Louis Minster who  then suddenly resigned from the council.

Now you might say as many naysayers do, why should we be bothered. It is all in the past and we should move on. But I bet none of these people have looked into the eyes of people who have been abused and seen the havoc and destruction they have faced years after the event. They would prefer to just call them fantasists and say none of this probably happened anyway.

That is why we have an independent inquiry at the moment looking into historic child sexual abuse and certainly looking at the evidence it has already dredged out of  the sexual abuse of children at Knowl View School in Rochdale by Cyril Smith there was a cover up as well as abuse.

That is why painstakingly we need to get the nearest we can to the truth and pretending document’s don’t exist is not a way to get there.

 

 

 

 

 

Exclusive: Supreme Court ruling opens way for legal action against Michael Gove and Liz Truss for racial discrimination and victimisation

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Liz Truss former Lord Chancellor Pic credit:BBC

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UPDATE: At a Press Gallery lunch in Parliament last week I raised the issue of the Supreme Court ruling and the potential case to be brought by three judges with David Lidington, the current Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary.

He did not want to comment about the Supreme Court judgement or any pending legal action but he vigorously defended any of the judges from institutional racism. He said it would be against their ” oath of office” and  believed all of them would be  fair minded and ” in no way racist.” He did admit that the judiciary did not have enough judges from black and ethnic minorities and promised a ” mentoring programme” so more top barristers would come forward and become judges.

Michael Gove and Liz Truss, two former Lord Chancellors,  the former lord chief justice, Lord Thomas, six High Court judges and  heads of the tribunal services are facing lthe prospect of legal action for victimisation and racial discrimination by three fellow black and Asian  judges and a black former tribunal member following a ground breaking ruling by the Supreme Court. An article appears in this week’s Tribune magazine. the link is here.

The virtually unreported Supreme Court judgement last week, which involved interpreting an EU equality treatment directive, is seen by campaigners as removing immunity claimed by the Ministry of Justice, the Metropolitan Police, magistrates and tribunal bodies, barristers, solicitors, doctors and dentists disciplinary bodies, from the Equality Act when handling misconduct inquiries.

It will also apply to disciplinary hearings involving sexual and gender discrimination and disabled people.

The original case was brought by a disabled black woman police officer, known as Ms P against the Metropolitan Police. She claimed discrimination because of her disability during a disciplinary and misconduct hearing.  She had previously been assaulted and was then involved in an incident which led to her arrest. She claimed post traumatic distress syndrome following the assault had led her to act in this way.  The panel rejected her claim and she was dismissed immediately.  She appealed to an employment tribunal  saying she had been  subject to disability discrimination but it struck out her case because it ruled that the panel was exempt from the Equality Act.

Her case was turned down by the lower courts but they have now been overruled by the Supreme Court. At the hearing her case was joined by four black and ethnic minority organisations, Operation Black Vote, Black Activists Rising Against the Cuts (BARAC UK) the Society of Black Lawyers, and The Association of Muslim Lawyers who asked for a ruling on civil law in this case.

pete rherbert caseThe ruling has had an immediate impact on four other cases involving racial discrimination and victimisation brought by three judges and a tribunal member that had been stayed at employment tribunals because the Ministry of Justice said it had immunity under the Equality Act.

These involve cases bought by Peter Herbert, a recorder and part time immigration and employment judge and chair of the Society of Black Lawyers; Daniel Bekwe,of African descent,  a former member of Croydon Employment tribunal; a district judge and an immigration judge, who plan to go public at a later date.

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Recorder Peter Herbert who is also chair of the Society of Black Lawyers. Pic Credit: Operation Black Vote

Mr Herbert said: “We met last night and decided that our solicitor will write to the Employment Tribunal asking for the stay to be lifted and the hearing re-opened following the supreme court’s judgement. We hope to get a hearing in December.”

Dianne Abbott, the shadow home secretary, is planning to raise questions with ministers on the judgement.

Groups were jubilant following the ruling. BARAC said: “Today’s important ruling we believe, means that Judges, Magistrates, lay tribunal members, barristers, solicitors, doctors, dentists, nurses and other professionals and office holders cannot be prevented from enjoying the full protection of the Equality Act 2010. We are writing to the MoJ and the Government to ask them to clarify all those professions where this ruling will apply.”

Lord Herman Ouseley, former Chair of the Commission for Racial Equality and the Chair of Kick It Out stated:

“There should be no hiding place in the form of judicial immunity for decision making bodies, decision makers and their processes enabling institutions to lawfully discriminate and not have these decisions challenged by those persons affected.
Too many attempts have already been made by the state to restrict access to and
therefore deny justice for individuals rightfully seeking to invoke the provisions of the
Equality Act 2010. No more denial of Justice”

Lee Jasper, former adviser to the Mayor of London on Equality, Chair of London Criminal Justice Consortium stated:

“The filing of an amicus brief indicates a renewed determination by British black organisations to embark on a focused legal strategy to achieve civil rights and equality. The notion of legal immunity from the Equality Act 2010 will now be the subject of intense legal examination. The black WPC at the centre of this case has been to hell at back at the hands of the Metropolitan Police, suffering the triple oppressions of race, gender and disability.”

“ Those involved in the suspension of Recorder Peter Herbert can now be exposed as exercising institutional white privilege,   as they had been given cover by the
Government relying on the misguided concept of judicial immunity to give licence
to institutional racism. ”

The decision  by the Supreme Court will have enormous ramifications for disciplinary panels. But there is also  extraordinary irony as well. This case could be appealed by the Metropolitan Police or the Ministry of Justice to the European Court of Justice.

But given the entire  stance being taken at the Brexit negotiations where the ECJ is a red line for ministers – it is the one thing that the government can’t do.

Meanwhile the Equality and Human Rights Commission has indicated it wants to make sure the government doesn’t sneakily change the law once we have left the EU.

EHRC Chief Executive Rebecca Hilsenrath said:”This case goes to highlight the importance of EU law in protecting fundamental rights. This is why we are pressing for amendments to the Withdrawal Bill to protect our rights under the Brexit process.”

A summary of the Supreme Court judgement is here.

Hillsborough Families:Patronised to death by the disdain of the powerful

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A Liverpool football shirt commemorating Hillsboough. pic Credit: itv.com

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While Westminster was yesterday swirling with tales of sexual harassment by powerful ministers and MPs and the arrogance of a government that won’t tell us what will be the real effects of Brexit, a calm but hard hitting report was published on what had happened since the revelations of the Hillsborough disaster.

The scandal of the deaths of 96 Liverpool fans who went to watch a football match 27 years ago is well known and now well documented following the Hillsborough Independent Panel which  exhaustively looked at what happened.

Since there are now criminal proceedings against people following the disaster I am not going to rerun  who was to blame for these needless deaths but concentrate on what yesterday’s report was about – what should be done.

There are many reports exposing what goes wrong. There are fewer reports proposing how to remedy serious shortcomings. There are even fewer that  demand a cultural change in British society.

This is one of them. The gruesome testimony in this report of the families who lost loved ones well before their time demands nothing less than a radical change in the way the ruling elite view ordinary people.

People caught up in a tragedy are confused, distraught. angry and suffer lifelong angst   and the last thing they want are people in power who frustrate, ignore, belittle or patronise them for wanting to know what happened to their loved ones. The Hillsborough families also had to put up with  very public denigrating coverage from the Sun  which has never been forgiven in Liverpool.

This report shows a way  change can come and outlines the legislation needed to get it done. The recommendations – if implemented in the right spirit – would make a radical change in the way society coped with  the aftermath of disasters – whether it is Hillsborough or the Grenfell tower fire tragedy.

The proposals go from introducing a ” duty of candour” for police officers to tell the truth, providing proper legal aid for ordinary people attending inquests so they can really participate in the proceedings and a special charter for families who suffer bereavement in a major tragedy like Hillsborough.

It also wants to make sure authorities don’t destroy vital documents to avoid public scrutiny, better training and evaluation for coroners, a review of the  effectiveness of  the pathology services and the way death certificates are issued. Nor should public bodies use public money to their advantage to outspend ordinary people trying to get to the truth.

Two other things should be said. Theresa May, whom I may  disagree politically, should be commended for commissioning this. She could easily have walked away once the Hillsborough Panel had done its work. Liverpool football fans are not her natural constituency. She will be even more commended if she decides to implement its findings.

There is also an remarkable passage in the introduction from the  report’s author, the Right Reverend James Jones, the former bishop of Liverpool and chair of the Hillsborough Inquiry which sums up the spirit of the report and what the families have suffered. It is worth quoting in full :

“I also wanted to set on record a recurrent theme that has been present, either implicitly or explicitly, in many personal conversations that I have had with families and survivors over the past 20 years.

“It is one that they have often been reluctant to raise not least because of public and political indifference to the subject and perhaps out of fear that it would add
to the lack of empathy that they experienced. The disaster, the aftermath, and the struggle to be heard for over quarter of a century have had an adverse effect on the mental and physical well being of both families and survivors.

“Depression, marital breakdown, family division, mental illness, unemployment, premature death and even suicide have featured in the Hillsborough narrative. Hopefully society’s increasing awareness of the issues of mental health will lead to a more sympathetic understanding of what they have endured.

“People talk too loosely about closure. They fail to realise that there can be no closure to love, nor should there be for someone you have loved and lost. Furthermore, grief is a journey without a destination. The bereaved travel through a landscape of memories and thoughts of what might have been. It is a journey marked by milestones, some you seek, some you stumble on. For the families and survivors of Hillsborough these milestones have included the search for truth, accountability and justice. But even these are not the end of the road.They are still travelling. And this report is another step along the way.”

You can read the report for yourselves here .

 

 

 

 

 

Nuclear decommissioning: How Whitehall turned toxic waste into a dirty mess

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Decommissioned power station at Wylfa in Anglesey

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It is possibly Whitehall’s biggest blunder. it certainly involves one of the biggest contracts ever let by government. And you will have shelled out hundreds of millions of pounds for very little in return.

The subject is the decommissioning of 10 nuclear power stations and two research centres – now all past their sell by date – and all leaving the taxpayer with an almighty bill to detoxify them and make them safe.

The total bill to do this was meant to be £3.8 billion but it turned out to do it properly would cost £6.2 billion- making it possibly one of the biggest contracts ever let by Whitehall.

And what a mess Whitehall civil servants and their ministers made of it. The whole sorry story was revealed in a report by Parliament’s financial watchdog, the National Audit Office, this month.

. The  £6.2 billion contract was approved by the Treasury because it promised to save taxpayers £904m by loading risks on the contractors. Instead it has only saved £255m and this has been partly wiped out by a botched tendering procurement which ended up with a rival consortia being able to sue the government for damages.

The company that won – an American led consortium Cavendish Fluor Partnership (CFP) based in Texas- was awarded the contract illegally.

We know this because its rivals Energy Solutions which includes Bechtel successfully sued  the government in the High Court last year and the High Court ruled that Fluor should have been disqualified because the final contract was nothing like the one put out to tender.The Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy ministry has just settled the bill with Energy Solutions by agreeing to pay then £97.3m in compensation.

But the real bill was even more. The NAO found that the full cost amounted to £122m.  It spent £13.8 million on legal and external advisers. Of this, £3.2 million was spent on the competition and £8.6 million was spent on legal fees in the ensuing litigation. The NDA estimates that in-house staff time has cost £10.8 million. This excludes the cost of staff time of senior central government officials who were heavily involved in decisions, particularly about the National Decommissioning  Authority’s settlement and its decision to terminate the contract.

One reason for this debacle is believe or not is that officials  did  not know the state of some of the decommissioned  power stations so had to revise its estimates as more problems came to light- changing the terms of the winning bidder’s contract.

Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office: “The NDA’s fundamental failures in the Magnox contract procurement raise serious questions about its understanding of procurement regulations; its ability to manage large, complex procurements; and why the errors detected by the High Court judgement were not identified earlier.

In light of these issues, the Department must consider whether its governance and oversight arrangements surrounding the NDA are sufficiently clear and effective in providing the scrutiny and assurance it requires to meet the standards expected in managing public money.”

There is now an inquiry going on under Steve Holliday, former chief executive of the National Grid. Its terms of reference include whether disciplinary action should be taken against the civil servants who made such a botched job and cost us even more money. It could mean heads should roll.

And it leaves the government another big problem because the contract with the present consortium has had to be terminated in 2019 – nine years before it is due to end.

And the axe is due to fall just as Brexit comes in – leaving more unfinished business just when Britain may well leave Euratom. What a mess.

I have written about this in Tribune. The full NAO report is here.

 

 

 

How you will soon be paying for Trident on your electricity bill

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HMS Victorious a nuclear power submarine – to be part paid by your electric bills
your electricity bill with hidden Trident costs

Whether you support or oppose Britain’s very costly renewal of the Trident nuclear deterrent  you  would expect to pay for it through general taxation.

You wouldn’t expect to have to subsidise it by paying even higher prices for essential and already expensive electricity to light and heat your home.

Yet this exactly what is going to happen following a  disclosure this month after a very short exchange between MPs and senior civil servants at a  hearing of the Commons Public Accounts Committee this month. And you won’t be seeing this spelt out in your bills.

The hearing was not into Trident but into the rapidly increasing costs and management of Britain’s first nuclear power station for decades at Hinkley Point.

But the issue was raised from a paper submitted to the committee by the Sussex University Social Science Policy Research Unit from Prof. Andy Stirling, Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and Dr Phil Johnstone.

Its key words were: ” an undetermined part of the full costs of this expensive, controversial – but officially highly-prioritised [3] – military infrastructure are in effect (without clear public acknowledgement or justification), being loaded into electricity prices. With costs of alternative large-scale domestic low-carbon energy resources like offshore wind power confirmed as significantly more favourable than HPC [4], it seems a hidden subsidy is being imposed on electricity consumers.”

“If a UK withdrawal from civil nuclear power on grounds of uncompetitive economics were to leave these shared costs borne entirely on the military side, then UK military nuclear infrastructures would be significantly more expensive.

“If civil nuclear commitments are being maintained (despite adverse economics) in order to help cover these shared costs, then it is this that amounts to a cross-subsidy.”

The problem was that these academics could only speculate they have no proof. Until now.

Meg Hillier, the Labour chair of the committee, without referring  to all this detail from Sussex University got an admission. She questioned Stephen Lovegrove, former Permanent Secretary, Department for Energy and Climate Change, on the issue.

This is the exchange:

“ Mr Lovegrove, there has been an argument put forward by Sussex University that Hinkley is a great opportunity to maintain our nuclear skills base. With your hat on at the Ministry of Defence, are you having discussions with the business Department about this?

Mr Lovegrove: “We are, yes. In my last year at DECC, I was in regular discussion with Jon Thompson, former Permanent Secretary at the MOD, to say that as a nation we are going into a fairly intense period of nuclear activity…. We are building the new SSBNs (nuclear armed nuclear submarines) and completing the Astutes.

…We are completing the build of the nuclear submarines which carry conventional weaponry. We have at some point to renew the warheads, so there is very definitely an opportunity here for the nation to grasp in terms of building up its nuclear skills.

“I do not think that that is going to happen by accident; it is going to require concerted Government action to make it happen. We are speaking to colleagues at BEIS ( Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy) fairly repeatedly about it, and have a number of forums in which we are doing that.”

So it is true. The two programmes ARE linked. And with  the cost of nuclear powered electricity at £92.50  per unit compared to £57 from other sources including renewable energy you are going to pay substantially more.

One company that is publicly delighted by this is Rolls Royce.  They are quoted saying : “that “expansion of a nuclear-capable skilled workforce through a civil nuclear UK programme would relieve the Ministry of Defence of the burden of developing and retaining skills and capability. This would free up valuable resources for other investments”.

Well Rolls Royce got £100m out of the submarine order and are happy for you to pay for the nuclear research. So it is more profit for them, higher bills for you.

The original article is published in Tribune magazine this week.

 

 

 

Time for MPs to take back control of Parliament

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John Bercow, the Speaker Image credit: bbc

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There has been much debate about populist slogans from Brexiteers about Britain needing to take back control of the country from so called Brussels bureaucrats when we leave the European Union in 2019.

The very same MPs are remarkably silent about a decision taken seven years ago by the UK Parliament to set up an independent committee to  take  back control of how the government can present its legislation to Parliament.

Put it very simply we are supposed to live in a Parliamentary democracy but in fact MPs allow the government to monopolise and control Parliament  through the Whips system without so much as a whisper of discontent.

The fact that nothing has been done was highlighted ( though you won’t have read in mainstream media) by John Bercow, the Speaker, in an address given in Parliament to the Hansard Society this week. You can read the full speech here.

In 2010 a committee chaired by Tony Wright, a Labour Mp who did a very good job scrutinising Whitehall on the public administration committee, proposed a series of reforms to  allow MPs to take back control of the running of Parliament from the government. One reform giving backbenchers a greater role in debates got through. Another reform giving Mps much more control over government business was also approved – but guess what the government did nothing about it.

As John Bercow said in this extract from his speech:

” It is missing in action, confined to something akin to parliamentary purgatory. Nailed to its perch.”

He goes on in this longer extract:

” As a matter of basic democratic principle this will not do. The House decided to back the concept of a House Business Committee along the lines of the Wright Committee recommendations. One of three courses of action should follow. The House should have its decision implemented. Alternatively, it should be consulted on some other design for a House Business Committee. Or the House should determine in a vote that it has changed its mind on the issue. It should not be side lined in this fashion. It is quite wrong for there to be a vacuum. This is as inappropriate as, for example, legislating to hold a referendum on a major question of the day and then simply ignoring the outcome. The longer that this state of affairs persists the more profoundly unsatisfactory I believe it to be.

“The Wright formula, to remind enthusiasts in the room for such detail, was very balanced. It did not seek to defenestrate the Whips Offices. It recognised that the Government of the day had a right to have its business tabled. Elections would be rendered impotent affairs if this were not the case. Ministers are, therefore, in my view entitled to a majority but not a monopoly on a House Business Committee. The legitimate issue for the House as a whole is the balance of allocation of time across the various measures that constitute a legislative programme. The Wright Committee also underlined the importance of the Official Opposition – and other opposition parties – being given more say on scheduling their business, and envisaged, I am reliably informed, the House Business Committee as the forum for such discussions. I dare venture that some of the recent tensions over scheduling Opposition Days or more accurately not scheduling Opposition days, might have been avoided if there had been a House Business Committee to hand.

“Any such Committee should be chaired by an independent figure. Wright suggested the Senior Deputy Speaker. It should have a backbench component as well as representation from the smaller parties. It would also be desirable to link the chamber to the select committees perhaps via the presence of the Chair of the Liaison Committee. Finally, if not instantly but over time, it should include the direct election of the backbench members in the spirit of the various other reforms which Wright offered to the House more than eight years ago and which the House chose to adopt.”

Now you might say -particularly after this long extract –  why should I be bothered about this arcane Parliamentary stuff? You should for two reasons.

First though she won the most votes Theresa May did not win enough Parliamentary seats to have a majority in Parliament but is ruling – because of the deal with the Democratic Unionist Party – as though she does using every statutory wheeze to try and stay in power for five years.

This measure will put Parliament as a whole in control as it will give greater bargaining power to Jeremy Corbyn, Vince Cable, the Scots Nats and the solitary Green MP – to influence how the government timetables its legislation and how Opposition Mps and backbenchers can get issues debated.

Second whatever your views on Brexit the government is planning to try and by-pass Parliament by using the Brexit bill to take power to change all sorts of laws and regulations by   ministerial diktat – the ” so called Henry VIII clauses ” – named  after the monarch who dissolved Britain’s monasteries – with little chance of debate.

These could be used to  change rights for the disabled, curb worker’s rights to holidays , drop environment protections , cut benefit entitlement and amend health and safety protection, – like for example reducing safeguards on working with asbestos ( this has actually been suggested by one Tory).

This will affect you in your daily life and Parliament needs to defend itself by making sure that ministers can’t  avoid being challenged by manipulating the Parliamentary timetable.

So what we need are some bolshie backbenchers of all parties to put up a motion to set up this committee. From what was said  week they would get a fair wind from the Speaker.

 

 

 

 

 

Footballer Justin Fashanu and the Westminster “back to basics” sex scandals

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Forbidden Games; New film on Justin Fashanu available on demand from iTunes,, Google Play and Amazon

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While mainstream media concentrated on the furore and fall out over the police investigation into  Sir Edward Heath, a new film revealing the troubled life of Britain’s first millionaire black footballer  with links to Westminster was released on Friday.

Forbidden Games charts the rivalry between the two footballing brothers Justin and John, Justin’s meteoric career, his fall from grace, his penchant for the high life and his coming out as gay.

It  reveals his links to the seedier side of Westminster, the exposure of his gay relationship with a Tory MP who lived a double life in Westminster hiding his gay sexuality from his wife and family until he was exposed but not named in The Sun.

Justin  Fashanu also had a penchant for under age boys ( much younger than 17) and tragically killed himself at the age of 37 when he was about to be prosecuted in the States for molesting a minor aged 17.

For today’s much more tolerant society people would not understand that in the 1980s and 1990s exposure in the tabloid press or on TV  for being gay was often the kiss of death to a political career. For a footballer to come out in a Sun exclusive –  and that is  true even today – was either extraordinarily brave or foolhardy.

Forbidden Games includes a cameo commentary from me on the context of Fashanu’s connections to Westminster where celebrities would party with MPs and which is in danger of being airbrushed in the current climate.

It coincided with former PM Sir John Major’s infamous ” back to basics” speech to the 1993 Tory conference which was then used by the media to expose a string of sexual scandals from minister Tim Yeo fathering a child out of wedlock , David Mellor’s  extra marital romp allegedly in a Chelsea football  stripe to the tragic  auto erotic death of Stephen Milligan ,  Tory MP for Eastleigh.

Justin Fashanu became involved in Westminster on two levels. His relationship with the Tory MP for Bournemouth east was revealed when the Sun exposed Justin’s connection to a ” South coast” Mp. His wife and children immediately realised that it was David Atkinson, as Justin had stayed regularly at their home. He was confronted by her and he admitted he was gay and had been for years.. He stood down in 2005 and died in 2012.

An article by Robert Mendick in the Daily Telegraph based on an interview with  his son Anthony  who describes him as “predatory” with many young lovers, and reveals much of the background from his own researches on his father.

From examination of the story myself,  there is evidence that Atkinson was being blackmailed by a member of the Commons catering staff, had relationships with young Parliamentary researchers ( one of whom he had a nude photo) and had an erotic photo sheet  of another person he was closely connected.

There was also as yet unverified allegations of a much wider hidden gay scene at Westminster involving other closeted MPs  which Justin at one stage – following the death of Stephen Milligan – threatened to expose for a large sum of money to the tabloids,.

He backed off when the police visited his home in Edinburgh and wanted to interview him about it.

What this sad story  does  is to contradict the trend, following the collapse of Scotland Yard’s  Operation Midland into the allegations brought by ” Nick”,  of a Westminster paedophile ring, to try and forget this piece of Westminster’s sordid history as though it never happened.

While there is no conclusive evidence that David Atkinson was himself a paedophile ( in the modern sense of boys under the age of 16) it seems certain that some of the people he knew were.

This moving film about the troubled life of Justin is well worth watching even if it does make uncomfortable viewing at times.

See a trailer and interview with one of the directors, Jon Carey – the other is Adam Darke  – here on Sky Sports.

 

 

 

Sir Edward Heath: Paedophile or No Paedophile?

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Sir Edward Heath Pic credit: BBC

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The long awaited Operation Conifer report  by Wiltshire Police into allegations against the former late Prime Minister  Edward Heath sums up the dilemmas investigating historic child sex abuse when the alleged perpetrator is now dead.

Child sexual abuse – because it is essentially a shameful and private act – is one of the most difficult crimes to prove and even more difficult when it is historic and the person accused is dead. An adult rape victim may be able to recognise their assailant, a child will have more difficulty unless it is a member of their close family or a teacher or youth worker.

Wiltshire Police have been attacked for spending public money investigating these claims and as a result damaging the reputation of a very prominent public figure when he can’t answer back.

In my view they were completely right to do so because of the number of people who came forward making these allegations. To refuse to do so would amount to complicity in a further cover up of these allegations and to assume  that all the people who made them were liars without examining any of the facts.

And it would compound the present scandal of  child sexual abuse – which is why we are having an inquiry- because across society in churches, schools, family, politicians ( like Sir Cyril Smith) and entertainers ( Jimmy Savile and Rolf Harris) there are now real examples of hidden child sex abuse going back 30 to 40 years.

The police investigation to my mind has been proportionate and fair. They have not said every one of the 42 ( actually 40 because three cases were the same person under different names) people who came forward totally proved Edward Heath abused them. And of the seven cases , including an 11 year old boy, where they believe Edward Heath should have been questioned under caution, that this meant Edward Heath was automatically guilty. It was just that other facts  suggested their allegations  sounded serious enough to warrant the ex PM being questioned. about them.

And where they think the accusers have been wrong or misled  they have said so. In three cases they decided it was mistaken identity.

And in two worse. -one is a live investigation into misleading the police and the other has been cautioned for wasting police time.

They seem to have gone about their job in a meticulous way – just as in these circumstances  any serious journalist would do – by looking for corroboration of the allegations from people who were not abusers or the abused. The fact that one case merited attention, for example, came because in questioning government chauffeurs ( which as any lobby journalist knows are some of the best sources for revealing  occasional indiscretions), one of them mentioned Heath visiting an area where separately a person alleged he was abused there.

They have also revealed what looks like one of Edward Health’s best kept secrets that he could drive and owned two cars.

They also appear to have uncovered another possible case of child sexual abuse – unconnected to Edward Heath – by contacting male sex workers in Salisbury which is still under investigation.

In their inquiries they seem to have scotched a specific rumour that he abused people on Morning Cloud and other racing yachts,  By chasing up the crew it looks extremely unlikely that he would have both the space and the privacy to do so.

The report says:”There is no indication from former crew members that children were ever taken aboard the different Morning Cloud yachts. There was no information or evidence that any of the identified crew members were complicit in child sexual abuse or witnessed Sir Edward Heath engaging in abuse.”

And it debunks suggestions that Heath was ” asexual”.

“During the investigation the issue became relevant as it was publicly implied that it was implausible for Sir Edward Heath to be an alleged suspect in child abuse related offences as he was considered to be ‘completely asexual’.
“Witnesses who were interviewed by investigators from Operation Conifer offered different opinions about Sir Edward Heath’s sexuality. However two witnesses, who have not disclosed abuse, provided evidence that he was sexually active with consenting adults during parts of his life.”

On the security services the report baldly says; “Enquiries were undertaken with UK Security and Intelligence Agencies and there was no information that progressed the investigation any further.”

I note a much fuller report is to go to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse and the intention is to attach the findings to more general inquiries about paedophiles in Westminster which will be a controversial part of the investigation – given what happened to the Operation Midland inquiry.

What this report doesn’t do is lift the lid on the alleged Westminster paedophile scandal and change the direction of the inquiry. Rather it adds to the whole problem of not proven allegations and how to balance how much and what should be investigated.  It rather leaves some matters in limbo. I notice with great interest that Wiltshire Police did appoint an independent scrutiny panel to oversee their investigation – which should stop people accusing the police of time wasting – and they fully support they way Wiltshire went about it.

But I entirely reject the idea that we need another judicial review after such a meticulous investigation. That would be a waste of public money.

Full report HERE.