Cutting councillors in Newcastle upon Tyne: A dangerous move to dilute democracy

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Newcastle: the first place to face serious cuts in its councillors? Pic Credit: Free Foto.Com

Newcastle: the first place to face serious cuts in its councillors?
Pic Credit: FreeFoto.Com

Most political activists know that by 2018 the Conservatives will have succeeded in pushing through boundary changes that will cut the number of MPs from 650 to 600 at a time when the UK’s population is rising.

Not so well-known is that there is a local government equivalent now under way by the Local Government Boundary Commission for England which is not being made nearly as obvious.

Papers circulating among councillors in the Newcastle upon Tyne reveal that the Commission is about to look at a series of big cities as part of an ongoing review of local ward boundaries. The bombshell, I am told, is, as a result, the number of councillors in the city could fall by a massive one-third – from 78 to 54. And that similar exercises could see reductions in councillors in Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham and Bristol.

The rationale behind the Commission’s interest is that changes in voter registration from households to individuals have seen a big drop in people registering to vote. Particularly affected are university students who used to be  registered  en bloc by the authority and now have to register themselves. Newcastle,Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol  and London all have huge student concentrations and registration has plummeted. Also  the growth in privately rented accommodation has seen people not always registering when they change address. Once there a ten per cent difference either way the Commission thinks it should review the authority.

It was the student drop that attracted the Commission’s attention to Newcastle. One ward,Ouseburn. saw figures down 30 per cent. But a registration drive saw this fall confined to four per cent.

Officially the Commission say they have no political motive – though it would hit Labour councils disproportionately – and only act if there are big changes in wards.

It told me:“ The Commission will intervene in authorities where 30% of wards have an imbalance of + or – 10% from the average elector: councillor ratio. This is how the Commission builds the main part of its programme.”

“The Commission has no view on whether the number of councillors should increase, decrease or stay the same for any authority. Each council is treated on a case by case basis and the Commission will make its judgment on the strength of the evidence it sees during the review process.”

It did confirm that big cities were being targeted:

” Several metropolitan authorities will form part of the Commission’s England-wide work programme over the next two years mainly because they have relatively high levels of electoral inequality between wards. ”

However documents circulating in Newcastle suggest differently. They reveal the council asked them to drop the review – because it did not meet the criteria( now only two out of 26 wards meet that figure) but the Commission refused.

The Commission confirmed they have cut councillors outside big cities citing   Stafford (-19 councillors), Suffolk Coastal (-13) and South Bucks (-12). They also say they have not cut councillors in Leicester, York, Bristol and Sheffield.

The one increase is in Hertfordshire which will have 78 councillors – an extra seat is being created in Hatfield in the constituency of Grant Shapps, the former Tory chairman. To be fair the councillors in North Hatfield appear to be a little under represented.

To me this suggests another agenda that it is totally not in keeping with government’s vowed policy to promote localism.

It fits more with an agenda of promoting city mayors to replace elected authorities, slashing local government  costs and  reducing accountability at a very local level.  Would a totally privatised London borough of Barnet need many councillors for example? I am not saying the Commission may have this agenda – more its political masters. But the Commission is not being entirely open about what is happening.You will find none of this information in this blog on the Commission’s website as it says it talks to local authorities ( presumably in private) first.

Luckily at least one Newcastle MP, Nick Brown, a former chief whip, seems to be aware of what could be happening and I fully expect him to start raising this in Parliament.I hope others will do so.

Vaz defeats Mactaggart in ight for home affairs chair

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Keith Vaz MP


Keith Vaz MP

Updated: Keith Vaz easily saw off Fiona Mactaggart for the chairmanship of the home affairs committee winning by 412 votes to 192. This will make him one of the ;longest serving chair of any Commons select committee as he will remain chair for the next  five years.

Keith Vaz, one of the more controversial Labour MPs, is facing a strong challenge for the chairmanship of the influential  House of Commons home affairs committee.The MP is being challenged by a former home affairs minister – the equally forthright Fiona Mactaggart. MP for Slough, and a doughty campaigner on human rights, civil liberties and race equality with strong views about prostitution -linking it to people trafficking and comparing the men who used prostitutes as little more than child  abusers.

The battle seems to have divided MPs – all of whom have a vote including ministers and shadow ministers – at next Wednesday’s elections.

The divide can be shown by the list of people nominating each candidate – which has to include political opponents – as well as people of their own party.

Vaz has been backed on the Labour side by Sir Gerald Kaufman, Jo Cox, Chris Evans, Mr David Winnick, Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck, Mr Chuka Umunna, Clive Efford, Ms Diane Abbott, Conor McGinn, Gareth Thomas, Mary Glindon, Steve McCabe, Tristram Hunt,  and Jonathan Ashworth .

Among Tories he is backed by Zac Goldsmith, who organised the all party pressure for the establishment of the child sex abuse inquiry, and MPs  like  Tories Chris Heaton-Harris and Nicola Blackwood, Scots Nat, Angus MacNeil. and Democratic Unionist,Sammy Wilson.

Fiona MacTaggart MP

Fiona Mactaggart MP

Fiona Mactaggart, is backed by Labour MPs, Margaret Hodge, Ian Mearns, Kate Green, Nia Griffiths, Jeremy corbyn, Jess Phillips. Bill Esterson, Alison MKcGovern, Liz McInnes, Rupa Huq, Daniel Zeichner, Gavin Shuker, ann Coffey, Diana Johnson and Yvonne Fovargue. Outside Labour she has got support from Tories, Daniel Kawczynski, Guto Bebb, ex home office minister,Damian Green, SNP member Tommy Shepherd; and SDLP member Mark Durkan.

Commons insiders say Fiona will have to campaign strongly to defeat Vaz who has been chairman since 2007 – and also been able to stand again because he has not served two full terms.

Internet trolls beware, your prison cell awaits

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With growing interest on the abuse of people on the internet, some amazing figures have emerged from the Ministry of Justice showing the huge rise in the number of prosecutions in the last decade.

I am indebted to the pay wall site of Media Lawyer for permission to reproduce much of their findings and to Inforrm blog who have also published the report.

Ten years ago just 143 people were convicted of the crime  to send “by means of a public electronic communications network” a message or other material that is “grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character”.

Last year – the latest figure for convictions had soared to 1209 – an extraordinary eight fold increase.

As Media Lawyer reports:

“The previously little-used section [ Section 127 of the malicious communications act 2003] has come to prominence in recent years following a string of high-profile cases of so-called trolling on social media sites.

It can also cover phone calls and e-mails, and cases of “persistent misuse” which cause the victim annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety.

Ministry of Justice  statistics show that 1,501 defendants – including 70 juveniles – were prosecuted under the Act last year, while another 685 were cautioned.

Of those convicted, 155 were jailed – compared with just seven a decade before. The average custodial sentence was 2.2 months.

Compared with the previous year there was an 18% increase in convictions under Section 127 but the number has dipped since a peak in 2012 when there were 1,423.”

The article adds:

” The issue of online abuse came under scrutiny after cases such as the targeting of Labour MP Stella Creasy, who spoke of the “misery” she suffered caused after a Twitter troll re-tweeted menacing posts threatening to rape her and branding her a “witch”.

Other victims of trolling have included campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez and Chloe Madeley, daughter of Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan.

The MoJ figures also revealed a similar rise in the number of convictions under the Malicious Communications Act, which makes it an offence to send a threatening, offensive or indecent letter, electronic communication or article with the intent to cause distress or anxiety.

Last year, 694 people were convicted of offences under this Act – the highest number for at least a decade and more than 10 times more than the 64 convictions recorded in 2004.”

I have noticed  an increase – since this blog has highlighted  child sexual abuse – in the number of survivors who speak out and then find themselves the target of trolls – sometimes saying they don’t believe their story.

The government  will increase penalties. Media lawyer reports it will increase: “the maximum sentence for trolls convicted under the Malicious Communications Act from six months to two years and extend the time limit for prosecutions under Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 to three years from the commission of offence.”

Obviously there has to be a balance between pursuing people and free speech – with the previous head of the Crown Prosecution Service now a Labour MP, Keith Starmer, saying there must be a ” high threshold” and people practising internet jokes should not be prosecuted. But what is disturbing -and I intend to return to this is that the abuse and misuse of the internet is growing  and there may be a case for even harsher penalties for the most persistent offenders.

Esther Baker child sex abuse allegations: A challenging case for Staffordshire Police

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Esther Baker

Esther Baker

The allegations of historical child sex abuse made by Esther Baker are going to be a big challenge for Staffordshire Police to investigate.

Her testimony  reported first on Sky News and developed in stories published at the weekend on Exaro News and in the Sunday Mirror make grim reading. I won’t repeat it all here.

What it suggests is that some 25 years ago a group of young girls – in Esther’s case as young as six – were taken into the deep woods of Cannock Chase in Staffordshire and  raped on numerous occasions  while a couple of police officers watched to make sure no member of the public stumbled upon such a scene.

She has been unable to identify any of the other girls – though she says they may have been six or seven of them and not all the same ones – and has until recently not been certain who all the assailants were. Some were alleged to VIPs, others were not.

But she has now told police that a former MP of repeatedly raping her not only there but at other places. He  is adamant that this is untrue and  insists that she has either fabricated this  or been manipulated by others to accuse him of criminal sexual acts he did not commit.

She points out to me that the first time she made the allegation it was to another survivor and was before she was being counselled by any organisation.

Staffordshire Police are at the moment nearing the end of a scoping exercise which has involved interviewing Esther seven times for hours before they proceed to a full investigation which  they have promised to undertake.

What has also emerged that quite independently two other women have come forward and made similar allegations against the same former MP. Unlike Esther these two women have not made their complaints public and still have to talk to Staffordshire Police in any detail about their allegations. Neither are known to Esther.

And to add to the complications a third survivor,  a man already talking to the Met Police, about allegations in Dolphin Square, London has identified from a picture of Esther as a child, her being there. She remembers being taken to London but had no idea where she had been taken.

All this is going to require a painstaking detailed investigation by Staffordshire Police which is going to take a lot of time and energy. It is a very good exemplar of how these allegations – which would have been dismissed years ago – are now being taken seriously by the police in the present climate. No doubt the naysayers would argue that these allegations  still should not be taken up because they sound so extreme.

But to clear up what looks like a hidden epidemic of child sex abuse that is being uncovered in this country Esther is entitled to a full and thorough investigation into exactly what happened in Staffordshire 25 years ago. And the police need to  track down  who is alleged to have carried out  such vile acts and bring them to trial.

Too expensive to reveal: The 2000 Whitehall emails on Just Solutions International

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The secretive and expensive world of the miniistry of justice

The secretive and expensive world of the ministry of justice

Earlier this year this blog disclosed how the Ministry of Justice had  quietly set up a profit making subsidiary with the aim of marketing justice to obnoxious and corrupt regimes like Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia and has now been revealed Macedonia.

This disclosure caused some embarrassment and a lot of anger that the United Kingdom government should be bidding to profit from advising countries like Saudi Arabia who lash bloggers and hold street beheadings which the UK forcibly condemn should the Islamic State do the same. The anger is most eloquently expressed on the blog of lawyer David Allen Green who runs a superb commentary on his Jack of Kent blog.

Naturally I thought it  would be in the public interest to find  out exactly how this rather shadowy body had been set up and what was the ministerial drive behind it.So what better device than the  current Freedom of Information Act to ask the ministry the questions. That was last January .

This was my request:” I would like to request details of all emails and communications between ministers and officials held by the Ministry of Justice and NOMS regarding the establishment of Just Solutions International  under the present coalition government.”

it took the ministry exactly 28 days( the maximum under the act)  to decide that such a request was so broad that they sent me a letter saying they would refuse to proceed with it at all unless I narrowed its scope. They could have told me the next day if it was the case.

So on February 25 I sent an amended request:

“What I would like to request  are documents and communications ( by email) between officials and ( if any) between officials and ministers which led to the creation of Just Solutions International. eg pertaining to  the reason why it was set up and. its role within noms and the ministry.”

It took until late April ( way beyond the 28 day period) to answer with a lovely letter dated xx April 2015 . And guess what evidently Whitehall has so much material debating the creation of Just Solutions International that it is too expensive to send it to me.

According to the letter it exceeds the £600 cost limit and would take civil servants more than three and a half days to find them all.

As their letter says; “In this instance to provide you with the information we would be required to locate emails, which we have estimated exceed 2000, since 2012 which detail the creation of Just Solutions international.”

They have suggested I could narrow down the request a again either to a short time period or by named official ( I don’t have the names of all the officials anyway). However in the spirit of kindly co-operation I have narrowed down the time limit to one year and see if this yields any results. I await the reply  with interest though they have not given me the courtesy of saying they received the request yet.

I suspect that the officials don’t really want to release anything – because the whole volume of correspondence – seems to suggest to me that they had a lot to discuss about why and how this  private profit making company was set up. But there is no reason yet to give up and all the more reason to probe exactly what is behind an initiative that believes making money from dodgy regimes is an ethical revenue earner for the taxpayer.

Naysayers at bay:The damning child sex abuse figures that should make them think again

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Simon Bailey, chief constable of Norfolk, who is co-ordinating the Operation Hydrant figures Ic credit: Norfolk Constabulary

Simon Bailey, chief constable of Norfolk, who is co-ordinating the Operation Hydrant figures
Pic credit: Norfolk Constabulary

The disclosure by Operation Hydrant – the national co-ordination hub set up by the police to bring together all allegations of  historical child sexual abuse – this week  of a huge number of paedophile suspects should give any naysayer a shock.The figures are released on the National Police Chiefs’ Council website here should give massive cause for concern. There is a separate breakdown for Scotland here.

Basically they show that there are 1433  male suspects of which 216 are deceased Some 666 suspects related to institutions, and 261  are classified as people of public prominence.

Some 506 are classified as unidentified and 357 institutions have been identified within the scope of the operation.

The breakdown of the prominent people is 135  from the world of TV, film or radio,76 are listed as politicians –(it should be noted that these include local-level politicians, not just national figures); 43 are from the music industry and  7 are from the world of sport

Some 357 different institutions have been identified. These include:154 schools,75 children’s homes,40 religious institutions, 14 medical establishments,11 classified as being institutions in communities – youth clubs, community centres etc.,9 Prisons or Young Offenders Institutions, 9 sports venues and  28 other institutions (i.e. military, guest houses) In addition, 17 institutions are classified as ‘unknown’.

These figures come as a surprise even to journalists working on Exaro as they are higher than we  even thought.. But to anyone who has been campaigning to suggest that the almost every claim is based on ” false memory syndrome” or made up to claim compensation this should be a wake up call. Are they really going to say that all these people across the UK have made up these claims? This is just not credible.

Obviously the fact they are suspects means the cases are not yet proven but the perpetrators should stand trial if the police can gather enough evidence.

And when you think that probably each and every suspect has assaulted or molested often scores or more survivors – these are not after all long term relationships – the problem is severe. No wonder former CSA panel member, Graham Wilmer, of the Lantern Project, has told Sky News ” This is just the tip of the iceberg.”

These figures however are not just shocking- they raise questions about what sort of society the United Kingdom is now.

How come professional bodies from the police, social services, the NHS never suspected this was going on or possibly covered it up? How come the media both TV and print never discovered the scale of this at the time? What is going on now that we don’t know about?

It also raises questions about what sort of society we live in where it appears to be OK for minority to prey on children in this vile way? It raises questions for all religious orders – especially the Roman Catholic church where the issue of celibacy could be contributing factor to this problem.. From what I  know there is not  a religious order where they are not allegations of  child sexual abuse whether it is the Anglican Church, Jehovah’s Witnesses , the Methodists and the Mormons.

We also cannot wait EIGHT years for the Goddard Inquiry to decide what new arrangements are required for protecting children in the future.In case there is any doubt about what a horrific experience child sexual abuse is – read the judgement of the Supreme Court this week which lifted the ban on the publication of a book by James Rhodes, the pianist.

Classical pianist James Rhodes. Pic Credit: www.classicalmusic.com

Classical pianist James Rhodes.
Pic Credit: http://www.classicalmusic.com

This is an extract (Warning Strong Language) from the book read out in court:

”

“Abuse. What a word. Rape is better. Abuse is when you tell a traffic warden to fuck off. It isn’t abuse when a 40 year old man forces his cock inside a six-year-old boy’s ass. That doesn’t even come close to abuse. That is aggressive rape. It leads to multiple surgeries, scars (inside and out), tics, OCD, depression, suicidal ideation, vigorous self-harm, alcoholism, drug addiction, the most fucked-up of sexual hang-ups, gender confusion (‘you look like a girl, are you sure you’re not a little girl?’), sexuality confusion, paranoia, mistrust, compulsive lying, eating disorders, PTSD, DID (the shinier name for multiple personality disorder) and so on and on and on.

I went, literally overnight, from a dancing, spinning, gigglingly alive kid who was enjoying the safety and adventure of a new school, to a walled-off, cement shoed, lights-out automaton. It was immediate and shocking, like happily walking down a sunny path and suddenly having a trapdoor open and dump you into a freezing cold lake.

You want to know how to rip the child out of a child? Fuck him.

Fuck him repeatedly. Hit him. Hold him down and shove things inside him. Tell him things about himself that can only be true in the youngest of minds before logic and reason are fully formed and they will take hold of him and become an integral, unquestioned part of his being.”

Need I say more.

Supreme Court upholds right of classical pianist to tell compelling story of child sex abuse

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An attempt to ban a book by a classical pianist James Rhodes where he revealed how he overcome his childhood trauma of  sexual abuse through music has been comprehensively overturned by the Supreme Court.

The findings and the judgement are reported in detail on the excellent Inforrm blog site here

The decision overturns what will be seen as a rogue judgement by the Court of Appeal which allowed his former wife to ban publication of the book because it could cause distress and damage to the author’s son. This extraordinary judgement has been report on this site earlier.

Dan Tench, of the law firm, Olswang, writes on the Inforrm.blog :

“The Supreme Court handed down today its judgment in OPO v MLA ([2015] UKSC 32), the case in which the Court of Appeal had – extraordinarily – granted an injunction to prevent the publication of a book solely on the ground that it might cause psychological harm to the author’s son. In a compelling and comprehensive judgment, the Supreme Court reversed the decision of the Court of Appeal and discharged the injunction.

The Court clarified the tort of intentionally inflicting mental suffering, gave a powerful reminder of the importance of freedom of expression, provided important guidance on the form of injunctive relief and abolished imputations of an intention by operation of a rule of law.”

He concludes:

” The judgement is also notable for including substantial extracts from the book, perhaps the most startling and vivid prose to appear in a Supreme Court judgement.  This material gives a strong insight into the power of the book and it is plain that the judges held it in high regard (although that was no part of their reasoning).  The Court recognised that the book used “brutal language” and “dark descriptions” and confirmed previous authority that the “right to convey information carries with it a right to choose the language in which it is expressed”.

This is a powerful, authoritative and humane decision from a Supreme Court at the top of its game.  Like all the best judgements, when one has finished reading it one concludes that the law could be only this, a welcome answer to the difficulties to which the decision from the Court of Appeal gave rise.”

I thoroughly concur. Survivors everywhere should welcome this decision by the highest court in the land. They should also note that one of the judges who made this decision was Lady Hale, one of the people who sadly turned down the offer to chair the statutory inquiry into child sex abuse after it was made clear that the Lord Chief Justice did not want any sitting judges from the UK chairing the inquiry. It may be a sad loss given what this judgement concluded.

POSTCRIPT: James Rhodes is launching his book at the Hays Literary Festival on Saturday May 23 (tomorrow). the link is 

Will a Tory town hall victory in May lead to bitter defeat in July?

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St Albans Civic Centre: One of the new Tory controlled councils. Pic Credit: St Albans gov.uk

St Albans Civic Centre: One of the new Tory controlled councils. Pic Credit: St Albans gov.uk

This weekend’s Observer contained a very interesting article from Toby Helm revealing that local councils are planning to lobby the government like mad to stop yet another huge wave of cuts.

What was interesting is that it was coming from the victorious Tory leaders in May’s local elections who are now fearful of having to implement heavy unpopular cuts to local services.

It has gone virtually unreported the scale of the local government gains by the Conservatives who gained of 32 councils and 541 more councillors on the back of getting a majority in Parliament. the full results are on the BBC website here.

The gains – many from  no over all control include Amber Valley (from Labour),Basingstoke, Bath,Brentwood, Broxtowe,East Staffs,Gloucester, Gravesham,Hinckley (from Lib Dems),Herefordshire,Lewes, Newark,North Warwickshire,Scarborough,St Albans,Taunton, Warwick, West Devon,Winchester,Worcester and Wyre Forest.

Labour had just three gains, Chester, Stockton-on-tees and West Lancashire but overall lost control of  three councils and lost over 200 councillors.  But this masks the scale of Labour defeat in places locally like Dacorum in Hemel Hempstead where Labour is down to two seats and the Liberal Democrats down to three, with 46 councillors from the Conservatives.The Liberal Democrats lost another 411 councillors and control of four councils, holding on to South Lakeland, Eastleigh and Eastbourne..

UKIP gained their first council in Thanet  where Nigel Farage was defeated and put on another 176 councillors.This council will become a yardstick on how UKIP run local services.

The Conservative victors have every reason to be apprehensive. Local government has borne a disproportionate share of the cuts under the now departed Eric Pickles and George Osborne is introducing an emergency budget in July. The Treasury often prefer to land local government which supplies personal services with big cuts to spare some of the lobbying from anxious Whitehall departments.

I predict that we are going to see some very radical changes to services. Private companies like Capita must be rubbing their hands with glee and many councils may have to follow the London borough of Barnet and outsource the entire council to private companies. People will soon find out that the only way to contact their council will be by a call centre – if they are lucky in England – but if unlucky in Bangalore or Chennai. The Tory victors could end up being defeated by their own austerity policies.

Four reasons why a partisan press helped win it for the Tories – Steven Barnett

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Steven Barnett’s comments are particularly interesting on the role of new media. it suggests that the dominance of the right is also being reflected on line and the danger that internet will just be the Left talking to the Left and the Right talking to the Right. The hoped for on line balance against traditional media may still be a long way ahead.

INFORRM's avatarInforrm's Blog

Press ElectionBarack Obama’s hugely experienced aide David Axelrod – who advised Ed Miliband on his campaign – was unequivocal about the press hostility which he faced in the run-up to this election: “I’ve worked in aggressive media environments before but not this partisan.”

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Have a laugh and watch tonight Rory Bremner and the mandarins

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rory bremnerDepressed or elated about the election result? Have a few laughs tonight and watch Rory Bremner’s election special about  who was holding the real power in Britain while the country was going to the polls.

I have been working as a consultant to the one off programme  which will explore the growing power of private companies running Whitehall and the role of mandarins. I know he has talked “off the record” to some pretty well placed political and Whitehall sources. You might be surprised to find out who is running the country and where we are selling our Whitehall wares. The programme is produced by the Vera – the company that has twice exposed MPs in lobbying stings – the latest being Sir Malcolm Rifkind and Jack straw.

Plus of course the inimitable impressions and the usual stuff from this comedian. It’s on BBC 2 at 10.0pm. It’s called Rory Bremner’s Election Report.