Tag Archives: jeremy hunt

Why the Tories have only themselves to blame for not reining in BBC excesses

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Last week top BBC figures cut a pathetic stance in front of the Public Accounts Committtee. But two years ago Jeremy Hunt, the culture secretary, actually PREVENTED the National Audit Office from getting direct access to their accounts. Don’t take my word for it, see the actual correspondence between Sir Micheal Lyons, Chris Patten, Jeremy Hunt, and Amyas Morse, head of the NAO released under Freedom of Information to Exaro News. How dare Maria Miller now say she wants direct access to accounts, it could have been done two years ago

davidhencke's avatarWestminster Confidential

Remember the great fuss from the Conservatives on how they were going to hold the BBC to account, expose those mega salaries paid to Graham Norton and Jeremy Paxman and make sure the taxpayer got the best value for their money from the BBC.

Well if you beleive  culture secretary Jeremy Hunt and Lib Dem culture spokesman Don Foster, it will be all happening from next year in the new cash frozen agreement to fund the BBC. He has spent the last year telling us about his success in allowing Parliament’s National Audit Office the right to launch any inquiry it likes into whether the BBC is value for money.

To quote him directly: “It is right that licence-fee payers have confidence that the BBC is spending money wisely, so I am pleased that the NAO now has the right to full access to BBC information. Its new power to decide which…

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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.

How Jeremy Hunt plans to implement Lansley’s sick funding scheme for NHS

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new health secretary Jeremy Hunt: Supporter of switching NHS cash from poor to the rich elderly

Four months ago I wrote a blog (see http://wp.me/pHiYZ-xu)  revealing a dastardly plan to switch NHS funding away from the poorest parts of England to the wealthiest areas under the guise of helping the elderly.

The scheme which drew attacks from Labour effectively meant tearing up the funding formula adopted since Clement Atlee which saw that the poorest deprived areas got more cash than the wealthy. To implement it Lansley was planning to get a health quango to recommend the changes. Thankfully since then nothing has happened..until today.

Jeremy Hunt, the newly appointed health secretary, it turns out is a passionate believer in such a scheme – as it would give loadsa state money to his own constituents in Surrey at the expense of Labour voting people in places like Newcastle upon Tyne and Sunderland.

I am indebted to a contact for alerting me to this information on Jeremy Hunt’ s own blog.

In his own words he says:

the real problem lies with the inherent  bias in the Government’s NHS funding formula of areas like Surrey. Guildford and Waverley’s population is weighted 9.1% upwards for market forces and 2.0% upwards for age structure but is weighted 25.3% downwards for additional need. The result of this is that the former Guildford & Waverley PCT’s target allocation per un-weighted head of population was £1,176, 15.3% less than the England average of £1,388. This means that even in an area with a large population of older people, the Royal Surrey is losing out”. Jeremy Hunt website (24 July, 2007, http://www.jeremyhunt.org/campaignshow.aspx?id=112&ref=50)
The extend of what this means is brilliantly explained in a user-friendly map by Dr Eoin Clarke – see http://eoin-clarke.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/camerons-new-man-in-charge-of-nhs.html.
So this reshuffle may mean an even worse future for the NHS from the man who befriends Rupert Murdoch. It will great news for  the Tory voting upper middle classes  from Esher to Guildford, but every, very bad news for deprived areas where Labour has a huge majority. It will allow Tory voters to live longer in safe seats and contribute to Labour voters dying  before their they have another chance to vote.Clever man, Mr Hunt. You can quiz him, by e-mailing at huntj@parliament.uk

Why the Tories have only themselves to blame for not reining in BBC excesses

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Jeremy Hunt : Playing a blinder in making sure the public don't know too much. Pic Courtesy: The Guardian

Remember the great fuss from the Conservatives on how they were going to hold the BBC to account, expose those mega salaries paid to Graham Norton and Jeremy Paxman and make sure the taxpayer got the best value for their money from the BBC.

Well if you beleive  culture secretary Jeremy Hunt and Lib Dem culture spokesman Don Foster, it will be all happening from next year in the new cash frozen agreement to fund the BBC. He has spent the last year telling us about his success in allowing Parliament’s National Audit Office the right to launch any inquiry it likes into whether the BBC is value for money.

To quote him directly: “It is right that licence-fee payers have confidence that the BBC is spending money wisely, so I am pleased that the NAO now has the right to full access to BBC information. Its new power to decide which areas of activity to scrutinise will increase transparency while maintaining the BBC’s independence.”

In fact this statement is the worst kind of spin and churnalism. The hilarious fact is that the national papers that were critical of the BBC, the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph plus for that matter the Huffington Post website  ( see it here http://huff.to/vDq6y5 ) fell for the whole thing, hook line and sinker.

How do we know this to be true? Well reluctantly after both the NAO and culture ministry had refused to reveal it,  all the correspondence between the remarkably named Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office, Jeremy Hunt and the Chris Patten, chairman of the BBC Trust and his predecessor Sir  Michael Lyons, were released under a  Freedom of Information request to Exaro News, the new investigative website I work for. You can see  the two detailed factual articles at http://www.exaronews.com/ .

What they reveal is that Amyas – the nearest person we have in Britain to ” Mr Taxpayer” was engaged in a bloody war of attrition with the BBC and Mr Hunt on behalf of you, the licence fee payer, to get proper unfettered access to the BBC and that he lost.

At one stage he was extremely fed up.  In Whitehall language he wrote, ” “I am concerned that audit access that depends on continuing agreement between the government and the BBC rather than on statute leaves important matters unresolved and may mean that, in practice, the coalition’s proposals may not take things much further forward in terms of independent scrutiny of the BBC.”

In even more stark language he said:”“I am disappointed that it remains your view that my reports should reach Parliament via the BBC Trust and secretary of state.” “It raises the possibility that the BBC Trust or the secretary of state could redact material or, indeed, not publish the report.” You can  download all the letters at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport website See http://bit.ly/ujwp60 if you want to trawl through them.

The reason why this public official is so cross is plain to see. Why he might have the right to investigate what he likes, he is shackled by what he can find out. For a start all those BBC stars can protect their deals from public scrutiny because he has no statutory right of access and cannot override the Data Protection Act.  Even the Royal Household is not so well protected from this and the mega salaries, also paid by the taxpayer, and  the rest of Whitehall can be  scrutinised.

Also no other organisation  examined by the NAO can delay the publication of a critical report by running off to the secretary of state.

Hunt also rejected giving the right of the NAO to audit the BBC accounts – something I am told auditors find extremely useful because  throws up very quickly information when money is misspent.

  He told Morse: “I do not intend to give the NAO statutory access. “I am not persuaded that I should require the BBC to appoint the NAO as its external auditor. I do not consider this is a necessary step in ensuring that the government commitment on NAO access is achieved.”

 Finally he put a gun to his head: ” “If we do not reach agreement, the NAO will not have access to the BBC at least until there is another chance to review the agreement in 2016.”

Hunt has played a blinder over this. He convinced the media that he is Mr Good Guy when actually he is a baddie. The trouble is that  it is you, the licence payer, who have been conned. You could tell  him if you want to. His e-mail is jeremy.hunt@culture.gsi.gov.uk.

BBC bosses: Squandering £160m of our licence fee

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Broadcasting House: Part of the BBC's wasted £160m Pic Courtesy:vam.ac.uk

Update: Since this blog was written Chris Patten, chair of the BBC Trust, has decided to curb the very high levels of executive pay at the BBC – a first step to deal with the problem. But he will need to tackle how the managers control non journalist spending – such as IT contracts and property moves which cost licencepayers £160m.

Don’t get this blog wrong, this is not  an attack  on the BBC for wasting licence payers money on programmes. It is an attack on how the BBC has wasted  tens of millions of pounds by not controlling the money it spends on the boring bits – the money spent on property, studios and digital equipment that go to make those programmes possible.

Two recent reports from the National Audit Office – the body that on our behalf examines whether our taxes are spent wisely –  make very disturbing reading. They are into the BBC’s handling of some £2 billion of cash that is being spent on moves from  London  to Salford and Glasgow  and back to Broadcasting House in London and into cutting edge digitisation of  TV. I have written about this at length in The Journalist – the National Union of Journalists magazine  see http://bit.ly/mCekbZ .

In a nutshell they show that up to £160m was wasted on these plans because of delays, a botched private tender and exposed a  bad management attitude at the top.

As the auditors, not known for colourful phrases, said on people handling the  studio move to Pacific Quay, Glasgow :“It was sometimes difficult to engage senior staff in decision-making about their area as some seemed to either not fully understand their responsibilities or take them seriously enough.”

To put in context the money lost was enough  to run both BBC News Channel and BBC4 – or in radio terms the entire cost of running Radio Three and Four – for a year. That bad.

The reason why it matters is that the BBC is now having to make cuts to meet the government’s spending targets. Journalists are going to be sacked, programmes and parts of the BBC World Service , radio  and TV channels closed down. It can ill afford to make mistakes in its boring  bits.

I don’t mind paying a licence fee to hear Jim Naughtie and John Humphrys confronting a less than straight politician on the Today programme or  see  Ian Hislop and Paul Merton take the piss out of  Boris Johnson on Have I got News for You? I certainly am keen on Panorama exposing scandals in private care homes. I like to be entertained by comedians like David Mitchell or the lewder Russell Howard on Live at the Apollo or dramas like Case Histories, Waking the Dead etc.

I do mind paying a licence fee for some useless manager to spend millions giving IT contractor  Siemens a monopoly tender  to digitalise TV which then falls apart. Or giving some  property company £46m extra cash because  BBC managers can’t get their act together to move back to Broadcasting House in time and have to extend their leases at Bush House.

So I think it is time the corporation got a grip on this. And what are they and Jeremy Hunt, the culture secretary, doing. Trying to bind the hands of the very body exposing this waste from doing its job properly.

Over a  year in government nothing has been done. The head of the National Audit Office who has the wonderful name of Amyas Morse wrote to Mr Hunt last September trying to get three basic things done on behalf of viewers and listeners.  He wanted  unfettered access to information to the BBC, the right to decide what he wanted to investigate and the right to publish his findings when he and not the BBC wanted.  Hardly revolutionary stuff.

Not granted yet. So how about some interactive reaction. If you think the man from the audit office should get  his access on our behalf –  send him an email at  enquiries@nao.gsi.gov.uk  marked Amyas Morse ( as it says on their website). You think  the BBC Trust is blocking this email trust.enquiries@bbc.co.uk or contact its chairman Lord Patten at pattenc@parliament.uk .

Finally you could remind Jeremy Hunt that he is supposed to have sorted this. Try jeremy.hunt@culture.gsi.gov.uk .  It is time the BBC had a metaphorical bomb put under it so it  gets its act together and doesn’t waste another £160m.