Tag Archives: michael gove

How Michael Gove plays fast and loose with taxpayers money on school redundos

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 ImageOne would expect a right-wing Tory like education secretary  Michael Gove to be pretty diligent on how he spends taxpayers cash. You wouldn’t expect him to spray public money around without Treasury approval and then tell auditors  to get lost if they pick him up on it.

This is exactly what he has done  by handing out extra cash to his beloved school academies so they can  buy staff  redundos with extra payments without bothering to get it cleared by the Treasury.

And when this was rightly picked up by the National Audit Office – the independent Whitehall body that scrutinises taxpayers’ cash –  he has had the cheek to demand that the NAO and the Treasury go away and forget it.

The row is revealed by me in a piece for Exaro News (http://www.exaronews.com ) this month after the NAO took the decision to qualify the £6.1 billion accounts of the quango that funds academy schools ( now merged into a wider body ) after it found  14 cases of excess severance payments, totalling just under £230,000 at nine academies.

This may not sound much but it only found out about them after checking accounts of 135 academics – just eight percent of them. The other 92 per cent of academy accounts were never scrutinised by the quango. If this figure were applied pro rata the number of excessive unapproved redundo cash would top nearly £3m.

Now this may be good news for the people involved but it seems to me like a repeat performance of what happened in the Thatcher era where millions of pounds of taxpayers money were paid out in early retirements just when cash was short. The result was worse as many of these people are probably still claiming pensions now.

Don’t get me wrong I am not against people getting a good redundo deal ( I got one myself in the private sector) but I do think that where public money is concerned the deal should be scrutinised by the Treasury first. Otherwise every pound paid out on top of normal redundo is being taken out of paying for kids education.

Amyas Morse, the head of the NAO, writes in the report: “YPLA ( the now defunct quango) has not required academies to notify them of severance cases or any other payments that require Treasury approval, and so I have concluded that the assurance framework that YPLA had in place for the financial year was not capable of identifying and managing all cases.”

“I have been unable to confirm that, in all material respects, grants to academies conform with the authorities that govern them, and have been applied for the purposes intended by Parliament.”

Michael Gove’s response was: “We do not believe that we need approval for these payments because maintained schools are not required to submit them. We are working with the NAO and HM Treasury on this.”

This conveniently leaves out the fact that these schools are responsible to the  directly elected local authorities, academy schools are responsible to unelected civil servants.

My solution is simple. If Michael Gove wants to spray  taxpayers’ money around in this way, he should pay for it himself. After all the  excellent new search the money website (http://SearchTheMoney.com/) reveals he has received £462,000 in donations, £304,000 from one private equity firm). So he could raise the money for this excessive payments and leave the taxpayer to fund what it should do-public education.

Four Cabinet Ministers and a Tory special relationship “charity” get off lightly

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Henry Kissinger- a star speaker at Atlantic Bridge's uncharitable events- picture courtesy UPI

Any political activist knows that party politics and charitable status don’t mix. And if they do and someone complains the effects can be toxic for the organisation and any leading figures involved.

The Smith Institute found this to its cost when it was torn apart by a Charity Commission investigation two years ago accusing its trustees and organisers of appearing to be too party political and too close to Gordon Brown. The damage to Labour was enormous and the Commission used its powers to hold a full inquiry and directed its trustees to reform the organisation or else.

This week it was the turn of the Tories – or did you notice it?

 Atlantic Bridge- patron Margaret Thatcher  and an advisory board composed of four prominent Tory Cabinet ministers, Liam Fox, George Osborne, William Hague and Michael Gove – was given a year to change its act- after facing exactly the same allegations as Labour. The charity which promotes the “special relationship” with the US – was found in a damning report to be little more than a promotion for Thatcherite party political beliefs and neo-Cons in the US.

But one reason why it may not have hit the headlines is that the Charity Commission was far softer on the offending Tory charity. For a start its press officer advised after they received the initial complaint from Labour activist Stephen Newton that the word investigate could not be used as they had not launched a formal investigation. Instead the phrase “engaging with the charity to address concerns” through a regulatory compliance case was used instead.

Now nine months later the report has been issued with the almost same findings against The Smith Institute. The key phrase is the finding that the charity is “promoting a policy which is closely associated with the Conservative Party.”

But instead of a six month direction the charity has been given a year to change and only then is there a threat against the charity’s trustees of further action.

But more significantly while it is clear that the charity had broken the rules for at least seven years nothing is being done about its tax free position.

These are not minor sums. This was the charity that was charging £700 a seat for VIPs and £400 a seat for ordinary mortals to hear Henry Kissinger speak at a luxury London hotel last year and see him presented with a Margaret Thatcher Medal of Freedom. The commission’s report discloses that the charity admits this event was part of a tax free fund raising drive. The donors – probably mainly higher rate taxpayers – could claim the money against their tax returns. And it is now clear that Atlantic Bridge can’t claim the same charitable status as the National Trust.

So why hasn’t this been referred to Revenue and Customs?  Why aren’t more searching questions not being asked of the advisory panel of Cabinet ministers who presided over an organisation that clearly broke charity rules?

Atlantic Bridge is not actually being repentant either. In a statement they reluctantly promised to follow the Commission’s ruling and have taken down their website for “updating”. But it expressed its  “ disappointment” at the Commission’s ruling  and refused to answer any questions about the role of their trustees or advisory panel.

 The Charity Commission is being a little too careful in handling this scandal. I wonder why.

A similar version of this blog has now appeared on the Guardian’s Comment is Free website.