Violence or Intimidation! Oh Really? by Les May

IN March 2015 a committee of the House of Commons produced a document summarising our national constitution and some options for reform. A key paragraph reads; ‘The United Kingdom constitution is composed of the laws and rules that create the institutions of the state, regulate the relationships between those institutions, or regulate the relationship between the state and the individual. These laws and rules are not codified in a single written document’. Nationally we do not have a written constitution, but local councils do. Amongst other things these regulate the relationship between the council and the individual.

As I have explained previously it took three requests to the Chief Executive of Rochdale Council to get an answer to the question of why the entry in the Register of Interest for Faisal Rana was not available on the council website. The answer I did get was; ‘In relation to the register of interest for Cllr Faisal Rana. The entries not shown on the website are due to the items being considered as sensitive by the previous Monitoring Officer of the Council. Any requests for such information should be submitted via the freedom of information process.’

So what does the written constitution of Rochdale Borough Council have to say on this matter of items being ‘sensitive’? On page 13 it says:

15. Register of interests: Subject to paragraph 16 any disclosable pecuniary interests or personal interests notified to the Monitoring Officer will be included in the register of interests. A copy of the register will be available for public inspection and will be published on the authority’s website.

16. Sensitive interests: This paragraph applies where you consider that disclosure of the details of a disclosable pecuniary interest or a personal interest could lead to you, or a person connected with you, being subject to violence or intimidation, and the Monitoring Officer agrees. In these circumstances, if the interest is entered on the register, copies of the register that are made available for inspection and any published version of the register will exclude details of the interest, but may state that you have a disclosable pecuniary interest, the details of which are withheld under Section 32(2) of the Localism Act 2011.

Unless Faisal Rana told the previous Monitoring Officer David Wilcock that he would be subject to ‘violence or intimidation’ and the present Monitoring Officer has confirmed this with Faisal Rana, then both officers have acted outside the terms of the Rochdale Council constitution by improperly allowing this councillor’s disclosable interests to be classed as ‘sensitive’. In both cases Rochdale Council should hold a written note of any meeting between the councillor and the Monitoring Officer(s) at which this claim was made and accepted as true.

It is more than six weeks since I submitted a Freedom of Information (FoI) request asking if the present monitoring officer has concluded that the disclosable information which should appear in the register of member’s interests for Councillor Faisal Rana is ‘sensitive’, why this information is considered to be ‘sensitive’ and on what date the decision was made. I assume that this is because the present Monitoring Officer, ex Labour councillor Asif Ibrahim, does not wish this question to be answered.

Two Monitoring Officers have acted in a way which they are not permitted to do by the Rochdale Borough Council constitution and have done so without censure from the Chief Executive Steve Rumbelow. If he will not put his house in order perhaps it is time that the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government was asked to intervene.

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