Corruption in Local Government? by Les May

ASKED recently on the BBC News Channel programme ‘Dateline London’ what she thought too little attention was paid to, Bronwen Maddox, director of the Institute for Government, replied ‘Corruption in Local Government’.

I have previously described the difficulties I have had in getting answers from my local council to Freedom of Information (FOI) questions regarding the ‘declarable interests’ of Councillor Faisal Rana. My conclusion was that Rochdale Borough Council is ‘Institutionally Corrupt’.

It is surely extraordinary that only after the intervention of my local MP, Chris Clarkson, have I been able to get a response to questions I first submitted in April.

Corruption isn’t only about money in brown envelopes and influencing planning decisions it’s also about a commitment to openness by council officers in the dealings with the public.

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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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Institutional Corruption Revisited by Les May

THE willingness of Rochdale Council officers to turn a blind eye to Faisal Rana’s apparent failure to file a list of his beneficial interests within the required period after his election in 2018; the evasiveness of officers when I questioned this in the autumn of that year; the reported willingness of the then Monitoring Officer to allow the information to be classified as ‘sensitive’, meaning it would not be available on the council website; the apparent readiness of the present holder of the post to allow this to continue; the unwillingness to comply with a Freedom of Information (FoI) request and the fact that all these things have been allowed to happen without anyone being called to account, are all signs that Rochdale Council is Institutionally Corrupt.

But in all of this there is one great mystery and that’s why anyone would go to all this trouble to keep information about the full range of business interests of Faisal Rana away from all but the most persistent of enquirers. Why indeed?

It is difficult to see that the officers concerned had or have anything to gain from their acquiescence. Nor can it be said that Faisal Rana has gained anything from it other than a reputation in some circles for being considered, what for want of a better phrase I will call, ‘a bit dodgy’. Some people might have swallowed the story that he voted twice in the belief that election law allowed him to do so, but now...?

The only plausible explanation I can come up with relies upon the truth of those stories of ‘Two Votes’ reported ambition to become Rochdale’s next Labour MP.

Consider this; during a General Election campaign Labour is attacking their opponents record on housing and some inquisitive journalist takes a look at a Labour candidate’s business interests and discovers that s/he is a ‘rentier’ with a long list of residential properties in their portfolio. Can’t you just hear the cries of ‘hypocrite’ or worse? Would the national Labour Party really want to take the risk by allowing such a person to appear on its list of potential candidates? But if no one knows… ?

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Walsall Anarchists & West Midlands Police

A personal experience of using the “Freedom of Information Act”

to research anarchist history

by Christopher Draper

IN 1892 four Walsall anarchists were imprisoned for a bomb plot orchestrated by Auguste Coulon, a police agent-provocateur. Although the police and trial judge conspired to conceal Coulon’s role he subsequently boasted of his involvement to reporters. For over a century the Metropolitan Police refused to disclose details of its part in securing conviction until in 2001 there was a breakthrough. Despite claims that all relevant documents had either been lost or destroyed a serving police officer seeking early retirement and academic respectability was granted access to hitherto hidden Special Branch files to complete his PhD: "Three “Special Account” books, each measuring 160mm by 200mm, and printed into five columns per page.  They detail, among other items, what appears to be the cash amounts paid out to individual informants.  In all, approximately six thousand individual entries span a total of the twenty four years from 1888 to 1912”.

 

These files revealed Coulon was paid almost £1,000 by the Metropolitan Police (and incidentally also revealed the previously unsuspected involvement of a second police agent in a separate high-profile “anarchist-terrorist conspiracy"). This initiative prompted me to wonder whether the Walsall anarchists’ local police force might similarly be sitting on undisclosed evidence, so in September 2017 I made a formal FOI request to West Midlands Police (WMP) for copies of documents relating to this 1892 case. It has taken almost 1½ years for that simple enquiry to be concluded and in the hope that it might amuse, enlighten and encourage fellow researchers I’ve recorded details of my quest.

READ MORE:    

RADICAL HISTORY NETWORK (RaHN)

radicalhistorynetwork.blogspot.com/

Protesting the Chop & Sheffield's Trees

Labour Council outsources tree felling to Amey / Ferrovial*

The outsource companies currently contracted to Sheffield City Council include:

• Amey manage the city's 'Streets Ahead' project including management of highways.
• Kier Sheffield maintains and repairs the social housing stock.**
• Veolia manages household waste disposal.
• Capita provides HR, payroll and IT services for council employees. ***

*       Amey, is a subsidiary of the massive Spanish company grupo Ferrovial
**     Kier is one of the seven companies that in 2015 admitted to blacklisting building workers.
***  Capita has been compared to Carillion, and its share price has plunged from around £11 to £2 in just two years and it dropped out of the FTSE 100 last March.

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OVER 5,000 trees have been cut down in Sheffield since 2012, as part the city council's £2bn Streets Ahead project with the excuse of improving roads and footpaths in the city.

The council, which is planting sapling trees after removing existing mature ones, insists the trees earmarked for felling are either 'dangerous, dead, diseased, dying, damaging or discriminatory'.

Yet it seems many of the trees condemned by the council as 'damaging' or 'discriminatory' are healthy specimens which campaigners say should be saved.  They say that alterations should be made to surrounding pavements and roads instead.

Today an event 'Get Off Our Tree!' is being held at Sheffield City Hall.  Also playing are local artists The Everly Pregnant Brothers, lead singer of Reverend and the Makers, Jon McClure, and former Pulp drummer Nick Banks and the Compare is Jason Cocker , who was interviewed on Radio Four's 'Today' program.

These are just some of Sheffield’s tree protesters, members of local groups coordinated by the Sheffield Tree Action Groups (Stag), which are claiming that this is another example of local government gone wrong.  Stag have made it their mission to protect the trees from council-backed felling crews in what is often hailed, with more than a pinch of Yorkshire hyperbole, as Europe’s greenest city.

Labour Council's PFI Contract

The fellings are part of a 25-year, £2.2bn Private Finance Initiative (PFI) contract.  Signed in 2012 between the Labour-led council and a private company, Amey, the Streets Ahead programme is intended to upgrade 'the condition of our city’s roads, pavements, streetlights, bridges …'  –  no small feat in a place that was known as 'pothole city'.

The contract has serious implications for the city’s 36,000 roadside trees, which have in effect been privatised until the late 2030s. Amey, a subsidiary of the massive Spanish company Ferrovial, has so far removed around 5,350, including oaks, elms and limes. Alison Teal, a local Green party councillor, believes she knows why many were chosen:  'I can only assume that because it’s a 25-year contract, they’re felling mature trees because they are more expensive. They cause pavement and road disruption and a hell of a lot of leaves fall off them.'

Loose and wonky kerbstones and cracked pavements owing to tree roots are among the reasons given for the fellings.  But there is a belief among the Sheffield protesters that the 14 alternatives priced into Amey’s contract – from flexible paving to root pruning and pollarding – are being underused.

The council says it only resorts to removing trees if they are 'dangerous, dying, diseased, dead, damaging or discriminatory' (meaning that they damage pavements and potentially obstruct disabled residents).  Of the eight mature limes destroyed on Rustlings Road, however, the council’s own independent tree panel found that seven were in good condition with a good life expectancy.

The heavy redaction of the contract between Amey and Sheffield council doesn’t help clarify things.  With many details kept from the public in the name of 'commercial confidentiality', there is no way of verifying, for instance, the council’s warnings of “catastrophic financial consequences” if the fellings are delayed.  The gaps leave room for conjecture about why the PFI deal isn’t being called off, or its terms renegotiated.  Protesters think they have found legal reasons that would allow the council to annul the contract – a recent petition focuses on Amey’s alleged failure to disclose a 2011 health and safety conviction following the death of an employee.  A council spokesperson said it was aware of the death before the contract was awarded, but it failed to provide written evidence of that knowledge in response to Freedom of Information requests made by campaigners.

 Thatcherite Law Used by Labour Council

Many cite “the battle for Rustlings Road” as a turning point – following a pre-dawn raid and scenes that the former local MP Nick Clegg described as “something you’d expect in Putin’s Russia”, pensioners were arrested for peacefully protesting. Eight trees were chopped down.
It has been a long and gnarly road to today’s situation, with frustrations running high.  In 2016, arrests of peaceful protesters started under the 1992 Trade Union and Labour Relations Act, which criminalises anyone who persistently stops someone from carrying out lawful work – in this case, tree surgeons contracted by Amey.

'We have the harsh irony of Thatcherite anti-union law being used by a Labour council against its own citizens,' says Ian Rotherham, professor of environmental geography at Sheffield Hallam university.  'Only about 30 years on from Orgreave, our local councillors seem to not see the bitter twist in all this.'

We have the harsh irony of Thatcherite anti-union law being used by a Labour council against its own citizens.

None of those arrested have ever been prosecuted, however, with the Crown Prosecution Service saying there was insufficient evidence.  Then, last summer, the council brought an injunction against nine named protesters – including the Greens Alison Teal, and Brook, as well as 'persons unknown'.   It prohibits protesters from entering safety zones around condemned trees, or encouraging others to do so, either on social media or in person.

Labour's 'One Party State' !

In Ms. Teal’s opinion of local democracy is low – and no wonder, after a year in which the council on which she sits took her to court for breaking the injunction, only for the case to be thrown out.  'This is a one-party state,' she says. 'Sheffield has 84 councillors; 56 are Labour.  They can’t be outvoted.'  She mentions Nasima Akther, a Labour councillor who defied the whip to abstain on a vote about the fellings.  'For her courage she was suspended from the party.  It’s bullying and she subsequently resigned.'

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Rochdale Lib Dems report alleged fraud!

Northern Voices' publishes the statement below in full which has been circulated by the Rochdale Liberal Democrats.  The contents are self explanatory.  It is not the first time that questions have been raised about the conduct of elections in the Spotland ward in Rochdale.  Northern Voices recently has questioned the curious disappearance of a ballot box 'marked' register in the Spotland ward during the local authority elections in 2016.  As I write this last issue of the lost ballot box register in Spotland ward is the subject of a Freedom of Information request.

Lib Dems alleged postal vote fraud

June 1, 2017 9:49 PM

Rochdale Liberal Democrats have formally complained to Greater Manchester Police after claiming to have witnessed postal vote fraud in the Spotland area. Now they are warning the public who haven't yet voted by post to be on their watch. The complaint was made by Liberal Democrat member Dave Hennigan. He claims to have spotted 'at least' 10 completed postal votes in a white transit van on Edmund Street in the Spotland Ward of Rochdale Council.

Mr Hennigan said: "We had a big team out delivering our latest leaflet entitled 'You can change Rochdale's future', with a huge picture of Lib Dem candidate Andy Kelly and the Lib Dem bird on it. It was obvious who we were, and a white transit van with a huge Labour logo and a smaller Tony Lloyd sign stopped to say hello. It was only after a few seconds that I noticed at least ten completed postal votes on the passenger seat. When I pointed this out to the driver nearly ran over my foot - he was that desperate to get away. Postal vote fraud is unacceptable. Not now, not ever. I know the police are busy but we can't let anyone get away with it. Driving around in a van marked 'Labour' with a load of clearly visible postal votes is not on and the police should look into this."

Lib Dem Candidate, Councillor Andy Kelly immediately alerted the Council's Returning Officer Steve Rumbelow. Lib Dems then alerted District Commander for Rochdale Borough, Superintendent JP Ruffle. Councillor Kelly said: "In this election, every vote counts and I don't think it's right for a vehicle supporting any candidate should be driving around with multiple postal votes. Elections should be fair and free from intimidation. Every candidate has access to a postal vote list but postal voters shouldn't have their postal votes taken from them by politicians. If you have a postal vote and haven't yet cast your vote, then please be on your watch."

The particular area of Spotland was mired in electoral controversy last year when a 'marked' register went missing without adequate explanation. The marked register is a crucial tool in the fight against electoral fraud."
 https://rochdalelibdems.org.uk/en/article/2017/1216428/lib-dems-report-alleged-postal-vote-fraud

www.northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com/2017/04/baffling-ballot-box-probe.html

Fitness For Work - 'Cover Up'?

PRIVATE Eye No.1435 reported that the 'opposition parties are calling for an independent inquiry after it emerged that ministers apparently "hid" reports into the deaths of benefit claimants from the independent expert who was reviewing controversial "fitness for work" test.'
It seems that, according to the Eye, that 'seven confidential peer reviews into deaths linked to work capability assessment (WCA) were not passed to Professor Malcolm Harrington as he prepared his final report in 2012.'
It seems that the Professor had 'no recollection of seeing any of the reviews, and he says that 'such damning indictments of the system - if seen - should have triggered a response from me.'  And  'It didn't.'
This all became clear after a Freedom of Information request.  Private Eye reports:  'This is just the latest evidence to emerge implicating ministers in covering up links between WCA flaws and deaths of benefit claimants - particularly those with experience of significant mental distress.'
It seems that the work capability tests have been widely condemned for being too prescriptive, and leading to fatal errors and leaving claimants 'penniless and stressed'.
After the latest 'cover-up', the Eye says:
'Labour, the Lib Dems and Greens all called for an independent inquiry into the "hidden reports" and into the wider issue of deaths directly linked to government welfare reform.'