Category Archives: Corruption

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22 Apr 2018

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Accountability, Corruption, Growth Strategy, Inequality, Scrutiny

City faces corruption crackdown as IMF investigates wealthy countries

“The City of London will come under the spotlight of the International Monetary Fund as part of a crackdown on corruption that will investigate whether Britain and other rich countries are taking tough enough action against bribery and money laundering.

In a hardening of its approach, the IMF said it needed to look at those giving bribes and financial centres that laundered dirty money as well as improving the existing clampdown on wrongdoing in poor countries.

London has won the unenviable reputation of being the global centre for money laundering, partly as a result of cases such as the Global Laundromat, under which British-registered companies and banks helped move at least £20bn of money from criminal activities out of Russia.

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All members of the Group of Seven industrial nations – Britain, the US, Germany, Japan, France, Italy and Canada – together with Austria and the Czech Republic will be looked at by the IMF to see whether their legal systems criminalised bribery and have the right mechanism to prevent laundering of dirty money.

Christine Lagarde, managing director of the IMF, said: “The flip side of every bribe taken is a bribe given. And funds received through corruption are often funds concealed outside the country, often in the financial sectors of major capitals. It is quite possible for countries to have “clean hands” at home but “dirty hands” abroad.

“To truly fight corruption, therefore, we need to address the facilitation of corrupt practices by private actors. To do this, we will be encouraging our member countries to volunteer to have their legal and institutional frameworks assessed by the Fund – to see whether they criminalise and prosecute foreign bribery and have mechanisms to stop the laundering and concealment of dirty money.”

Lagarde said the willingness of the G7 plus Austria and the Czech Republic to allow their anticorruption regimes to be tested was a “a major vote of confidence in the new framework”.

The investigation will form part of the annual Article IV health check that the IMF conducts on every member country. Philip Hammond said in Washington that the size of the City of London meant he could not definitively say that there was no illicit money flowing through the UK financial system but that the government was working hard to reduce and eliminate illicit flows.

Lagarde said there was empirical evidence to show that high levels of corruption were linked to significantly lower growth, investment, foreign direct investment and tax revenues.

A country that slid down from halfway to three-quarters of the way down a league table of corruption and governance was likely to see growth of national income per head decline by half a percentage point or more.

“Our results also show that corruption and poor governance are associated with higher inequality and lower inclusive growth.” …”

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/apr/22/city-faces-corruption-crackdown-as-imf-investigates-wealthy-countries

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19 Apr 2018

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Accountability, Corruption, Lobbying, Sleaze

“GRUBBY CORRUPTION’ Tax officials refused to investigate money laundering at telecoms company ‘because they donated cash to the Tories’ “

“TAX officials are under fire after it emerged they refused to investigate a company for money laundering – saying the firm was a massive Tory donor.

HMRC was asked by French authorities to raid the offices of telecoms firm Lycamobile, but turned down the request.

BuzzFeed revealed that in an email to the French officials, a senior civil servant said: “It is of note that they are the biggest corporate donor to the Conservative party led by Prime Minister Theresa May and donated 1.25m Euros to the Prince Charles Trust in 2012.”

HMRC has admitted the reference to Lycamobile’s political links was a mistake – but insisted that was not the reason they refused to probe the firm.

Furious MPs accused the tax authorities of “grubby corruption” and demanded an explanation from Philip Hammond.

Prosecutors in France launched an investigation into claims that Lycamobile uses its phone business to launder money two years ago.

They asked HMRC to help out by raiding the company’s offices in London, but the British officials refused in an email sent in March last year.

The email included the information about the links between Lycamobile and the Tories – who have now stopped accepting donations from the company.

Asked about the letter, HMRC initially denied it was authentic, saying: “This is the United Kingdom for God’s sake, not some third world banana republic where the organs of state are in hock to some sort of kleptocracy.”

But they later admitted it was real and said it was “regrettable” that the line was included.

A spokesman told The Sun today: “HMRC always investigates suspected rule breaking professionally and objectively and is never influenced by political considerations.”

HMRC added that the reason the request to raid Lycamobile was refused was that French officials didn’t provide enough information.

Labour MP Wes Streeting blasted the revelations today, saying: “This sort of grubby corruption cannot be tolerated.”

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/6091792/tax-officials-refused-to-investigate-money-laundering-at-telecoms-company-because-they-donated-cash-to-the-tories/

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11 Mar 2018

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Accountability, Conflict of interest, Corruption, Lobbying, Scrutiny, Sleaze, Transparency

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“Litvinenko widow warns Tories over Russian donations”

Why should ANY UK Party be allowed to take donations from non-UK companies or nationals?

The Conservative Party has also blocked us knowing who funded the DUP anti-Brexit campaign that paid hundreds of thousands of pounds for anti-Brexit newspapers not available in Ireland.

“The Conservative party is facing pressure to return Russian donations after the attempted murder of the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal on British soil.

Marina Litvinenko, the widow of another former Russian spy, Alexander Litvinenko, whose murder is believed to have been carried out under the direction of Russia’s FSB spy agency, said the Tories risked tainting their reputation if they held on to the cash.

“You need to be very accurate where this money came from before you accept this money,” she told Sky News. “If you identify it’s dirty money [you’re] just not allowed to accept it because I think reputation is very important. [The] reputation of the Conservative party in the UK and all around the world needs to be clear.”

The Sunday Times reported that Russian oligarchs and their associates had registered donations of £826,100 to the Tories since Theresa May entered No 10.

A spokesman said: “All donations to the Conservative party are properly and transparently declared to the Electoral Commission, published by them and comply fully with the law.”

Litvinenko accused May of failing to act to prevent a reoccurrence of the type of attack to which her husband fell victim. …”

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/mar/11/litvinenko-widow-warns-tories-over-russian-donations

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7 Mar 2018

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Accountability, Conflict of interest, Corruption, Democracy, Scrutiny, Sleaze

“Tories seek to block move to reveal donations to DUP in EU referendum”

Imagine if this was Corbyn paying off the Lib Dems with £1 billion and then agreeing to keep all Lib Dem referendum donations secret – what would the Conservative Party be saying and doing?

“Ministers will whip Conservative MPs to block a move to reveal donations to the DUP during the EU referendum, which Labour has said is “doing the party’s dirty work”.

The government is set to help the Northern Irish party conceal details of past political donations, including a highly controversial sum given during the referendum, despite a 2014 law that extended party transparency rules to Northern Ireland.

The rules on transparency were to bring Northern Ireland into line with the rest of the UK, which first introduced in legislation in 2014 with the wide understanding it would be applied from that year.

However, the government has since said the transparency rules will apply from 1 July 2017, which would mean donations during the EU referendum in 2016 will not be made public.

The shadow Northern Ireland secretary, Owen Smith, said it was outrageous that the government would not backdate the donations rules.

“All parties in Northern Ireland apart from the DUP support the government’s previous promise to publish. There is simply no excuse to not publish the donations,” he said.

“The Tories must explain why they are doing the DUP’s dirty work by helping them avoid publishing the source of the funds received in the EU referendum. Those funds played a significant part in the referendum campaign across the UK and the public have a right to know precisely where that money came from.”

Serious questions remain over the DUP’s spending on the EU referendum in June 2016 – including a £435,000 donation from a group called the Constitutional Research Council (CRC), chaired by Richard Cook, a former vice-chairman of the Scottish Conservatives and Unionist party.

The DUP spent more than £280,000 of that money on a wraparound advertisement in the London-based Metro newspaper, which is not distributed in Northern Ireland.

On Monday night, the government attempted to enact the transparency rules in the legislation via statutory instrument, a process which allows the provisions of an act of parliament to come into force or be altered without parliament having to debate them.

However, after objections by Labour at the last-minute nature of the SI, the measure will now be put to a vote on Wednesday, where the party will attempt to get the law backdated to its introduction in 2014. Conservative MPs are under a three-line whip to oppose.

A Labour source said: “The government tried to pull a fast one and got their minister to sit down early so they could vote on the SIs last night rather than deferred on Wednesday. We stopped it but it’s very unusual and shows the nervousness on this, especially the NI political donations.”

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/mar/07/tories-seek-to-block-move-to-reveal-donations-to-dup-in-eu-referendum

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1 Mar 2018

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Accountability, Conflict of interest, Corruption, Scrutiny, Sleaze, Transparency

So, how is the “Misconduct in Public Office” consultation going?

Here’s the current state of play:

Click to access cp229_misconduct_in_public_office_summary.pdf

Here’s a summary:

Click to access cp229_misconduct_in_public_office_summary.pdf

Owl says: chances of reform – zero. Why: there is no will for change from a government that has too much to lose from such reforms!

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26 Feb 2018

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Accountability, Corruption, Education (local), Scrutiny, Sleaze, Standards Committee, Transparency

The swamp, the sleaze … coming to a government very near you

“The vetting process by which Toby Young was appointed to the board of the new higher education regulator was flawed and rife with political interference, according to the results of an investigation by an official watchdog.

The commissioner for public appointments’ report castigates the Department for Education (DfE) and regulator the Office for Students (OfS) for failing to delve into Young’s controversial writings and social media postings, and uncovers a high degree of direct meddling by ministers and No 10 Downing Street.

The commissioner concludes that the OfS’s board appointments, including Young, showed a “clear disparity” in the treatment of different candidates, and that parts of the process “had serious shortcomings in terms of the fairness and transparency aspects” under the code governing public appointments.

The report reveals Jo Johnson, who was then the universities minister, contacted Young about applying for the post and that his nomination was later queried by Justine Greening, the education secretary at the time.

The commissioner also detailed the involvement of Downing Street special advisers in blocking nominees for the “student experience” role on the OfS board, who were blacklisted because of previous involvement with student unions and their expressed opposition to the government’s Prevent counter-extremism programme.

“The evidence presented to the commissioner indicates that the decision on whether or not to appoint one candidate in particular was heavily influenced, not by the panel but by special advisers, notably from 10 Downing Street,” the report concluded.

Emails and memos “show that there had been a desire amongst ministers and special advisers not to appoint someone with close links to student unions, such as the National Union of Students”.

Young’s appointment was announced by the DfE at midnight on New Year’s Eve, when the powerful new higher education regulator was formally launched.

Young’s inclusion on the board immediately attracted sustained public controversy, with critics highlighting Young’s Twitter account, containing salacious and crude comments about women, and Young’s writing in support of what he dubbed “progressive eugenics”. Eight days later Young announced he would withdraw.

The commissioner found that while the DfE said it conducted online vetting of the candidates, “by its own admission, it did not delve back extensively into social media so it was not aware of the tweets by Mr Young”. The report adds: “However, the social media activity of the initially preferred candidate for the student experience role was extensively examined.”

The commissioner also revealed that departmental emails referred to “No 10 Googlers” in highlighting social media comments by the student candidates. “Notably, no such exploration or research was made on other possible appointees, including Mr Young,” the report states.

“Mr Young’s reputation as a controversialist, in itself hardly a secret, should have prompted further probing to examine whether what he had said and done might conflict with his public responsibilities and standards expected on the OfS board.

“Second, the rapid disclosure of what were described as offensive tweets in the days after his appointment suggests that it was not that hard to find them, that not much delving was required,” the report added.

The OfS and its chair, Sir Michael Barber, also came in for criticism for their part in the proceedings. Barber sat on the appointments panel, alongside two DfE officials. “Regrettably, and contrary to best practice, the panel for the generic non-executive roles was all male,” the commissioner noted.

The report also details the DfE’s repeated efforts to minimise or delay requests for information about the appointment process from the commissioner’s office.

Peter Riddell, the commissioner for public appointments , said: “My investigation uncovered a number of areas where important principles in the governance code were breached or compromised in the appointments to the board of the Office for Students.

“In my experience, this episode is unrepresentative of the hundreds of public appointments that take place each year, but it is important that lessons are learned – not least so that talented people from a wide range of backgrounds are willing to put themselves forward to serve on the boards of public bodies.”

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/feb/26/no-10-advisers-meddled-in-toby-young-getting-ofs-role-finds-report

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23 Feb 2018

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Accountability, Conflict of interest, Corruption, Democracy, Developers/ Development, Lobbying, Scrutiny, Standards Committee, Transparency

“Wine and dine democracy is now on trial – and about time”

There wasn’t a paragraph in this article that could be edited out – truly we are in The Swamp:

“Each time a US gunman goes berserk, the British media erupts in fury at the money the gun lobby can devote to its lethal interest. To be sure, big time lobbying is the occupational disease of American politics. In the US, it can have murderous consequences. Still, on matters of principle, Britons would do well to watch their hypocrisy.

The sums spent by property companies on lobbying Westminster city council’s planning committee – revealed in Tuesday’s Guardian – may be dwarfed by those spent across the Atlantic. But the hospitality showered on the committee’s chairman for 16 years, the amiable Robert Davis, was breathtaking. Five-hundred freebies, including 10 foreign trips, in just three years. At least 150 of these were from a who’s who list of property industry figures. Even Harvey Weinstein is on the list. Entertaining Davis was clearly a Westminster cottage industry. He can hardly have had time to down one glass of champagne before raising another.

Everywhere money is at stake, those regulating it will be open to temptation
Meanwhile in the planning committee, the London Evening Standard’s Jim Armitage – there as a local resident objecting to a planning application – watched planning approvals get ticked off mechanically. He noted that not a single objection was upheld. Members “looked at the ceiling, buffed their nails and scratched their noses” as each was nodded through.

Westminster council asserted this week that all hospitality was received during “meetings”, and the idea that any of its councillors “could be bought by the property lobby was demonstrably untrue”. The meetings apparently took place at Wimbledon, at a performance of the musical Hamilton, and in the south of France. There is nothing wrong in this, provided gifts and hospitality are declared. But this assumes that what is declared cannot be considered, under the 2010 Bribery Act, a “financial or other advantage” offered or accepted to secure “improper performance”. Transparency is not enough.

Davis’s most extraordinary case was that of the late Irvine Sellar’s 72-storey “Paddington Pole”. This required the demolition of an Edwardian baroque sorting office and the erection of a gigantic tower, within the boundary of a conservation area and towering over Brunel’s Paddington station. Proposed in 2016, it breached every conceivable principle of good planning, but Sellar entertained Davis and apparently secured his approval for the pole Davis later described as a potential masterpiece. Sellar added seven more storeys to his plans. A public outcry led eventually to plans for the pole being withdrawn, but only to be replaced by a proposal for a bigger in volume but lower glass box. This was waved through the planning committee against all local opposition after Davis had publicly hailed it as a “game-changer”.

What is highly questionable is what happened next. Protesters pleaded for a meeting with the council but were ignored. Despite the obvious unsuitability of a vast box in a conservation area, Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, declined to intervene. That decision was followed by a similar refusal by the planning minister, Sajid Javid, who declined to give his reasons for doing so. This is most unusual for such a controversial project. The Shard, also developed by Sellar, was, in contrast, subject to a lengthy public inquiry. Protesters are trying to take Javid’s refusal to explain why he declined to intervene to the court of appeal.

British planning is a mess. It is awash with political donations and lavish lobbying as the construction industry wrestles to capitalise on the Conservatives’ “let-rip approach” to urban and rural development. Before the 2010 election, the Conservative Property Forum is recorded as donating £500,000 to the party.

The Cameron government duly dropped proposals for local appeals against development from its planning framework document. Lobbyists from the British Property Federation and others were effectively invited to rewrite the framework for themselves. The industry then donated a further million pounds to stave off higher council tax banding in response to Labour’s mansion tax.

This is hardly unique to planning. The NHS is awash in inducements to doctors to prescribe branded medicines. Arms company boards are stuffed with generals. The banks that fund private finance initiatives keep the Whitehall doors revolving. Declarations of interest by members of the House of Lords read like a lobbyists’ congregation. It clearly pays companies to lobby. The irony is that it was David Cameron who made great play of curbing this in his Lobbying Act. It was, he said, “the next big scandal waiting to happen”. Yet the only scandal was how the act was watered down, and how Cameron’s transparency register for lobbyists was lobbied to oblivion.

British lobbying is not as blatant as Washington’s infamous “Gucci Gulch”, where interest groups stuff the pockets of congressional lawmakers. Corruption in Britain is rarely through payments to individuals, and public officials seldom indulge in the log-rolling – legislators trading support for each other’s pet projects – seen in American politics. But the risk of bias and partiality exist in parts of the public sector. Of these, property planning, where huge sums of money can be involved, is the most obvious.

Everywhere money is at stake, those regulating it will be open to temptation. That is why oversight is crucial. But oversight of British local government is currently on a par with a banana republic. The Standards Board for England was abolished in the course of Cameron’s “quango cull” in 2012. It supposedly monitored the ethical performance of officers and councillors in local government. It was criticised as cumbersome, meddlesome and bureaucratically intrusive. Few mourned the board’s passing. Each local council was then expected to make its own arrangements.

The minister at the time said there was a need “for a light touch”. Westminster council took him at his word. It might have been a good idea to see the Standards Board go, but it should have been replaced with something. Even the most ardent localist cannot expect councils to float free of any oversight. Millions of pounds can turn on a planning decision. Anyone who knows these local controversies will attest that many stink to high heaven.

Davis has denied any wrongdoing and nobly referred himself to Westminster’s own “monitoring officer”. It is hard to see how this meets any plausible test of independence. Much now rests on the shoulders of this officer, as it does on the judges reviewing the Sellar glass box decision. The Paddington horizon will be their memorial. Everyone is now on trial, not least local democracy.”

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/23/wine-dine-democracy-trial-westminster-city-council-planning-committee

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22 Feb 2018

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Accountability, Affordable and Social Housing, Barratt Homes, Corruption, Developers/ Development, Land banking

“Demand for new homes sees house builder Barratt rake in profits and pledge another £175m payout to shareholders”

And all done on the back of building fewer houses:

“Profits rise at Barratt despite the UK’s biggest housebuilder building fewer homes”

and a bribery scandal:
https://eastdevonwatch.org/2017/01/26/four-arrests-for-bribery-at-developer-barratts/

“House builder Barratt Developments is cashing in on the demand for homes across the UK with bumper half-year profits in the last six months of 2017.

The new home builder reported a record half-year profit of £342.7 million in the second half of last year, a 6.8 per cent increase on the year before.

While it said a slowdown in high-end central London homes could hit margins, Barratts planned to offset it by buying more land and ‘operational efficiencies’. …

The group revealed plans to pay out a special dividend to shareholders worth £175 million in both November 2018 and November 2019, something it said reflected its ‘confidence’ in performance. …”

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-5417233/Barratt-Developments-rakes-340m-profit.html

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24 Jan 2018

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Accountability, Corruption, Sleaze, Transparency

“MPs finally get ‘revenge’ nine years after expenses scandal by blocking watchdog’s new job”

Owl wonders how many MPs are over 76 years of age. In 2016 there were 27 of them over 70 (the oldest being 84) and 107 between 60 and 65:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/12126186/More-female-MPs-and-over-70s-in-parliament-than-ever-before-report-finds.html

and how many take taxis from their London homes to the House of Commons!

“MPs have finally got “revenge” nine years after the expenses scandal – by blocking their watchdog’s new job.

The Commons voted 77-46 tonight to stop Sir Ian Kennedy, ex-chairman of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, becoming an Electoral Commissioner.

Sir Ian, who led a controversial crackdown on claims after the scandal in 2009, was backed by Theresa May for the £374-a-day role with the elections watchdog.

But 40 Tory and 31 Labour MPs were branded “petty” after leading a revolt against his appointment. HuffPost UK and The Sun quoted anonymous MPs describing the move as “revenge”.

Conservative former minister James Duddridge said he believed Sir Ian was “not a fit and proper person” to serve in the four-year role.

He told the Commons: “This gentleman is 76 now, he’ll be 80 at the end of his term. When he served on a health commission, he claimed £15,000 in taxis from North London to the job.

Whilst our expenses system desperately needed to be reformed, I don’t think there’s a single member of the House that thinks IPSA is a system that is a system lacking in bureaucracy that couldn’t be well reformed.

“I don’t think he did a good job.”

Labour MP John Spellar accused IPSA of “obstructionism”, adding: “Let’s be frank about it.

“Sir Ian Kennedy, many colleagues feel, largely created the dreadful, anti-elected member, vindictive attitude that has permeated so much of IPSA. That has basically taken as its premise that they are there to make life difficult for MPs.”

Commons Leader Andrea Leadsom said no objections were raised by the leaders of political parties to Sir Ian’s appointment.”

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/mps-finally-revenge-nine-years-11902828

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14 Jan 2018

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Accountability, Conflict of interest, Corruption, Privatisation, Scrutiny, Sleaze

How much more sleazy can the Carillion privatisation mess get?h

This is from the Daily Mail “This is Money” on 12 September 2017:

“Troubled engineer Carillion introduced tougher rules that protect bonuses paid to bosses – just months before it was embroiled in an accounting crisis that wiped £600million off its shares.

The firm changed the wording of its pay policy to make it harder for investors to claw back bonuses paid to executives in the event it ran into financial difficulty.

In recent days Carillion has been under pressure from investors to recoup some of the millions of pounds in bonuses paid to former chief executive Richard Howson and ex-finance chief Richard Adam when they were in charge.
A probe by the Mail has found that previously bosses could have been forced to hand back their annual bonus and share awards in ‘circumstances of corporate failure’.

But in the group’s 2016 annual report this wording was tightened.
It says deferred bonuses may be reduced in circumstances of corporate failure but goes on to say the so-called ‘malus’ and ‘clawback’ provisions can be applied in two circumstances: if results have been misstated or the participant is guilty of gross misconduct.

The changes to clawback rules, if interpreted as being a higher bar, could save bosses millions.

Howson, 49, stepped down from his role as chief executive on the day of the disastrous trading update. He had been in the post since 2009.

He is still with the company as chief operating officer but is due to leave next year. He has made £1.9 million in cash and share bonuses during his tenure, only not getting an award in 2012, according to Mail calculations.
Last year he pocketed a £245,000 bonus in cash and shares as well as a £346,000 long-term incentive award.

Adam, 59, has had up to £2.6million in extra cash and shares since starting in 2006, according to Mail calculations.

Last year he was handed a bonus of £140,000 and long-term incentive awards worth £278,000.

After leaving Carillion in December 2016, he faced a revolt from shareholders at First Group when he joined the transport company’s board. More than a fifth opposed his appointment.

Carillion is still one of the most shorted stocks on the market, suggesting investors are expecting worse to come. But shares closed up 3.7 per cent yesterday, or 1.6p, at 44.76p.

The company declined to comment.”

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-4873710/Carillion-protected-bosses-4m-bonuses-crisis.html

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3 Jan 2018

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“MPs To Block Ex-IPSA Chief Sir Ian Kennedy From New Watchdog Post As ‘Revenge’ For Expenses Crackdown”

“MPs are blocking a new taxpayer-funded job for former IPSA chief Sir Ian Kennedy as “revenge” for his crackdown in the wake of Parliament’s expenses scandal, HuffPost UK can reveal.

Tory and Labour backbenchers are set to deploy little-used Commons procedures to stymie plans to appoint Kennedy to the board of the Electoral Commission.

Kennedy, who led the drive to reform the system after the 2009 MPs’ expenses affair, has been recommended as a new Commissioner for the elections watchdog, a four-year post which carries a salary of £359-a-day.

But MPs plan to shout ‘object’ when a formal procedural motion on the appointment is tabled in the Commons next Monday, its first day back after the Christmas recess.

The rebels, who only need one objection to delay the motion, plan to continue their protest indefinitely, forcing the Commission to either withdraw the appointment or leave the post vacant. …”

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/mps-to-block-election-commission-appointment-of-ex-ipsa-sir-ian-kennedy-as-revenge-for-mps-expenses-crackdown_uk_5a4ce876e4b0b0e5a7aa1d9

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17 Dec 2017

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Accountability, Corruption, Democracy, Developers/ Development, EDDC, Planning System

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East Devon mentioned in corruption and bribery article in Sunday Times

See post below for the history of the mention of East Devon.

“Bricks, bribery and mortar — the flaw built into our planning rules

This newspaper’s exposure of a corruption scandal in London is just the tip of the iceberg, says Rohan Silva. Outmoded development laws allow crime to thrive.

Exactly seven years ago today, on December 17, 2010, a young man named Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire outside a government building in Tunisia, kicking off the Arab Spring that turned the geopolitics of the region on its head.

In the aftermath of the turmoil, the influential economist Hernando De Soto interviewed Bouazizi’s family — and the families of the dozens of other people who killed themselves in similar ways in countries from Saudi Arabia to Egypt.

De Soto wanted to find out why these young men and women had committed violent acts of self-immolation — and he concluded that every case had the same root cause: “Desperation over property.”

According to De Soto, the absence of enforceable property rights in Tunisia — and across the Arab world — meant people were at constant risk of their property being confiscated by the government, and made it almost impossible to escape poverty and build a better life for their families.

Here in the UK, we tend to think property rights are a developing-world issue — with our long history of land registration and ownership, it’s easy to assume everything is hunky-dory.

If only. Last weekend this newspaper published a damning exposé of corruption in east London, with a £2m bribe sought from a developer in exchange for the promise of permission to build a skyscraper, Alpha Square.

Off the back of this exemplary journalism, the National Crime Agency is investigating the incident. Hopefully the bent politicians and officials will be brought to justice.

But the depressing truth is that corruption is endemic in Britain’s bureaucratic planning system. In every corner of the country, you can find stories of bribery, with local councillors and officials rigging the planning process for their own gain.

Doncaster, Enfield, Greater Manchester, EAST DEVON — these are just a handful of the local authorities where corrupt practices have been discovered in planning departments. In other words, the corruption is systemic and it’s caused by the inadequacy of Britain’s property rights.

To understand why, we need to look back to 1947, when post-war socialist planning was all the rage, industries were being nationalised and the state was steadily gaining control of the “commanding heights” of the economy.

That year, the Town and Country Planning Act was introduced, giving the government the power to determine the direction of property development. This piece of legislation is the basis of today’s planning system — and it took land development rights away from property owners and gave them to the planning authorities. It was another form of nationalisation, in other words.

Ever since, when you buy a piece of land in the UK you receive its property title, but you have absolutely no idea what you’re allowed to build on it — that’s up to planning officials in the local council.

Given that the value of a property can increase by tens — or even hundreds — of millions of pounds depending on what the planners decide, the incentive for corruption among low-paid officials and councillors is overwhelming.

Unfortunately, the lack of clear property rights doesn’t only lead to corruption. It also slows down every aspect of the development process, creating a boon for expensive planning consultants and lawyers.

All this bureaucracy helps explain why too few houses have been built over many decades, with monumental social and economic consequences.

As Mark Littlewood of the Institute of Economic Affairs has pointed out, our outmoded planning system has artificially inflated property prices in the UK by as much as 41%, adding more than £3,000 to the average family’s annual rent or mortgage payments.

What’s more, our post-war planning system stifles innovation. Developers have to play it safe, putting forward generic projects designed to get through the bureaucracy, rather than delivering what consumers want.

As the architect Lord Rogers has asked, why should bureaucrats get to decide on aesthetics? It’s a recipe for the kind of soulless grey buildings you now find in every British city.

Corrupt practices. Market failure. Lack of innovation. These are just some of the consequences of our broken planning system — the last vestige of socialist command-and-control we have left in the UK. (Until Jeremy Corbyn gets elected, anyway.)

It doesn’t have to be like this. In US cities, when you buy a piece of land, it comes with property rights that tell you what you’re allowed to build on it and how much extra space you can add.

This is known as “by-right” planning permission — because you don’t need a bureaucratic process to tell you what you can do. You apply for planning permission only if you want to build more than you’re entitled to.

Now is the time to bring this approach to this country and clamp down on corruption. By strengthening the UK’s framework of property rights and dismantling the failed post-war planning system, we can cut red tape and stamp out bribery.

Thanks to this newspaper’s exposure of corrupt practices, change is surely coming. You might even call it a British Spring.

Rohan Silva”

Source: Sunday Times, paywall

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17 Dec 2017

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Accountability, Conflict of interest, Corruption, Developers/ Development, East Devon Alliance, EDDC, Local Plan, Philip Skinner, Scrutiny, Sleaze, Transparency

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The disgraced ex-EDDC Tory Councillor Graham Brown “If I can’t get planning, nobody will” scandal refuses to die

Remember the disgraced ex-Councilor Graham Brown scandal?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9920971/If-I-cant-get-planning-nobody-will-says-Devon-councillor-and-planning-consultant.html

Well, it refuses to die.

The Sunday Times today (page 29, main paper) mentions it in passing in an article entitled “Bricks, Bribery and Planning – the flaw built into our planning rules” (full text to follow shortly).

“But the depressing truth is that corruption is endemic in Britain’s bureaucratic planning system. In every corner of the country, you can fund stories of bribery, with local councillors and officials rigging the planning system for their own gain.

Doncaster, Enfield, Greater Manchester, EAST DEVON – these are just a handful of local authorities where corrupt practices have been discovered in planning departments. In other words, the corruption is systemic and it’s caused by the inadequacy of Britain’s property rights”. …”

Brown, at various times, headed up the East Devon Business Forum, was also highly influential in the early stages of the Local Development Plan (which wasted two years or more mostly visiting big development sites owned by prominent businessmen and which had to be abandoned and re-started under the later chairmanship of Councillor Philip Skinner).

Brown held many other posts throughout his long career as an EDDC councillor, mostly related to planning, while running his local planning consultancy business – a fact of which other Tory majority party councillors and officers were very well aware, but did not perceive as not being a conflict of interest – until the Daily Telegraph sting.

His only censure was to be kicked out of his local Tory party – local police refused to be involved with an inquiry due to insufficient evidence. Were local planners and councillors – or even the Daily Telegraph or Anna Minton – asked for evidence? We have no idea.

Brown features (as does East Devon generally – a whole chapter) in the Anna Minton expose “ Scaring the Living Daylights Out of People: The Local Lobby and the Failure of Democracy” (Section 3: The Local Mafia: Conflicts of Interest in East Devon”) :

Click to access scaring-the-living-daylights-final.pdf

As a final insult to injury, after his departure from EDDC he attempted to get the agricultural tie lifted from the farmhouse in which he lived (which would have greatly increased its value by up to 40%) until a local investigation (led by East Devon Alliance) uncovered the fact that he had been receiving EU farming subsidies to the tune of at least £850,000 throughout the period he said he was no longer farming:

https://eastdevonwatch.org/2014/09/22/ex-councillor-browns-facts-disputed-2/

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24 Nov 2017

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Accountability, Affordable and Social Housing, Austerity cuts, Corruption, Developers/ Development, Housing (local), Inequality, Privatisation, Scrutiny, Sleaze, Spin, Transparency

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Grenfell Tower resident blogged that fire would be result of council’s deliberate neglect – local media refused to take up the story

Local media knew about this for YEARS but refused to take it up or investigate, leaving a lone Grenfell Tower blogger to document the unfolding disaster. One so-called “local” journalist was actually filing copy from Dorset!

“[Edward] Daffarn [a social worker who had lived in Grenfell Tower for 15 years] is understandably emotional when reflecting on the last few months, but more than that he is angry. Angry with the way he feels Grenfell residents were treated by the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation – the people who were entrusted to maintain the estate and keep its residents safe. Angry with the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Council, which was meant to scrutinise the KCTMO. Angry with a society which didn’t seem to care about people like him – people who live on housing estates – until it was too late.

“The reality is if you’re on a housing estate it’s indifference and neglect, two words that sum up everything about the way we were treated,” he says. “They weren’t interested in providing housing services, keeping us safe, maintaining the estate. They were just interested in themselves.”
It wasn’t for us to tell the council what they should be doing we were just trying to raise an alarm.

Edward Daffarn, Grenfell Action Group blog

Daffarn and fellow Grenfell resident Francis O’Connor had been blogging on behalf of the Grenfell Action Group since 2012. They wrote about issues that concerned their tight-knit community – air pollution, the closure of the local public library, and their fears that corners were being cut during the refurbishment of the tower.

“We wanted to record for history how a community on a housing estate in the fifth richest country in the world could be ignored, neglected, treated with indifference. We never thought we could make change. We just wanted to record what was happening,” he says.

Daffarn and O’Connor shared a theory that Kensington and Chelsea – a London borough more widely known for its museums, designer shops and flower shows – actually wanted its council estates to go into decline, so that the residents would leave and expensive flats could be built in this sought-after location. For this they were described as fantasists.

“We weren’t fantasists,” he says, visibly hurt. “We were trying to raise genuine concerns about how our community was being run down.”

The natural consequence, he concluded, would be loss of life. Which is why on 20 November 2016, frustrated and desperate, Edward wrote the blog post KCTMO – Playing with fire!

“It is a truly terrifying thought but the Grenfell Action Group firmly believe that only a catastrophic event will expose the ineptitude and incompetence of our landlord.”

A few months earlier a fire had ripped through five floors of a tower block in Shepherd’s Bush, just down the road. Edward was worried that if a fire broke out in his tower block residents wouldn’t know what to do. They had been given no proper fire safety instructions from the KCTMO. There were no instructions on individual floors on how residents should act in the event of a fire, there was only a recent newsletter saying residents should remain in their flats – advice which in the case of the Shepherd’s Bush fire would have led to fatalities.

There’s a lot of abusive behaviour evidenced forensically about what was happening to our community, but it wasn’t sexy so it never got picked up.

In March 2017 the KCTMO installed fire safety instruction notices in the entrance hallway to Grenfell Tower and outside the lifts on every floor of the building, again urging residents to “stay put” unless the fire was “in or affecting your flat”.

It wasn’t the first time the Grenfell blog’s authors had raised concerns about fire safety.

Before the blog began, when a school was built on the only green space the residents had, they wrote to the borough pointing out that access for fire and emergency vehicles had been compromised.

Later they blogged about the blocking of a fire exit with mattresses during the refurbishment and the power surges in 2013 that manifested in flickering lights, computers and stereos blowing up, and entire rooms filling with smoke. These continued for three weeks, Daffarn says.

“We were tenants we weren’t fire safety specialists but we were switched on enough to feel this was important and it was not being dealt with on our estate and that’s why we were blogging. It wasn’t for us to tell the council what they should be doing., We were just trying to raise an alarm.”

An alarm that went unanswered. The November 2016 blog post represented the last moment at which something might have been done to avert the disaster which followed six months later. But why didn’t anyone heed or investigate Daffarn’s claims?

Hidden within the story of the Grenfell blog is another story of the decline of local media. There simply was no local press on the ground in the borough of Kensington and Chelsea scrutinising the authorities and helping to amplify the voice of people like Edward Daffarn.

The last time he had the attention of a local journalist was in 2014 when Camilla Horrox, the reporter for the Kensington and Chelsea Chronicle ran front page stories about Grenfell residents’ concerns regarding the possible presence of asbestos on the site of the new school and about the power surges.

She had met Daffarn several times, and had been concerned about KCTMO’s dealings with the residents of the properties it managed.

But when the newspaper was closed down later that year Horrox was made redundant and all her Grenfell articles disappeared from the web. The Kensington and Chelsea Chronicle was incorporated into a website that reports on 29 west London districts.

Horrox’s replacement was expected to report on three boroughs – Kensington and Chelsea, Westminster and Hammersmith and Fulham – while based in Surrey, an hour’s drive away.

Some residents of the borough might have been under the mistaken impression that they did have a local newspaper. In 2015 a free paper, The Kensington and Chelsea News, was established to fill the gap left by the closing of the Chronicle.

But when I tracked down its reporter he explained that he was the sole reporter working on the paper, and on two other local newspapers – his salary was £500 a week and he did almost all his reporting from home in Dorset, 150 miles away. He made it to the borough only twice in two-and-a-half years, and the one story he ever published about Grenfell was from a council press release about the installation of the new cladding.

Though he always searched for a “good front page splash” for each of the three editions, he also made sure to find two pages of royal stories and two pages of entertainment stories.

Edward Daffarn didn’t take his concerns to the media in November 2016 because he no longer thought anyone would listen. But the blog was out there for everyone to see, he points out, if only they had been looking.

“We’d been blogging for three or four years and you go back over that time there’s a lot of abusive behaviour evidenced forensically about what was happening to our community, but it wasn’t sexy so it never got picked up.”
For Edward, what was going on at Grenfell wasn’t just a local story, but a national one. A story about invisible people in a society that cared more about celebrity and wealth than its most vulnerable residents.

Close to tears, he admonishes the nation’s journalists.

“If you look back now our whole community of North Kensington, the policy that the local authority was taking every public space and privatising it, that that could be missed by the BBC, by Channel Four, by these wider news agencies… The question should be for you, why did you miss it?
“Why aren’t our lives important enough for you?”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-42072477

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23 Nov 2017

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“The House of Lords is a rolling expenses scandal – now politicians must act”

… “At the end of 2015, the ERS conducted an audit of the House of Lords, Fact vs Fiction. It challenged claims that the Lords is a beacon of independence and professional diversity and demonstrated the huge democratic and financial cost.

Indeed, in the 2010-2015 parliament, £360,000 was claimed by peers in years they failed to vote once. On independence, over a third of Lords (34%) previously worked in politics.

The research also found that the Lords represents only a small section of society: 44 percent of Lords listed their main address in London and the South East, while 54 percent were 70 or older. More members have worked in the Royal Household than in manual jobs.

But the problems of an unrepresentative, inefficient and growing house have not improved since those revelations. The ERS’ new report, The High Cost of Small Change: The House of Lords Audit, shows that 109 peers failed to speak at all in the 2016/17 session. Sixty-three of those claimed expenses – claiming a total of £1,095,701.

More shockingly, 33 peers have claimed nearly half a million pounds between them while failing to speak, table a written question or serve on a committee in the past year. Particularly at a time when Parliament is dealing with major legislative upheaval, this kind of behaviour is unacceptable.

We know the upper house is grossly oversized. But we also know that the bulk of the work of the Lords is carried out by a smaller number of peers. The top 300 voting peers account for over 64% of all votes in divisions during the 2016/17 session – suggesting much of the work of the Lords is done by a minority of peers.

Indeed, nearly 1 in 10 of the peers eligible to vote throughout 2016/17 (9.2% – 72 of the 779) are inactive when it comes to scrutinising the government’s work on committees, in the chamber, or through written questions – vital roles for the revising chamber.

This is something that is finally being recognised by the upper house. The Lord Speaker’s Committee on the size of the House was set up to discuss how to shrink the supersized second chamber. In October 2017, they released their plans to reduce the size of the Lords to 600 in 11 years and move to 15 year terms by 2042. But by that time NASA plans to have landed humans on Mars.

Calls for reform are often dismissed on the basis that the Lords is a bastion of independence. We can reveal the truth is far from it. Our analysis shows that nearly 80 percent of Conservative peers didn’t once vote against the government last year.

Of the Labour peers who voted, 50 percent voted against the government more than 90 percent of the time. And non-partisan crossbenchers often don’t turn up – over 40 percent voted fewer than 10 times last year: leaving decisions in the hands of the party whips.

Finally, the House hosts 184 ex-MPs, 26 ex-MEPs, 11 ex-MSPs, 8 ex-Welsh AMs, 6 ex-London AMs, 11 ex-MLAs and 39 current or ex-council leaders, as of April 2017. Rather than an independent chamber, the Lords is increasingly being used as a retirement home or a gift to those no longer wanted by parties.

The ERS are calling for a much smaller, fairly-elected upper house the public can have faith in. Around two thirds of voters agree in both the need for a drastic cut in its size, and for it to be largely elected.

This report lays out the state of Britain’s second chamber today. It’s now up to politicians to meet the challenge – before trust in our democracy falls even further.”

https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/money-for-nothing-weve-audited-the-house-of-lords/

The full reportis here:

https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/latest-news-and-research/publications/the-high-cost-of-small-change/

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9 Nov 2017

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Accountability, Austerity cuts, Corruption, Democracy, Scrutiny, Sleaze, Sovereignty, Tax avoidance

UK politics and corruption – it’s not (only) “Johnny Foreigner” to blame

This article, written in December 2016, foresaw developments this week. We have had the warnings, but where is the path to change when all the paths are obstructec by the corrupt?

“… Our media likes to write about crime and corruption as though they are the funny fetishes of Johnny Foreigner: Italian mafia, Russian oligarchs or Mexican drug lords. But this year alone, the former banker and anti-corruption campaigner Roman Borisovich made the claim that three-quarters of the money looted in Russia comes to Britain, the Italian mafia expert Roberto Saviano described the UK as “the most corrupt place on earth”, and our biggest bank was sued for its involvement in laundering Mexican drug money: appropriate, given than HSBC was founded by criminal drug dealers on the back of the Opium Wars.

This racket is big enough to have vast control over our politics. An enterprise dogged by criminal charges can pay to hush up the nation’s biggest broadsheet. It’s hard to look at party funding in the last two UK general elections without concluding that it was the donations of the financial sector and prominent tax dodgers which put David Cameron into Downing Street twice to ensure that they weren’t regulated after the 2008 crash.

And it’s not just the Tories. After trade unions, the biggest ‘donors’ to the Labour party before the 2015 elections were the accountancy firm PricewaterhoueCooper, who ‘gave’ in the form of £600,000 of research ‘help’. Then shadow-chancellor-now-TV-dancing-supermo Ed Balls effectively outsourced £200,000 worth of policy work to these much criticized wizards of tax accountancy for the mega-rich, while shadow business secretary Chukka Ummuna got £60,000 worth of ‘support’.

Not wanting to miss out on the action, the Liberal Democrats accepted 1371 hours of policy ‘technical support’ from PwC in 2015 alone, the year after the Luxemburg Leaks revealed the firm’s significant involvement in helping the hyper-rich slash their tax bills through complex accounting arrangements. It’s worth pondering on who wrote the maze of loopholes into the laws in the first place…

Once they leave office, the deal only gets better for our prominent politicians. Former British foreign secretaries like Malcolm Rifkind, Jack Straw and David Miliband have auctioned access to themselves for huge sums of money. Former British health secretaries like Alan Milburn, Virginia Bottomley and John Hutton have all quietly slipped from government into the private healthcare sector, and now make millions of pounds between them cashing in on NHS privatisations they (and their cousins) pushed through. Former British Chancellor George Osborne has seen his best man’s firm rake in £36 million from his bargain-basement privatisation of the Royal Mail. Former British prime minister Tony Blair used the links made in office to secure vast sums of money running round the globe as a lackey for the violent royal dictators of the United Arab Emirates, and working as an advisor, lobbyist and spin doctor to a cast of characters including Nursultan Äbishuly Nazarbayev, the dictator of Kazakhstan and Aleksandar Vučić: once Slobodan Milošević’s Information Minister, now Serbia’s prime minister.

Our country is represented in the world by a trade minister who was previously sacked as defence secretary for allowing a businessman funded by companies which “potentially stood to benefit from government decisions” to sit in on at least 40 meetings and a foreign secretary whose time as London Mayor included overseeing property deals described by the former chairman of the government’s Committee on Standards in Public Life as “having the smell of semi-corruption” involving large donations to the Conservative party. Do either of them have an eye to the second career profits of their predecessors? We’ll have to see.

And those who wish to buy influence get their way. David Cameron promised “no ifs, not buts, no new runways” at Heathrow. Theresa May came out publicly against the scheme. Boris Johnson and Zac Goldsmith both tied their reputations to their opposition to it. But it is going ahead, costing the Tories an MP and a bucket of political capital across marginal seats in West London.

It seems to me that there is a simple explanation for what would normally be seen as an astonishing act of political self-harm: as the organisation 10:10 puts it: “15% of the population took 70% of all flights in 2014. People in that 15% group earn more than £115,000 a year. They tend to have a second home abroad. And their most popular destinations? Tax havens.[1]” The third runway only makes sense if seen from the top of the towers of Canary Wharf. But in Britain, that’s the view that matters.

The scar of living in a country run by and for the rich is marked by more than a runway, though. Even if you ignore the vast quantity of wealth hidden in tax havens, Britain is the sixth most unequal country in the OECD, after Chile, Mexico, Turkey, the USA and Israel. This is a level of inequality of the scale that tears whole societies apart; or is only possible in places that have already been rent asunder: three of those countries have governments at war with their own citizens; and the USA just elected Donald Trump.

By some measures, the UK has nine of the ten poorest regions of Northern Europe, while London is the richest. We produce 18% less per hour worked than the G8 average, and real wages have fallen 10.4% since 2007: a figure only matched across the OECD by Greece. Children in England are among the least happy in the world, and in 2013, the UK was criticised by the UN for a mortality rate among under 5s that’s higher than in countries including the Czech Republic and Slovenia. Meanwhile, the bonfire of the London housing market sucks in ever more of our cash, ensuring the nation’s wealth is squandered on making homes in the most expensive city on earth ever-more expensive, rather than investing that capital in anything productive.

For those of us who seek answers to serious questions about how to build a just, sustainable economy in this archipelago, one of the first questions must surely be what vehicle we have to do this through. And whilst government is certainly necessary, the ancient British state; built to run an empire, seems utterly unfit for the purpose. Without the modifying influence of the EU, though, it’s all that England is left with.

In this context, any conversation about tax in Britain must include a thought about the constitutional position of our tax havens. Any discussion of regional inequality has to look at the vast centralisation of power in our supposedly sovereign parliament. Any talk of financial regulation has to ask why the City can have such vast influence within our politics. Any look at income inequality must also survey inequalities of political reach. Because once you accept that the state has a decisive role in our economy – and it does – you need next to ask who runs that state, in whose interests, and how that can change.

In 2016, millions of British people voted to leave the EU because they wanted to ‘take back control’. The remaining question, then, is a simple one: to whom will that control be returning? Will it be the same ruling class, using the same holes in the same wood-wormed constitution to squirrel away wealth and power and plunder the country like they plunder the planet? Or will the process force us to realise that Britain’s problem aren’t the fault of foreigners from whom we can escape; but come instead from our own failure to free ourselves from Medieval subjecthood, and fight for real democracy?

[1] This research was done by the Tyndall Centre, using the PwC list of tax havens.”

https://www.opendemocracy.net/neweconomics/britain-is-not-what-it-thinks-it-is/

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18 Sep 2017

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Accountability, Corruption, Developers/ Development, Scrutiny, Sleaze, Somerset

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6 Somerset estate agents fined £370,000 for commission price-fixing

CMA fines estate agents cartel £370,000 for rate fixing

“A group of estate agents who secretly conspired to keep their fees high to make “as much profit as possible” have been fined £370,000 for operating an illegal cartel.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said this was the second time in two-and-a-half years that it had taken enforcement action against estate agents, and this latest case raised concerns that the sector “does not properly understand the seriousness of anti-competitive conduct and the consequences of breaking competition law”.

The six estate agents, all based in the Burnham-on-Sea area of Somerset, had a meeting and agreed to fix their minimum commission rates at 1.5%, thereby denying local homeowners the chance of getting a better deal when selling their homes. Between them the agents dominated the local area: their market share was said to be potentially as high as 95%.

The CMA said it was publishing full details of the case to remind other agents to comply with the law and avoid being fined.

Penalties totalling £370,084 were imposed on five firms: Abbott and Frost Estate Agents Limited, Gary Berryman Estate Agents Ltd (and its ultimate parent company Warne Investments Limited), Greenslade Taylor Hunt, Saxons PS Limited, and West Coast Property Services (UK) Limited.

The sixth, Annagram Estates Limited, trading as CJ Hole, has not been fined as it was the first to confess its involvement in the arrangement and cooperated with the investigation.

The price-fixing cartel was formed in early 2014 when the estate agents met with each other to “have a chat about fees”.

Email evidence showed that the agents’ rationale was “With a bit of talking and cooperation between us, we all win!”. The correspondence also explained how “the aim of the meeting … will be to drive the fee level up to 1.5%” and “… it’s really important we all give it the priority it deserves (making as much as profit as possible!)”.

The estate agents took steps to ensure the minimum fee agreement was kept to by emailing each other when a specific issue arose, such as accusations of “cheating” on their agreement. Each business also took it in turn to “police” the cartel to make sure everyone was sticking to the agreement.

However, in December 2015 the CMA carried out searches of the estate agent offices and seized documents and digital material. Stephen Blake, senior director of cartel enforcement, said: “Cartels are a form of cheating. They are typically carried out in secret to make you think you are getting a fair deal, even though the businesses involved are conspiring to keep prices high.”

He added: “We have taken action against estate agents before and remain committed to tackling competition law issues in the sector.”

In May 2015 the CMA ruled that three members of an association of estate and letting agents, the association itself, and a newspaper publisher infringed competition law. That case involved the advertising of fees in the area around Fleet in Hampshire, and resulted in penalties totalling more than £735,000 being imposed.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/sep/18/cma-fines-cartel-of-estate-agents-rate-fixing-burnham-on-sea

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2 Aug 2017

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Accountability, Corruption, Developers/ Development, Environment (local), Freedom of Information and EIA, Planning System, Sleaze, Sustainability

Planning decisions must take air quality into account – so a council falsified the data

NOT the developer, the COUNCIL. Do we need any better evidence that it appears some councils no longer work for us but DO appear to work for (andcan be corrupted by) developers?

Cheshire East is the council that has suspended its CEO, its Financial Officer and Chief Legal Officer for unknown reasons. The CEO formerly worked at Torbay.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-39495102

Though, of course, suspension is a neutral act and doesnot imply guilt.

http://www.knutsfordguardian.co.uk/news/15416114.Second_senior_management_suspension_as_Cheshire_East_Council_investigates_misconduct_allegations/

On that air pollution scandal:

“A local authority has admitted its air pollution data was deliberately manipulated for three years to make it look cleaner.

Cheshire East council apologised after serious errors were made in air quality readings from 2012 to 2014.

It is reviewing planning applications amid fears falsified data may have affected decisions in at least five towns. It said it would reveal the full list of sites affected this week.

When considering planning applications councillors have to look at several factors, including whether a development will introduce new sources of air pollution or release large amounts of dust during construction.

Government’s air quality plan branded inadequate by city leaders
“It is clear that these errors are the result of deliberate and systematic manipulation of data from a number of diffusion tubes,” a statement on the council website said.

Sean Hannaby, the director of planning and sustainable development, said: “On behalf of the council I would like to sincerely apologise in respect of these findings, we would like to assure everyone that we have done everything we can to rectify these failings.”

He added: “There are no immediate health protection measures needed as a result of these errors.”

Cheshire East council, like all other authorities, monitors nitrogen dioxide levels on sites throughout the borough as part of work to improve air quality. The information is then submitted to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).

Oliver Hayes, a Friends of the Earth air pollution campaigner, said the fact that the data was falsified was outrageous. He said: “Residents will rightly be wondering what this means for their and their families’ health. The council needs to be fully transparent about how far the numbers were manipulated and what impact this has had on the local area.”

He added: “If this is happening in Cheshire East, where else across the country are pollution figures being lied about? … National and local government need to get serious about dealing with this invisible killer, not just cooking the books and hoping the issue will go away.”

An internal review by council auditors last year found the air quality data submitted was different to the original data from the council’s monitoring equipment. It prompted an external investigation, the results of which were released last week.

The falsified data was from testing stations spread over a wide geographical area, according to the report. It noted: “The air quality team have reviewed their internal processes and procedures to ensure that the risk of data adjustment is minimised. There are now a number of quality control measures in place.”

Cheshire police said officers would review the case to establish if any criminal offences occurred.

A Defra spokesperson said: “We are aware of this issue and understand the local authority is now considering its response to the investigation.”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/aug/02/cheshire-east-council-admits-falsifying-air-pollution-data

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27 Jul 2017

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Accountability, Corruption, Democracy, Scrutiny, Transparency

“Being ethical puts people off government service”

Owl remembers the case of disgraced ex-councillor Graham Brown and other scandals close to home:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9920971/If-I-cant-get-planning-nobody-will-says-Devon-councillor-and-planning-consultant.html

and wonders if the world will ever change.

“White House counselor Kellyanne Conway on Thursday suggested that filling out financial disclosure forms and having them released to the public discourages qualified people from serving in government ― despite the fact that the procedure is a basic measure of transparency in government.

Appearing on “Fox & Friends,” Conway aimed to defend new White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci, after he falsely claimed that his financial disclosure form was leaked to Politico.

“There are so many qualified men and women who wanted to serve this president, this administration and their country who have been completely demoralized and completely, I think, disinclined to do so, based on the paperwork that we have to put forward, divesting assets, the different hoops you have to run through,” Conway said. “This White House is transparent and accountable, and we’ve all complied with those rules, but it has disincentivized good men and women. I hope it doesn’t disincentivize Anthony.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/kellyanne-conway-anthony-scaramucci-leaks_us_5979dfa0e4b02a4ebb734573

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26 Jul 2017

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Accountability, Corruption, Economy, Sleaze, Tax avoidance

UK – tax avoidance hot spot

“Almost 40% of corporate investments channelled away from authorities and into tax havens travel through the UK or the Netherlands, according to a study of the ownership structures of 98m firms.

The two EU states are way ahead of the rest of the world in terms of being a preferred option for corporations who want to exploit tax havens to protect their investments.

The Netherlands was a conduit for 23% of corporate investments that ended in a tax haven, a team of researchers at the University of Amsterdam concluded. The UK accounted for 14%, ahead of Switzerland (6%), Singapore (2%) and Ireland (1%).

Every year multinationals avoid paying £38bn-£158bn in taxes in the EU using tax havens. In the US, tax evasion by multinational corporations via offshore jurisdictions is estimated to be at least $130bn (£99bn) a year. …”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/25/netherlands-and-uk-are-biggest-channels-for-corporate-tax-avoidance