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Citizens could lose right to sue Government post-Brexit; government says tradition will protect us

“The Brexit Bill includes a provision that could strip UK citizens of the right to sue the government, campaigners have pointed out.

Currently, the UK is subject to rulings of the European Court of Justice, including the so-called Francovich rule, which has been part of EU law since 1991. It allows EU citizens the right to sue their respective governments for failing to implement EU law such as environmental law, workers rights and business regulation.

However The European Union Withdrawal Bill states: “There is no right in domestic law on or after exit day to damages in accordance with the rule in Francovich”.

This has sparked concern that this weakens the rights of citizens to seek redress if the government were to fail to uphold certain laws.

Liberal Democrat Brexit spokesman Tom Brake, said: “This is a shameless attempt to take away people’s rights through the backdoor.
“Citizens must be able to hold the government to account when it breaks the rules.”

Martha Spurrier, director of the civil liberties group, Liberty, told The Times: “This chilling clause, buried deep in the Bill’s small print, would quietly take away one of the British people’s most vital tools for defending their rights,

“Putting the government above the law renders our legal protections meaningless. It exposes a clear agenda to water down our rights after Brexit.”

However, the government said the UK has a “longstanding tradition” of ensuring public rights and liberties are protected.

A government spokesman said: “The people of the United Kingdom voted to leave the EU and that is exactly what we are doing. The right to Francovich damages is linked to EU membership – the government therefore considers that this will no longer be relevant after we leave.

“After exit, under UK law it will still be possible for individuals to receive damages or compensation for any losses caused by breach of the law.”

http://www.publicfinance.co.uk/news/2017/08/citizens-rights-redress-threatened-brexit-bill

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Outsourcing kills democracy

“Outsourcing of public services began in the 1980s, a central feature of the drive to roll back what neoliberalism casts as a bureaucratic, inefficient state. Its proponents claimed the involvement of private providers would increase cost-savings and efficiency, and improve responsiveness to the “consumers” of public services. Thirty years later, the value of these contracts is enormous – more than £120bn worth of government business was awarded to private companies between 2011 and 2016, and their number is increasing rapidly. At least 30% of all public outsourcing contracts are with local authorities.

Unlike government, private companies have no duty to provide for any public interest; the laws of the market mean their primary motive must be to maximise returns for shareholders. Questions have been raised about whether corruption or “misuse of public office for private gain” contributed to the Grenfell disaster; but the nature of outsourcing public services means that even the most well-meaning politicians can enter into contracts that result in severe detriment to the public, in both financial and human terms, without any crime having been committed.

The relationship between local councils and companies bidding for contracts is usually highly unequal. Local government funding cuts have caused a reduction in resources dedicated to providing scrutiny and oversight. The Audit Commission, previously responsible for scrutinising local authority contracts, has been abolished. The private companies involved, often huge multinationals, have significant advantage over local authorities in terms of technical knowledge and negotiating experience.

If it’s hard for councillors to evaluate and oversee these contracts it is nigh on impossible for the people using and experiencing services to apply scrutiny to the contracts governing their delivery. “Commercial confidentiality” is frequently cited as a reason for not disclosing the information necessary to assess contract content – and services, when delivered by the private sector, are not subject to the rules on freedom of information that apply to local government.

Attempting to use opportunities promised in legislation when the Audit Commission was abolished, residents in Lambeth, London, recently undertook a “peoples’ audit” of the councils accounts. The resident audit group included highly experienced finance professionals, who spent hundreds of hours chasing information requests and working their way through poor quality data. The published report claims to have identified numerous instances of inadequate governance of contracts, including questionable valuations of council property and land, systematic overcharging and billing for work that wasn’t carried out. The report calculates financial losses that run into millions.

In the London borough of Haringey, council leaders are planning the highest value local government-private sector contract in history. It was never presented in any manifesto on which voters could express their opinions or make their voices heard. The deal involves placing £2bn worth of council homes, property and land into a new “development vehicle” that will demolish and rebuild vast swaths of the area. This new entity will be 50% owned by private company Lendlease, a multinational property company with a turnover of billions of dollars.

Lendlease has form when it comes to contracts with the public sector. Its redevelopment of the Heygate estate in Southwark initially promised 500 social homes, that number reduced to just 82 in the final plan – only 20 have so far been built. It has made millions of pounds from its contracts with Southwark council.

Five years ago the company admitted fraud in government contracts in the US. Three years ago an Australian local government deal resulted in the authority being hundreds of millions of dollars out of pocket. In 2016, the company was named in an investigation into noncompliance with building regulations in Melbourne, Victoria, for using highly flammable cladding on a public hospital construction project, although subsequently Lendlease has offered to replace the cladding in the spring at no charge to the taxpayer, and says test panels were successfully installed in May.

In Haringey, local campaigners have found it almost impossible to examine the content of the Lendlease contract. Senior councillors have ignored the overview and scrutiny committee’s advice against the deal, and campaigners now plan to challenge it via judicial review. Although the councillors responsible for agreeing the deal may no longer be in power come next May’s local elections, its consequences will outlive many political careers. Any future council wanting to reverse the deal will be breaking the terms of the contract, and that is likely to incur financial penalties which will impact heavily on all the borough’s residents. So where is the accountability?

Less than 90 years after the right to vote was extended to all men and women in the UK regardless of wealth, the practice of outsourcing government services to private companies is rendering democracy ineffective, particularly for those most affected. While we could attempt again to insert more transparency and accountability into these opaque agreements, it may just be simpler, and more cost-effective, to return responsibility for government provision where it belongs – back in-house – with the people elected to represent us.”

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/10/outsourcing-killing-local-democracy-britain-stop-it

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Special interest groups (such as blogs) and democracy

Summary of article:

“How should the interest group process operate in a liberal democracy?

• Elected representatives and politicians should recognise a need for continuous dialogue between decision-makers and different sections of the public over detailed policy choices. Procedures for involving interest groups in consultations should cover the full range of stakeholders whose interests are materially affected by policy choices.

• The resources for organising collective voice and action in pressure groups, trade unions, trade associations, non-governmental organisations, charities, community groups and other forms should be readily available. In particular, decision-makers should recognise the legitimacy of collective actions and mobilisations.

• The costs of organising effectively should be low and within reach of any social group or interest. State or philanthropic assistance should be available to ensure that a balanced representation of all affected interests can be achieved in the policy process.

• Decision-makers should recognise inequalities in resources across interest groups, and discount for different levels of ‘organisability’ and resources.

• Policy makers should also re-weight the inputs they receive so as to distinguish between shallow or even ‘fake’ harms being claimed by well-organised groups, and deeper harms potentially being suffered by hard-to-organise groups.

• Other aspects of liberal democratic processes, such as the ‘manifesto doctrine’ that elected governments implement all components of their election programmes, do not over-ride the need to consult and listen in detail to affected groups, and to choose policy options that minimise harms and maximise public legitimacy and consensus support.

• Since policy-makers must sometimes make changes that impose new risks and costs across society, they should in general seek to allocate risks to those groups best able to insure against them.”

The some paragraphs from the article:

“Between elections, a well-organised interest groups process generates a great deal of useful and perhaps more reliable information for policy-makers about preference intensities. By undertaking different levels of collective action along a continuum of participation opportunities, and incurring costs in doing so, ordinary citizens can accurately indicate how strongly they feel about issues to decision-makers.

So sending back a pre-devised public feedback form, writing to an MP, supporting an online petition to the government, or tweeting support for something indicates a low level of commitment. Paying membership fees to an interest group or going to meetings shows more commitment, and gives the group legitimacy and weight with politicians. Going on strike or marching in a demonstration indicates a higher level of commitments still. A well-organised interest group process will allow for a huge variety of ways in which citizens can indicate their views. …

This area of policy-making has been stable for many years, with occasional fringe scandals. Two small changes have taken place recently. The 2014 Lobbying Act introduced an official register of paid lobbyists operating with MPs in Westminster and in touch with Whitehall departments. But this was on a rather restrictive basis, affecting especially paid-for lobbying firms and some groups with developed governmental or parliamentary liaison operations.

The lobbying industry (estimated by some sources to be worth £2bn a year) also remains self-regulated. For a period during the bill’s passage (2013-14), the Cabinet Office proposals seemed to threaten to make academics, universities and a wide range of charities advocating for policy changes register too. But after much criticism this proposal was fought off. However, the legislation is still somewhat controversial – particularly among charities, who complain that it stifles them before election campaigns. …

Nobody now claims that the UK’s interest group process is an equitable one. There are big and powerful lobbies, medium influence groups and no hopers battling against a hostile consensus. Democracy requires that each interest be able to effectively voice their case, and have it heard by policymakers on its merits, so that the group can in some way shape the things that matter most to them. On the whole, the first (voice) criterion is now easily met in Britain. But achieving any form of balanced, deliberative consideration of interests by policymakers remains an uphill struggle. Business dominance is reduced but still strong, despite the shift to cognitive competition and more evidence-based policy-making.”

http://www.democraticaudit.com/2017/08/10/audit-2017-how-democratic-and-effective-is-the-interest-group-process-in-the-uk/

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Electoral Officers might – one day in the distant future – be fully accountable

The Freedom of Information (Extension) Bill is slowly (very, very slowly) wending its way through parliament and, as the title suggests, hopes to extend the reach of the FOI Act. The Statement of Purpose (in full here) sums up the aims:

‘The Freedom of Information (Extension) Bill will seek to make housing associations, local safeguarding children boards, Electoral Registration Officers, Returning Officers and the Housing Ombudsman public authorities for the purpose of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, whilst making information held by persons contracting with public authorities subject to the Freedom of Information Act 2000…’

See:
http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2017-19/freedomofinformationextension.html

for the very, very, very slow timetable.

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How Ireland tightened lobbying rules (and why)

Likelihood of this happening here – zero. All that happened here was the opposite – charities were banned from criticising the government:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/06/chilling-lobbying-act-stifles-democracy-write-charities-party-chiefs

“Two years after Ireland introduced some of the strictest laws in the world on lobbying transparency, the reforms are being held up as the gold standard for policymakers looking to shine a light on the often murky world of influence peddling.

Calls for transparency are growing louder across Europe, especially in Germany, where a series of scandals have put a spotlight on the car industry’s close ties with senior politicians.

Ireland’s experience, say proponents of the law, has dispelled worries that tough lobbying rules would cripple the industry or limit the ability of politicians to do their job — as MEPs in Brussels resisting similar obligations have argued.

“Transparency is catching hold,” said Sherry Perreault, head of lobbying regulation at Ireland’s Standards in Public Office Commission, who’s traveled across Europe to showcase the Irish reforms. “To see this catching fire outside of Ireland is really terrific.”

The Irish reforms are simple. Any individual, company or NGO that seeks to directly or indirectly influence officials on a policy issue must list themselves on a public register and disclose any lobbying activity. The rules cover any meeting with high-level public officials, as well as letters, emails or tweets intended to influence policy.

For those in the business, the impact of the register and its requirements are primarily about the way the industry is perceived — and, broadly, they’re happy about it.

“I’ve not heard anybody suggest the Lobbying Act has impacted in any way the willingness or the ability to influence [policymakers],” said Conall McDevitt, CEO of Hume Brophy, one of Ireland’s largest lobbying firms. “It’s always better in our industry to have transparency, we’re all the stronger for it.”

Indeed, the push for more transparency is often advocated by lobbyists themselves, eager for legal clarity and happy to present themselves as fulfilling a vital role in modern democracies through the information they provide to policymakers.

“Lobbying has got a very bad name because of the actions of some individuals,” said Cian Connaughton, president of the Public Relations Institute of Ireland. “What the register has done is clarify to people what is happening, who is doing what.”

“It means people can’t say, ‘God knows what’s going on there,’” he added. “The fact that [the] new regime has hopefully increased people’s trust in the system, it’s a big plus.”

Popular revulsion

The tougher laws have their origins in the 2008 financial crisis that brought the Irish economy to its knees. The country’s travails are widely regarded as a consequence of the close relationships between politicians from the Fianna Fáil party, in power at the time of the crisis, and Ireland’s property developers.

“The fact that we had gone through this economic collapse [and that there was] a broadly held belief that influence had been peddled, there was such a ground swell of support for reform,” said Brendan Howlin, currently leader of the Labour Party and minister for public expenditure and reform between 2011 and 2016.

Popular revulsion at corruption had been building for decades. Several inquiries — including one into Ireland’s planning system that found widespread corruption had taken place in the 1980s and 1990s — had concluded that underhand payments had become endemic in the country.

To write what would become the 2015 Regulation of Lobbying Act, Howlin looked at existing rules across the world, including Canada’s, whose government first introduced transparency requirements in 1989 and subsequently strengthened them four times.

“There wasn’t much opposition to the concept,” Howlin said.

The law uses one of the broadest possible definitions of a lobbyist: anyone who employs more than 10 individuals, works for an advocacy body, is a professional paid by a client to communicate on someone else’s behalf or is communicating about land development is required to register themselves and the lobbying activities they carry out.

That means NGOs and other civil society organizations are just as much subject to the rules as groups representing multinationals or local industries.

Failure to register or filing incorrect information can result in a fine of up to €2,500 and a two-year prison sentence. …”

http://www.politico.eu/article/ireland-lobbying-clampdown-model-for-europe/

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Should empty homes bought for investment be requisitioned?

“If people hoarded food the way they hoard homes, hungry people would riot. No wonder proposals to help councils requisition empty properties are popular.

This week the Guardian revealed the names of some of owners of the 1,652 empty properties in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea , after the names, addresses and council tax details were accidentally sent in response to a freedom of information request.

Some familiar names crop up – the Candys, of course, via an offshore company; former New York mayor, Michael Bloomberg; and a string of sheikhs and oligarchs. As of 2016, there were 2,753 households on the council’s waiting list.

For some, the link between empty homes and homelessness is moot: the two are unrelated and no links and correlations should be drawn between them. This misunderstands the reason homes are left empty. Most people buy homes to live in, with good reason; the chances are that your home, rented or bought, is what you will spend the most money on in your lifetime.

Most people don’t have the capital sloshing around to buy two homes, let alone one to leave empty. So to buy homes to leave empty is to treat them as money-making machines; the wealthy increasingly view housing as a liquid investment, due to its low volatility. This may change slightly, though not substantially, with warnings that the top end of the market is tailing off.

But it also changes how we view housing as a nation. After the Grenfell Tower fire, when scores of families were left homeless, and still remain in hotel accommodation, the idea floated by Jeremy Corbyn that we might requisition empty homes to temporarily house survivors was met with shrieking from the commentariat and political classes alike. The idea, they said, was ludicrous, communist and made a mockery of property rights. As it happened, the public disagreed: 59% of those polled by YouGov agreed with Corbyn’s proposal and only half as many opposed it.

The requisitioning argument, and revelations on empty homes in Kensington, reveals the battle lines being drawn on housing in the UK. What matters more, our human right to shelter, or people’s right to use property as equity?

Treating housing as an asset is not benign. Hoarding homes pushes prices up, and encourages market supply to boost what is most profitable – luxury flats that can be left empty and flogged when the market is booming, not family homes that can be bought on a modest income. And when land values soar as a result of a keen market interest in buying up property, unscrupulous local authorities eye up the land social housing is built on, and consider whether turfing out council tenants to make a quick buck on the ground homes stand on is worth a punt.

The public seems to be accepting the idea that a right to shelter should trump a right to profiteering: the histrionic claims that requisitioning empty homes will lead to families being turfed out of their properties reveals there is no proper argument to be made for letting homes lie empty while people sleep on the streets.

We accepted homelessness while the rich left houses empty. No more
No one will be kicked out of a home they live in, but consistently allowing people to hoard an asset that is in short supply has no ethical argument behind it. If people hoarded food the way they hoard homes, hungry people would riot. The outcry over the revelations of these empty homes and support for Corbyn’s proposal to boost powers for councils to requisition empty properties, shows the public is in agreement.”

https://www.theguardian.com/housing-network/2017/aug/04/right-shelter-trump-profiteering-corbyn-housing

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Do you want to fight for Honiton? Vacancies for 6 town councillors

Want to fight for your hospital and against inappropriate development?

6 vacancies on Honiton Town Council.

You can stand as an Independent and/or for East Devon Alliance if you distrust the mainstream parties.

Good training for district and/or county should you want to fight more and higher!

Details of how to stand:

http://www.devonlive.com/by-elections-will-be-held-to-replace-six-councillors-who-resigned-in-mass-walk-out/story-30468700-detail/story.html

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The (ir)responsibility of politicians

This long article is about the crisis in prisons. But the last four paragraphs quoted here could be about anything that is the responsibility of politicians:

“Who allowed this systematic irresponsibility? Civil servants could no doubt have been more robust in their advice. But the truth is that Grayling and Gove [and here add names of other ministers] at least did not broach any challenge. Any senior officials that they felt were obstructing their plans or raising awkward questions were edged out. It’s tough to push back when your job is at stake.

No doubt some governors and prison officers could have done more to raise problems and find solutions – but most of them had crises to manage.

The only conclusion I can really draw is that the blame lies with the politicians. They cut prison budgets without having a good understanding of the likely impact, then carried on cutting long after those consequences were clear. They focused on pet projects rather than getting the basics right.

They were supported in doing so from the very top. Cameron and Osborne [and now May and Hammond] made the call that people didn’t much care about the condition of our prisons [hospitals/schools/environment], and if budgets were to be cut this was a place to cut particularly deeply. They ignored signs that the system was creaking, and forgot that changing your justice secretary [or any minister except Hunt where no-one wanted his job] every 18 months is a sure-fire way to create problems. Most important, they forgot that there is no better symbol that government is out of control than riots [bed shortages/failing schools/concrete jungles] within the facilities they are meant to run.”

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/02/prisoners-rioting-serial-ministerial-incompetence-justice-chris-grayling-michael-gove

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“What does democracy require of England’s local governments?”

“Local governments should engage the wide participation of local citizens in their governance via voting in regular elections, and an open interest group and local consultation process.

Local voting systems should accurately convert parties’ vote shares into seats on councils, and should be open to new parties entering into competition.

As far as possible, consistent with the need for efficient scales of operation, local government areas and institutions should provide an effective expression of local and community identities that are important in civil society (and not just in administrative terms).

Local governments should be genuinely independent centres of decision-making, with sufficient own financial revenues and policy autonomy to be able to make meaningful choices on behalf of their citizens.

Within councils the key decision-makers should be clearly identifiable by the public and media. They should be subject to regular and effective scrutiny from the council members as a whole, and publicly answerable to local citizens and media.

Local governments are typically subject to some supervision on key aspects of their conduct and policies, in England directly by UK government in Whitehall. But they should enjoy a degree of constitutional protection (or ‘entrenchment’) for key roles, and an assurance that cannot simply be abolished, bypassed or fully programmed by their supervisory tier of government.

The principle of subsidiarity says that policy issues that can be effectively handled in decentralised ways should be allocated to the lowest tier of government, closest to citizens.”

http://www.democraticaudit.com/2017/08/02/audit-2017-how-democratic-is-local-government-in-england/

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1 in 5 MPs still employ family members – including both our MPs

Swire employs his wife as his researcher on about £35,000 a year, Parish employs his wife at a lower salary as a junior secretary on about £15,000 (but we don’t know how many hours that is for):

“One in five MPs are still using taxpayer-funded expenses to employ members of their family – despite the practice being banned for new Members of Parliament.

Official data shows that, of the 589 MPs who returned to Parliament after the June election, 122 have declared the employment of a relative in the latest Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

Yet under new rules, none of the 61 new MPs elected for the first time on 8 June are allowed to do so.

Alexandra Runswick, the director of campaign group Unlock Democracy, said: “The ban on new MPs employing family members reflects the public’s concerns about nepotism and the potential abuse of public money.

“If MPs employing family members is wrong in principle, then when the MP was first elected is irrelevant.”

Among the MPs who have continued to employ spouses following the June election are several members of the Cabinet, including Tory chairman Sir Patrick McLoughlin, Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon and Transport Secretary Chris Grayling.

Several of Jeremy Corbyn ’s top team also employ spouses, including Labour chairman Ian Lavery and shadow international trade secretary Barry Gardiner.

There is no suggestion any of the existing MPs who continue to employ family members have done anything wrong.

Ms Runswick said it was ‘reasonable’ to give MPs’ families time to prepare for a new clampdown – but said a ‘time limit’ was needed on how long the current situation could continue.

“A transitional period is reasonable, particularly as the snap election means that these rules have come into force three years earlier than expected,” she said. …

… Darren Hughes, acting chief executive of the Electoral Reform Society, said it was fair to phase out the practice over the coming years.

“Given the high rate of turnover of both MPs and staff, it is clear that within the next few electoral cycles it will apply to the vast majority of Parliamentary staff,” he said.

“Voters must be able to have confidence that our democracy is resourced in an open and transparent way, so it’s welcome that Parliamentary authorities have taken steps to reform the system.”

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/one-five-mps-still-using-10907964

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Make sure you are registered to vote says EDDC Electoral Registration Officer

And will those who don’t return their forms be canvassed for follow-up? Your guess as good as Owl’s since Mr Williams believes it isn’t necessary to follow up and told a parliamentary committee that phone calls (how you get the phone number is a mystery) will suffice:

http://data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedocument/political-and-constitutional-reform-committee/voter-engagement-in-the-uk/oral/14118.html

“East Devon residents will soon receive a form asking them to check whether the information that appears on the electoral register about their address is correct.

East Devon District Council is asking residents in East Devon to look out for the form in the post and to make sure that they respond as soon as possible.

The aim of the form is to make sure that the electoral register is up to date and to identify any residents who are not registered so that they can be encouraged to do so.

Being registered to vote gives you the right to vote in elections and can also improve your credit rating

Mark Williams, Electoral Registration Officer at East Devon said: “It’s really important that residents respond as soon as possible, so we can make sure we have the right details on the electoral register for every address in East Devon. Simply check the form when it arrives and respond as soon as you can.”

If you’re not currently registered, your name will not appear on the form. However if you decide to apply to register, you will still need to complete the form and then send it back to us. The easiest way to get yourself registered is to go online to apply to register at

http://www.gov.uk/register-to-vote

or we’ll send you information explaining how to do this in the post. You can also provide the information over the telephone.

It’s particularly important that anyone who has moved address recently looks out for the form and checks whether they are registered.

Research by the independent Electoral Commission indicates that recent home movers are far less likely to be registered than those that have lived at the same address for a long time. The research showed that across Great Britain, 94 % of people who have been at their property for more than sixteen years will be registered compared to 40% of people who have lived at an address for less than one year.

Any residents who have any questions can contact the registration team on 01395 517402 or electoralservices@eastdevon.gov.uk”

http://www.devonlive.com/residents-in-east-devon-urged-not-to-miss-important-voter-registration-information-in-the-post/story-30463309-detail/story.html

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Accountability, Austerity cuts, DCC, Democracy, East Devon Tories, Health and Social Care (local), Honiton/ Gittisham, Martin Shaw (Seaton), NHS (local), Paul Diviani, Phil Twiss, Rural communities, Sarah Randall Johnson, Scrutiny, Seaton/ Colyford / Colyton, Sleaze, Spin

Seaton DCC Councillor on that shameful DCC Health Scrutiny meeting – and Diviani’s disgraceful behaviour

“Councillor-Sara-Randall-Johnson (from this article):

Why did Devon’s Health and Adult Care Scrutiny Committee block the proposal to refer the closure of our beds to the Secretary of State?

The idea that the Chair, Councillor Sara Randall Johnson (left), was settling an old score with Claire Wright makes a nice story but overlooks the concerted Conservative position. The collusion between Randall Johnson and Rufus Gilbert – who rushed to propose a ‘no referral’ motion before Claire could move her motion to refer – was obvious to all, as was her keenness to persuade her colleagues not to have a recorded vote.

Equally striking, however, is that only one out of 12 Tories on the Committee – Honiton’s Phil Twiss – voted against Gilbert’s motion. The other 7 Tories who voted were all for allowing the beds to be closed; 2 who had reservations abstained; 2 more were (diplomatically?) absent. Whipping is not allowed on Scrutiny committees, but this gives a strong impression of a Tory consensus. Members who were uncertain of their support were unwilling to defy it beyond abstention. Twiss was obviously a special case, as the one committee member whose hospital will lose its beds.

Clearly the Conservative Group on DCC gave their East Devon members the main role in dealing with the Eastern Locality hospital beds issue when in May (with its return to Scrutiny looming) they made Randall Johnson chair and nominated two Exmouth members, Jeff Trail and Richard Scott, as well as Twiss as members of the Health Scrutiny Committee. With East Devon Tory leader, Paul Diviani, representing Devon’s district councils, 5 of its Tory members were from East Devon and only 7 from the other five-sixths of the Tory group.

East Devon Tories on the committee certainly lived up to their role on Tuesday. All except Trail voted, making half of all Tory votes cast on the committee and 3 out of 7 on the pro-CCG side. In contrast, only 4 of the 8 Tories from elsewhere in the county cast a vote on this crucial issue: East Devon’s Tories may have convinced themselves, but not their colleagues.

Paul Diviani spills the beans

With Randall Johnson preoccupied with timekeeping (except when the CCG were speaking), Scott silent and Twiss asking questions, it was left to Diviani to express the Tory rationale. He claimed to speak for Devon district councils as a whole, but has acknowledged that he had consulted none of the others. He was happy to defy his own Council, which has voted to keep hospital beds, and spoke for himself – and East Devon Conservatives.

Diviani’s caustic little speech deserves more attention than it has been given.

He started by saying that those who decide to live in the countryside expect diminished service, and must cut their cloth accordingly in current times – forgetting that many have lived here all their lives, or moved here long before the present Tory government arrived to savage the NHS.

‘Costs will always rise without innovation’, Diviani continued, forgetting that the ‘costs’ of community hospitals are rising particularly because of the Tory innovation which gave them over to NHS Property Services and its ‘market rents’.

‘Local decisions should be made locally’, he averred, overlooking the fact that Sustainability and Transformation Plans, Success Regimes and NHS property sales are all national initiatives forced on the local NHS – while NEW Devon CCG is so unrepresentative even of local doctors that only full-time managers (Sonja Manton and Rob Sainsbury) are allowed to present its case in public while its ‘practitioner’ figurehead, Dr Tim Burke, hides in a corner.

When, however, Diviani warned that ‘attempting to browbeat the Secretary of State to overturn his own policies is counter-intuitive’, he expressed the truth of the situation. The closure of community hospitals results from the determined policies of the Conservative Government. (Referral would have served the purposes of delaying permanent closures, embarrassing the Government and forcing its Independent Reconfiguration Panel to give an assessment of the issue.)

East Devon Tories are the Government’s faithful servants. ‘Don’t trust East Devon Tories’ over the hospitals, I warned during the County elections. How right have I been proved.”

East Devon Tories were central to ditching Seaton and Honiton hospital beds

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Accountability, Austerity cuts, Claire Wright, DCC, Democracy, Health and Social Care (local), Honiton/ Gittisham, NHS (local), Sarah Randall Johnson, Scrutiny, Seaton/ Colyford / Colyton, Sleaze, Transparency

Claire Wright’s report on the shameful behaviour of DCC Health Scrutiny Committee Tories

“The Conservatives on Devon County Council’s health and adult care scrutiny committee on Tuesday, torpedoed local people’s views and any possibility of a referral to the Secretary of State for Health for a decision to close 71 community hospital beds.

I will keep this blog post short and instead post three articles that explain things just as well as I could have explained them.
Suffice to say that I am deeply disappointed.

Not just with the behaviour of chair, Sara Randall Johnson, who appeared to do her utmost to prevent any referral, both at the previous meeting last month and at Tuesday’s meeting.

But also with the attitude of the majority of the Conservative group, who used a variety of ill-informed views and remarks, to justify their determination not to refer, refusing to hear or see any member of the public’s distress, frustration and disbelief at the proceedings.

The chair’s attitude made me angry and led to a protracted row where I repeatedly asked her why she had allowed a proposal to be made and seconded at the very start of the meeting by her conservative colleague, Rufus Gilbert, NOT to refer to the Secretary of State for Health, when I already had a proposal that I had lodged with her and the two officers, before the meeting.

I had been indicating to speak since the start of the meeting, yet, Cllr Randall Johnson chose to call four councillors before me.

When I was finally called to speak I challenged her on why she had not made my proposal, which she had a copy of in front of her, known to the committee at the start of the meeting, which is the usual practice.

Cllr Gilbert’s seconded proposal before questions or the debate had even started had nullified my proposal, which was why I was so angry.

Cllr Randall Johnson admitted that it was her decision not make my proposal known to the committee and her decision on who is called to speak.

When they did what they did at Tuesday’s health scrutiny meeting, the Conservatives betrayed thousands of local people.

As I said in my final speech, local people had written letters, organised petitions, replied to public consultations, attended meetings, spoken at meetings, attended demonstrations, some had even spent significant sums of money on a legal challenge.

Time after time, month after month, the committee has asked questions which have not been properly answered on issues such as evidence that it will work, the staffing required, the finances, care of the dying. Local GPs are up in arms, staff have objected… yet the Conservative group knew best.

The vote was agonisingly close – six votes to seven, with two abstentions. All those who voted with Cllr Gilbert’s motion were conservative. Cllr Randall Johnson also voted with Cllr Gilbert – another unusual move at such a highly charged and significant meeting.

I am quite certain, that with a different approach by the chair, that the outcome would have been different. And local people’s views would have been respected and acted upon.

Councillors are elected by local people to represent their views.

Why was it so important to the chair and her colleagues that my proposal failed on Tuesday?

A whip at scrutiny committees, much least a legally constituted committee such as the health and adult care scrutiny committee of Devon County Council is strictly forbidden.

Yet to the members of the public present, who were repeatedly shouting “fix” it certainly appeared that way.

Since the meeting I have been inundated with messages from people who are disgusted at what happened.

Alongside two other councillors, I am seeking advice on what took place at Tuesday’s meeting.

The debate can be viewed on the webcast here – https://devoncc.public-i.tv/core/portal/webcast_interactive/293466

Seaton councillor, Cllr Martin Shaw, wrote an excellent account of the meeting here – https://seatonmatters.org/2017/07/26/the-health-scrutiny-committee-which-didnt-scrutinise/

My row with Cllr Randall Johnson has led to a local newspaper running a story about revenge… – see http://www.devonlive.com/tory-sara-randall-johnson-derails-claire-wright-s-health-campaign-six-years-after-election-defeat/story-30457493-detail/story.html”

http://www.claire-wright.org/index.php/post/conservatives_torpedo_local_peoples_views_on_community_hospital_bed_closure

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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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Accountability, Austerity cuts, Claire Wright, DCC, Democracy, East Devon Tories, Health and Social Care (local), Honiton/ Gittisham, Independent Councillors, NHS (local), Sleaze, Transparency

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“How Tory Sara Randall Johnson took down rival Claire Wright’s health campaign”

Owl says: So, Honiton and Seaton hospitals sacrificed to Randall-Johnson’s anger?

By P Goodwin, Western Morning News

“As the old saying goes: revenge is a dish best served cold.

For Conservative county councillor Sara Randall Johnson the wait to gain the upper hand on old rival Claire Wright stretched to six years.

When she did, the result was painful and public.

At this week’s bad-tempered and rowdy council health scrutiny meeting, Ms Randall Johnson used her new power of chairmanship to thwart the independent rebel and stamp her authority on the newly-elected authority.

In a move which prompted jeers and cries of “fix” from the public gallery, Randall Johnson ignored a tabled motion to halt hospital bed closure plans and instead allow a fellow Tory, Rufus Gilbert, to seize the momentum by kick starting the debate and swiftly proposing the exact opposite.

She then dismissed Ms Wright’s protest by telling her the power to choose was entirely at her discretion as chair, before moving to a vote against referring the proposals, which was won by a majority of one, with one abstention.

It was a swift and brutal piece of politics. The result: bad headlines averted, no need to trouble Jeremy Hunt with the protests of a rebellious council and the upstart put firmly in her place.

Former Lib Dem county council leader and respected political veteran Brian Greenslade remarked after the meeting that the move had been highly unusual.

He considered that not mentioning or circulating a table motion – one submitted before the meeting begins – was rare: not against procedure but definitely a departure from protocol.

In other words: a low blow but not quite below the belt.

It was clear from the tetchy exchanges during the meeting that there is little love lost between the two women and this is perhaps no surprise.

Wright pulled off a shock victory when she ousted Randall Johnson from her East District Council seat and her position as leader, relegating her into third place in a race for two seats, by the slender margin of just 25 votes.

The defeated leader put on a brave face, claiming she had got her life back after 20 years of public service, but this hardly sounds like the words of a woman who just two years earlier was vying with Sarah Wollaston to become MP for Totnes.

Since that victory, Wright, an outspoken independent campaigner, has become a painful thorn in the side of local Tories at district and county level, particularly around the NHS, where she worked in PR before launching her political career.

She has led the opposition ever since, including two general election campaigns in which she gave MP Hugo Swire a run for his money.

But the campaign to halt bed cuts and hospital closures has been a major factor in her rallying call to local people, the jewel in her campaigning crown.

The recent background to Tuesday’s meeting went like this:

Plans by the Northern, Eastern and Western Devon Clinical Commissioning Group to axe 71 beds across four cottage hospitals sparked anger in the Eastern locality.

Amid fears the NHS is planning to sell off the hospitals, relations between the public and NHS officials deteriorated with many accusing executives of lying about their true intentions.

Campaigners, angry that the case has still not been made for the Your Future Care model of home visits, labelled the consultation a sham and turned to the Health and Wellbeing Scrutiny Group for help.

It could refer to Mr Hunt though in reality it the plans would have gone to an independent reconfiguration panel who would make recommendations.

What many people wanted was a change in the way the CCG operates and communicates. they wanted a more open approach and they felt this might give the health trust a jolt.

Under the chairmanship of veteran Labour councillor Richard Westlake, the scrutiny group was poised to refer the plans to the Secretary of State if 14 documented points were not addressed.

But he stepped down at the election and Ms Randall Johnson took up control.

At the first meeting of the newly constituted committee in June, it became clear that she did not intend to let this happen.

Ms Wright had proposed to the last meeting that it was time to vote to refer to the Health Secretary and the chair repeatedly came under fire for not putting this to a vote.

There was a lack of clarity among one or two members about the whole process and eventually, members were persuaded to defer a decision until yesterday to get more information.

It appeared that the Conservatives had their ducks in a row on Tuesday.

Wright cried foul when her tabled motion was ignored, claiming she had never seen it happen in six years of committee meetings.

Unfortunately, the legal advice from the council backed Randall Johnson: Motions needed to be proposed and seconded in the meeting.

Would it have changed the vote? Maybe not. It was close though. East Devon leader Paul Diviani rebelled against his members and voted not to refer and one Tory did admit he was wavering.

The way the meeting was handled did little to foster good relations between the council and the community.

Ms Randall Johnson may have done nothing wrong but she certainly didn’t make any new friends in the public gallery.

As for old foes among the membership – no change there.”

http://www.devonlive.com/tory-sara-randall-johnson-derails-claire-wright-s-health-campaign-six-years-after-election-defeat/story-30457493-detail/story.html

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” How democratic and effective are the UK’s core executive and government?”

“…Conclusions

The UK’s core executive once worked smoothly. It has clearly degenerated fast in the 21st century. Westminster and Whitehall retain some core strengths, especially a weight of tradition that regularly produces better performance under pressure, reasonably integrated action on homeland security for citizens, and some ability to securely ride out crises. Yet elite conventional wisdoms, which dwelt on a supposed ‘Rolls Royce’ machine, are never heard now – after six years of unprecedented cutbacks in running costs across Whitehall; political mistakes and poor planning over Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq; and the unexpected loss of the Brexit referendum. Now the looming threat of leaving the EU on poor economic terms under a ‘hard Brexit’ strategy seems to cap a very tarnished recent record.

The clouds in the form of recurring ‘policy disasters’ and ‘fiascos’ are also gathering. Both the Conservative and Labour party elites and leaderships seem disinclined to learn the right lessons from past mistakes, or to take steps to foster more transparent, deliberative and well-considered decision-making at the heart of government. Like the Bourbon monarchs, the fear might be that they have ‘learnt nothing and forgotten nothing’.”

http://www.democraticaudit.com/2017/07/25/how-democratic-and-effective-are-the-uks-core-executive-and-government-system/

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Accountability, Democracy, Minority Government, Sleaze, Spin, Transparency

Government tries to bury bad news on “take out the trash day”

“Theresa May has been accused of an “absolute affront” to democracy after dumping dozens of official documents online on parliament’s last day of term, showing the police force numbers have dropped to a 30-year low and the number of soldiers has fallen by 7,000.

The government has published very little for weeks after the election but about 22 written statements and dozens of Whitehall reports were released on Thursday, just as MPs embark on their long summer break.

The tactic – known as “take out the trash day” – means MPs will not be able to scrutinise the information properly while parliament is away for the next seven weeks. The statements included a damning human rights assessment of the UK’s ally Saudi Arabia, the cancellation of the electrification of a key railway and a decision to opt into some new EU regulations on crime-fighting, even though the UK is heading for Brexit.

Toby Perkins, a Labour MP, said the rush of documents released on the last day before recess was an “absolute affront to parliament”.

Revelations in the set of documents included:

• A drop of 0.7% to 123,142 police officers across all ranks in England and Wales at the end of March this year. This is the lowest number at the end of a financial year since comparable records began in 1996.

• Warnings in a separate Foreign Office report that there are grave concerns about the human rights situations in countries such as Saudi Arabia, China and Bahrain though many of the countries listed bought billions of pounds of arms from the UK.

Britain has sold £3.3bn worth of arms to Saudi Arabia in the past two years alone, including licences for aircraft, drones, grenades, and missiles. The Foreign Office report said the UK is “deeply concerned about the application of the death penalty” in Saudi Arabia and restrictions on freedom of expression, as well as women’s rights. [Our MP Swire is a very frequent visitor to Saudi Arabia, sometimes when British arms dealers are also there]

Bahrain, one of the first countries visited by May when she became prime minister, is criticised for locking up pro-democracy activists, such as the writer Nabeel Rajab. Other countries of concern listed included Afghanistan, Burundi, China, Iran, Iraq, Myanmar, Russia, Syria and Yemen.

• The decision to scrap the electrification of train lines, which had been heralded as a way of making the rail network faster, greener and cleaner, after massive budget overruns of billions of pounds.

• A statement showing that the UK plans to opt into new Brussels regulations allowing for more cross-border police cooperation in cases where children are at risk of parental abduction – news that pro-EU campaigners said demonstrates the risks of a hard Brexit, which might force the UK to abandon the deal.

• A report showing that schools and colleges do not currently have the capacity to teach all pupils maths until they are 18, with about a decade needed to expand capacity.

Sir Adrian Smith’s review said England “remains unusual” in not requiring study of maths beyond 16, compared with most advanced nations. Schools will get new funding to improve the quality of teaching for maths A-level, the schools minister, Nick Gibb, said.”

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jul/20/tories-use-take-out-the-trash-day-to-dump-controversial-reports

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Accountability, Democracy, EDDC, EDDC Monitoring Officer, Electoral Commission, EU Referendum, General Election, Monitoring Officer, Scrutiny, Transparency, Voting

Voting processes need tightening (and scrutiny) urgently

Why shouldn’t our council’s Scrutiny Committee check in its Electoral and Returning Officer’s procedures – even if the Monitoring Officer doesn’t like the idea because it MIGHT be considered political (by him)? A clean bill of health would reassure voters surely?

“The list of Brexit campaigners done for breaking the rules is getting lengthy.

Following the record £12,000 fine for breaches of spending rules, the pair of £1,000 fines for other offences, the company fined £50,000 for illegal text messages and the 11 anti-EU campaign groups struck off for breaking referendum rules, there’s now another £1,500 fine on a different Brexit campaigner:

The Electoral Commission has fined Mr Henry Meakin, a registered campaigner in the EU referendum, £1,500 for failing to submit his spending return on time. It is an offence not to deliver a spending return by the due date.

Though Mr Meakin reported spending of £37,000 in the campaign, the return was received more than 5 months late.”

https://www.markpack.org.uk/150816/henry-meakin-european-referendum-fine/

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Accountability, Democracy, Local Enterprise Partnership, Spin, Transparency

Heart of the South West: 50% self- interest, 49% spin, 1% substance

… and the 1% is generous!

That’s Owl’s summary of this puff job where the Emperors tell us how beautiful their new clothes are – and how we will all benefit from them:

http://www.devonlive.com/how-the-great-south-west-is-set-to-rival-northern-powerhouse/story-30447945-detail/story.html

“Never mind the quality – feel the width”!

And still not an ounce of accountability or transparency!

How long will our councils keep up the charade that these people are working for us – or working at all.

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Government rules on civil servants moving to private sector replaced by … nothing

“Rules on civil servants moving to posts in the private sector have been operating with no guidance on their use because the Cabinet Office has failed for five years to produce this, the National Audit Office has found.

Its investigation of the Business Appointment Rules also discovered the rules do not say that a department can reject an application, only that these may be accepted or have conditions attached.

The rules apply when civil servants move to outside bodies and are designed to prevent them using privileged information or contacts gained in the civil service or to prevent any perception of impropriety.

Contentious appointments are supposed to be referred to the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (Acoba).

They are administered by the Cabinet Office but the NAO found it removed guidelines for departments on administering the rules in 2012 to write fresh ones, which have never been completed.

The lack of clarity over rejection of applications even saw the Cabinet Office tell the NAO it thought such rejections did in practice happen, but was unable to supply any evidence.

Nor did the Cabinet Office maintain oversight of how departments implemented the rules, relying on them for enforcing compliance, transparency and public scrutiny.

Auditors also found it impossible to discover from transparency data whether all those leaving the civil service for the private sector who should have made an application under the rules in fact did so. …”

http://www.publicfinance.co.uk/news/2017/07/whitehall-missing-rules-private-sector-appointments-nao-finds