Category Archives: Sleaze

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

21 Mar 2017

Posted under

Accountability, Democracy, Sleaze, Spin, Standards Committee, Voting

MPs and the stinky swamp some of them inhabit

“Is politics a service, a duty, a means to represent the needs and aspirations of the people, or is it a launchpad for lucrative jobs in the private sector? George Osborne was terribly amused in the House of Commons yesterday: all this fuss over a trifling issue like the corruption of British democracy! Can’t we see he’s doing us a favour, having to suffer the indignity of being paid hundreds of thousands of pounds for multiple jobs rather than representing his constituents, all to make sure our “parliament is enhanced”, as he puts it? The sacrifice Osborne has made for all of us, having to be paid a juicy salary to further blur the distinction between media and political power, to make sure parliament is enriched by yet more MPs failing to devote themselves to the people who elected them.

There isn’t a sick bag big enough. It turns out he didn’t bother waiting for the advisory committee on business appointments to decide whether there is a conflict of interest first. Either they rule that there is an obvious conflict of interest in a serving senior Tory politician editing a daily newspaper, or the rules are a farce. Regardless, there are a number of lessons here. One is that some politicians think they are simply too brilliant to be reduced to the mere level of giving a voice to those they exist to serve, exploiting the prominence that comes with constituents selecting them as their representative and then making a packet out of it. Another was David Miliband, who made hundreds of thousands of pounds for speeches and corporate advisory roles when he returned to the backbenches: at least he had the dignity to eventually resign from his seat.

Then there is the revolving door of British politics. Public office gives you lots of marketable advantages: prominence, connections, knowledge of the inside workings of government. These can then be exploited by major corporations, wealthy individuals and media oligarchs to gain even more power over our corrupted democracy. Health ministers whose job it is to defend our sacred NHS end up working for private health firms who benefit from its privatisation; defence ministers end up working for arms firms bidding for government contracts. Our now foreign secretary was paid a quarter of a million pounds – described by Boris Johnson as “chicken feed” – for writing columns rather than, say, serving Londoners (although he did give up his regular column after becoming foreign secretary).”

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/21/george-osborne-story-britain-ruled-never-ending-dinner-party

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

19 Mar 2017

Posted under

Accountability, Democracy, Hugo Swire, Scrutiny, Sleaze, Standards Committee, Voting

“I feel sorry for the people of Tatton – I hear their MP is just too busy to care”

The above quote from Labour MP, Jess Phillips.

But why only Tatton?

Here in Devon we have our own Hugo Swire who, after telling us all how sorry he was not to be able to speak for us when he worked at the Foreign Office but then, when sacked by Mrs May, immediately took the post of Chairman of the Conservative Middle East Council.

We also have Conservative West Devon and Torridge MP Geoffrey Cox – in whose area the North Devon District Hospital is under threat of closure – who has to juggle his constituency problems with being a successful barrister. According to the Daily Telegraph, based on the declarations in the register of members’ interests, his extra-parliamentary work was worth £820,867 in 2014 or 12 times his annual MP salary. Not to mention his little problem with an alleged tax avoidance scheme.

And Owl is sure there are many many more MPs with their snouts in many conflicting job troughs – and other conflicts – for example those with large shareholdings in private health care companies.

But people vote for them again and again.

As Ms Phillips says:

“The column I wrote last week about how the ex-chancellor was treating being an MP as a hobby after the announcement of his one-day-a-week £650,000 job working for BlackRock Investments is not even in the recycling yet (thanks to years of austerity cutting the collections). Yet, just days later, he’s acquired another job he is apparently going to do on the other four days a week. Next week you can look forward to my column announcing that Osborne has a Saturday job presenting Match of the Day and a Sunday job in the clergy. He is as qualified for those jobs as he is to be the editor of the Evening Standard.

The conflicts of interest are so numerous that my brain has no time to think of them before another pops up. I shall try to devise a list as an aide-memoire for the similarly baffled. It is not OK for politicians to be the editors of newspapers. Not in the UK at least. It’s all the rage in Russia, which is perhaps why the Standard’s proprietor, Evgeny Lebedev, thought nothing of it. No one who read the Evening Standard’s coverage of the London mayoral race would be surprised that it is of the Tory persuasion. It showed then that it was a fan of a rich boy with no talent by supporting Zac “God loves a trier” Goldsmith.

People might think it’s no biggy, it’s not the BBC, it doesn’t have to be neutral. No, it doesn’t, but it does have to at least make some commitment to reporting facts and holding to account those in positions of power. How can George Osborne ever be trusted to do this?

At the moment, when the press is getting a global drubbing from people shrieking “fake news”, how will we be able to trust anything the Standard says? For all those hard-working news reporters and political journalists fighting to be trusted and maintain an important part of our democracy, this is a smack in the face. As pravda means truth in Russian, anything political written in the Standard must now be judged as equally “true”.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/19/george-osborne-editor-evening-standard-constituents

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

17 Mar 2017

Posted under

Accountability, Democracy, Electoral Commission, General Election, Scrutiny, Sleaze, Transparency

Comments

1 Comment

Comments on record fine for Conservative expenses scandal

“… Four aspects of this record fine are worth noting, especially in terms of what it means for forthcoming decisions on legal action against more Conservative MPs than makes up Theresa May’s majority in the House of Commons.

In short – it’s bad news for the Conservatives as the Electoral Commission has found repeated evidence of spending missing from constituency expense returns. That’s with the police, who have started interviewing MPs under caution, and the Crown Prosecution Service, which has received files from a dozen police forces now.

1. Conservative Party repeatedly hindered the Electoral Commission

The Conservative Party repeatedly refused to cooperate fully with the Electoral Commission investigation, requiring the Commission to go to court to get access to relevant evidence. Even after that, two further legal notices were issued in response to the party failing to provide information requested. The Electoral Commission also had to issue a legal order against a Conservative Party campaigner who “had chosen not to provide information voluntarily”.

“The Party hindered and caused delay to the investigation”, the Electoral Commission’s report concludes. This is notable different from its conclusions on other parties it has investigated recently, where cooperation was forthcoming and sustained.

2. When parties split costs, they must keep good evidence

It is a normal and legal part of election expenditure to split some costs between different legal areas. For example, a leaflet might both promote a local election candidate and a general election candidate and as a result its costs are split between the two candidate’s different expense limits.

One area where the Electoral Commission found against the Conservative Party was over its splitting of staff costs where staff were located in a constituency at the time of a by-election but were also continuing with their normal party roles as well as helping on the by-election.

“The Party could provide no record of how those proportions were determined for any of the by-elections. It did not have any written record of the formula at all, either generally or in relation to any of the three by-elections,” the Electoral Commission reports.

3. Police investigations into Conservative MPs are continuing

As the Electoral Commission’s report says, “The Commission does not have specific powers to investigate and enforce incomplete candidate returns”. The fines and police referral by the Electoral Commission are all about national record keeping and expense limit compliance, not what MPs and their agents got up to.

4. Electoral Commission’s conclusions worsen the legal risk faced by Conservative MPs

All the accommodation costs for national staff relocated to constituencies during three Parliamentary by-elections which the Electoral Commission investigated should have been included in local constituency returns even if the staff were spending some of their time on non-constituency campaigning.

That’s because otherwise they would have been based in their normal offices without accommodation being paid: “There is no reason the Commission can see as to why only an unspecified proportion of the accommodation costs for staff was included in the invoices to candidates. The Commission is satisfied that the entire accommodation costs, for staff and volunteers, were incurred for the purpose of basing individuals in Newark, Clacton and Rochester and Strood, to facilitate those individuals’ work on the respective by-election campaigns. This money would not have been spent otherwise.”

Moreover, when it comes to the Thanet South general election contest, the Electoral Commission has concluded that some of the expenses put on the party’s national expense return should have been included in the constituency return instead as they were for constituency campaigning: “The Commission is satisfied that a proportion of the costs included in the Party’s campaign spending return associated with the team based in South Thanet did not relate to Party campaign spending and should not have been included in the Party’s spending return. In particular, a proportion of the £15,641 included in the Party’s 2015 UKPGE spending return in relation to the Royal Harbour Hotel constituted candidate campaign expenses and should not have been included in the return.”

Likewise on the Conservative battlebus tour, the Electoral Commission has found that the Conservative Party wrongly claimed that all its costs were national election expenditure because in reality the battlebus operation often promoted constituency candidates and so a proportion of its costs should have counted against their limits.

Because the Electoral Commission doesn’t have direct jurisdiction over constituency returns, the question therefore of under-declaring costs on constituency returns has not been followed up by them in this report. That, however, is a matter for the ongoing police investigations. For example, on the question of the Conservative battlebus, the Electoral Commission concludes: “The Commission has not sought to identify the extent to which any affected candidates may have underreported their campaign spending, which is an RPA [Representation of the People Act] matter and therefore a matter for the police.”

In other words, the Electoral Commission has found a number of issues which directly mean that constituency expense returns were wrong. They haven’t issued fines or taken other action over them as those matters are with the police.”

http://www.markpack.org.uk/148784/conserative-party-electoral-commission-fine/

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

16 Mar 2017

Posted under

Accountability, Democracy, Electoral Commission, Sleaze, Voting

Comments

1 Comment

Conservative Party fined laughable £70,000 for breaking election rules

Owl says: £70,000 – laughable. Four pots of Hugo Swire’s honey (allowing for inflation) auctioned off at the next Tory fundraiser will sort that out. £700,000 better, £7 million best! AND if the party can’t keep track of this sort of accounting – what sort of mess is it making regionally and nationally!

“The Electoral Commission has fined the Conservative Party £70,000 over “significant” election campaign expenses issues.

The independent elections watchdog said the party had made “numerous failures” in reporting its expenses for the 2015 General Election and three by-elections in 2014.

It has also referred one matter, relating to the party’s treasurer declaring he had examined the return and believed it to be complete and correct, to the Metropolitan Police.

The investigation found the party’s 2015 General Election spending return was missing payments worth at least £104,765.

Separately, payments worth up to £118,124 were either not reported to the Commission or were incorrectly reported. …

… Commission chairman Sir John Holmes said the Tories’ failure to follow the rules “undermined voters’ confidence in our democratic processes” and said there was a risk political parties were seeing such fines as “a cost of doing business”.

The fine comes after a dozen police forces announced they had sent files to the Crown Prosecution Service as part of a probe into the Conservatives’ 2015 election expenses.

The allegations centre around whether spending on hotels for visiting activists and certain campaign material was incorrectly registered as national rather than local spending.

At least three Tory MPs have been quizzed by police investigating whether election finance laws were broken in the 2015 contest.

Sir John said: “Our investigation uncovered numerous failures by a large, well-resourced and experienced party to ensure that accurate records of spending were maintained and that all of the party’s spending was reported correctly.

“The rules established by Parliament for political parties and their finances are there to ensure transparency and accountability.

“Where the rules are not followed, it undermines voters’ confidence in our democratic processes, which is why political parties need to take their responsibilities under the legislation seriously.”

He went on: “This is the third investigation we have recently concluded where the largest political parties have failed to report up to six-figure sums following major elections, and have been fined as a result.

“There is a risk that some political parties might come to view the payment of these fines as a cost of doing business; the Commission therefore needs to be able to impose sanctions that are proportionate to the levels of spending now routinely handled by parties and campaigners.”

Responding to the investigation, a Conservative Party spokesman said the party had complied fully with the investigation and will pay the fines imposed.

“As we have consistently said, the local agents of Conservative candidates correctly declared all local spending in the 2015 general election.”

He said the party’s campaign headquarters “accepted in March 2016 that it had made an administrative error by not declaring a small amount constituting 0.6 per cent of our national spending in the 2015 election campaign.

“This error was subsequently corrected and the Party has since improved its accounting practices, reporting structures and staff guidance. Even taking this into account, the Conservative Party still considerably underspent the statutory national spending limits for the 2015 general election.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/conservative-party-fine-tory-tories-electoral-commission-70000-election-campaign-expenses-a7632516.html

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

11 Mar 2017

Posted under

Accountability, Democracy, Scrutiny, Sleaze

Comments

1 Comment

Daily Mail tells Tories to stop playing politics with public trust!!!

Owl says now I’ve heard everything! This could be straight out of Socialist Worker (Middle Class Branch)!

“… It was less than two years ago that the Conservatives went to the polls on a promise, spelled out four times in their manifesto: ‘We will not raise VAT, National Insurance contributions or Income Tax.’

In that now discredited, apparently worthless document, there was no suggestion the pledge referred only to Class 1 NICs (how many voters even knew there were four classes?)

Yet this was the devious excuse offered after the Chancellor increased the rate for Class 4, costing 2.4million self-employed workers some £240 a year each – almost eight times the 60p-a-week ‘average’ he so disingenuously cited.

Not content with this betrayal of his party’s core supporters, he slashed the tax-free allowance on dividends from £5,000 to £2,000. Thus, he hammered family-owned businesses, freelance workers and every saver with stock market investments of more than £50,000.

Meanwhile, tax rises and changes to compensation payments are likely to add £75 a year to car insurance premiums.

But still Mr Hammond hadn’t finished. Having joked he would not exhume Labour’s death tax, he is now pushing through… a huge increase in death tax! …

… And now it emerges the Chancellor has another £700million trick up his sleeve. Complex changes in already baffling tax rules mean some shops and newsagents will see their VAT more than quadruple, while self-employed service-providers will also be hard hit.

So bang goes another pledge that helped sweep the Tories to power in 2015. Indeed, all parties seem to see manifestos merely as vote-winning exercises, to be forgotten once an election is won.

David Cameron is right about one thing. It is indeed ‘stupidity’ to break manifesto pledges. But then look who’s talking! He was the PM who shredded almost every core promise he made in 2010, from cutting migration to below 100,000 to scrapping the Human Rights Act.

Meanwhile, his shameless sidekick George Osborne is becoming a veritable Tony Blair, stuffing his boots with banknotes on the strength of contacts and experience gained in public office.

He even tried to bury news of his one-day-a-week, £650,000 job for a US investment company by sneaking it out on Budget day. No wonder politicians are held in growing contempt. …”

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-4303252/DAILY-MAIL-COMMENT-Stop-playing-politics-public-trust.html

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

8 Mar 2017

Posted under

Accountability, Austerity cuts, Democracy, Inequality, Scrutiny, Sleaze, Spin

Comments

1 Comment

It’s best to live in Surrey if you want favours from the government

“Philip Hammond was among a series of Conservative MPs who lobbied on behalf of Surrey county council in a row over social care funding, correspondence released under freedom of information laws has shown, reviving claims the council received a special deal from ministers.

Hours after Theresa May insisted at prime minister’s questions that Surrey had enjoyed no preferential treatment, one of the released letters and emails showed the chancellor had spoken to the communities secretary, Sajid Javid, on the council’s behalf.

Hammond, who represents the Surrey constituency of Runnymede and Weybridge, wrote to the council’s deputy leader, Peter Martin, in September to sympathise about funding difficulties, saying he would “take this up with Sajid Javid”.

The correspondence shows that another Surrey MP, Jonathan Lord, wrote to the council in November saying he had discussed the issue with Javid and “he’s doing something for us”.

In an email to the council’s leader David Hodge and fellow Surrey Tory MPs in January, Lord suggested Javid might have “£40m hidden under the departmental sofa” for the council, and suggested other councils’ budgets could be trimmed to help.

The correspondence, released following a freedom of information request from the BBC, follows a long and public standoff between by the Conservative-run council and Javid’s department over what Hodge said was a funding gap to pay for social care.

Hodge promised to hold a referendum of Surrey residents on imposing a 15% rise in council tax to make up the shortfall. However, last month this was called off at the last moment.

Leaked text messages passed to Labour last month prompted Jeremy Corbyn to accuse May at prime minister’s questions of buying off Surrey with a special deal, something she denied.

Following the release of a recording in which Hodge told fellow Surrey Conservatives about a “gentleman’s agreement” with ministers, Corbyn reiterated the accusation at PMQs on Wednesday. May again denied Surrey had received special treatment.

The new documents show a concerted lobbying effort by Surrey MPs, among them Hammond. Other Surrey MPs to lobby for the council included Chris Grayling, the transport secretary, Michael Gove, Crispin Blunt and Dominic Raab, the correspondence showed.

It also highlights the extent of anger felt by Hodge over the funding issue. In one letter, he accuses Javid of “some seriously muddled thinking”, and warns of the political consequences if an agreement is not reached. “We will see the largest Conservative group in the country pitted against a Conservative government, and we will be blunt about where we think the blame lies,” he warned.

Writing to Hodge, Hammond had said: “I recognise the challenges you are facing in Surrey, and the apparently harsh treatment that the funding formula delivers, and I will take this up with Sajid Javid.”

An email from Lord in November suggested Javid and Hammond were seeking to help the council. “I have spoken to Sajid J, and he says he’s doing something for us,” Lord wrote. “Won’t be drawn on exactly what. Says that Philip H is being supportive and will be signing off on things for us.”

But a subsequent email from Lord in January said he was “extremely unimpressed” Javid had not “come up with the goods”.

He wrote: “If Saj was imprudent enough to not have £40m hidden under the departmental sofa just for this sort of emergency/problem/‘outlier’ emerging from his department’s draft settlement, then I assume, if he is a man of his word, that he must have done his best to put a strong case to the Trreasury

“If all his local government settlement money is really allocated, if the Treasury is refusing to help out, and if he can’t find a pot of money for the ‘missing’ learning disability grants, then Saj still has the option of adjusting all the other council settlements down very slightly in order to accommodate the £31m needed for Surrey – and I think he should be encouraged to do this.”

The shadow communities secretary, Teresa Pearce, said May should “come clean” over the deal. “Despite Theresa May’s claims to the contrary, this is more evidence of the Tories’ secret deal with the leadership of Surrey county council,” she said.

“We need full disclosure of the terms of the deal and reassurance that all councils will be treated the same way, not just the lucky few the Tories favour.”

However, a government spokesman said the discussions were nothing exceptional.

“As we have repeatedly made clear, there was no special deal for Surrey county council and they will not receive any extra funding that would not otherwise be provided or offered to other councils. To imply the opposite is simply untrue,” he said.

Javid’s department discussed funding settlements “with councils across the country, of all types and all political parties”, he added. “This happens every year, involves councils making representations to the government, and has always been the process.”

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/mar/08/philip-hammond-among-mps-lobbying-for-surrey-county-council-in-funding-row

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

7 Mar 2017

Posted under

Accountability, Austerity cuts, Democracy, Scrutiny, Sleaze, Spin, Standards Committee, Transparency, Voting

Comments

1 Comment

“Surrey council leader ‘had gentleman’s agreement’ with ministers”

David Hodge, the leader of Surrey council, told Conservative colleagues that he had secured a “gentleman’s agreement” with senior cabinet ministers that persuaded him to cancel a threat to raise council tax by 15%.

In a secret recording of a Conservative group meeting on 7 February, the politician revealed there had been a “series of conversations” with the communities secretary, Sajid Javid, in a car outside Downing street, followed by a second meeting with the chancellor, Philip Hammond.

Hodge told those in the room not to email or tweet any details as he shared details of meetings that appeared to take place between an MP acting as an intermediary and the cabinet members.

He said the MP was “looking for assurances, looking for clarification, looking for help basically on how we could stop the referendum” from Javid in the car.

“He [the MP] then went inside and spoke to the chancellor – I think I can say that. He went inside and spoke to the chancellor, his spad was waiting – spad being his political whatever they call it [special adviser] – he was with him and then the spad rang me with what we can and cannot say,” Hodge added, according to a transcript of the meeting passed to the Guardian.

Hodge implied that the outcome of the meeting was for him to withdraw the decision to push for a referendum that day, which would allow the council to raise the tax to 15%, and instead stick with the 4.99% allowed without asking voters for permission.

The question over whether Surrey was subject to a sweetheart deal was raised in the House of Commons by the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, a day later, on 8 February after he received leaked texts from Hodge that suggested an agreement had been reached.

But this recording goes much further – with Hodge talking about his major worries about finances, particularly disability funding. He talked about the government pushing forward with some form of funding review.

“We’ve agreed this morning that, subject to them agreeing, that if it’s possible, we will become part of that process going forward,” he said, before adding that he was not giving up the fight over disability funding or the Better Care Fund for social care.

“We listened carefully to the information that was being relayed back to us from government. Yes, on one hand Tony is absolutely right, we should get something in writing. But on the other hand I do actually have something in writing, that Helen knows I have in writing, Sir Paul Beresford knows I have in writing, which gives me a certain amount of comfort but I’m not going to release that information for obvious reasons,” he added.

“There may come a time that if what I call gentleman’s agreements, that the Conservative party often does, are not honoured, we will have to revisit this in nine months or a year’s time. If we do, let me assure you, you’ll have to drag me kicking and screaming not to go for a referendum next year.”

The shadow communities minister, Gareth Thomas, said: “Sajid Javid and Philip Hammond should come to the House of Commons and explain what the gentleman’s agreement that they’ve done – explain why they are offering it to Surrey council and not the rest of English councils trying to manage budgets that are at tipping point.”

The meeting of the council’s Conservative group took place on a Tuesday, the same day that the council announced plans to cancel the referendum. The issue was then raised by Corbyn at prime minister’s questions in the House of Commons the next day following texts referring to a “memorandum of understanding” between the government and council.

A day later, on Thursday 9 February, it emerged that Surrey county council had been chosen to take part in a new government pilot scheme under which the local authority would retain 100% of business rates raised in the county.

But both Javid and the council strongly denied there was any sweetheart deal. A spokesman for Surrey county council said they could not comment on a meeting of the Conservative group, but said there had been no shift from a statement issued when the controversy first emerged.

Hodge said at the time: “Surrey’s decision not to proceed with a 15% council tax increase was ours alone and there has been no deal between Surrey county council and the government.

“However, I am confident that the government now understands the real pressures in adult social care and the need for a lasting solution.”

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/mar/07/surrey-council-leader-had-gentlemans-agreement-with-ministers

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

7 Mar 2017

Posted under

Accountability, Scrutiny, Sleaze, Transparency

Conflict of interest – it starts at the top

“The Bank of England’s new deputy governor has admitted breaching the Bank’s guidelines after she failed to declare that her brother worked for Barclays.

In a letter to the Treasury select committee, Charlotte Hogg apologised for not formally disclosing that her brother was the bank’s director of group strategy, which could conflict with her work on the Prudential Regulation Committee (PRC).

The apology comes after Hogg, who has been touted as a possible successor to Mark Carney, the Bank’s governor, told the committee at a hearing last week that she always declared areas of conflicts of interests and was compliant with all of the Bank’s codes of conduct because she helped write them.

The PRC has direct responsibility for regulating banks, including Barclays.

In the letter, Hogg wrote: “As Barclays Bank plc is regulated by the PRA, under the Bank’s internal code of conduct and personal relationships policy, I should have formally declared my brother’s role when I first joined the Bank.

“I did not do so and I take full responsibility for this oversight. I have now added a full record of my brother’s role in the Bank’s HR systems.

“Regrettably, my oversight means that my oral evidence to the committee in this respect was not accurate. I write now to correct that evidence at the earliest opportunity and to place on record my sincere apologies to the committee.”

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/mar/07/bank-of-england-deputy-governor-fails-to-declare-conflict-of-interest

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

26 Feb 2017

Posted under

Accountability, Democracy, Electoral Commission, Sleaze, Spin, Transparency, Voting

Comments

1 Comment

Man who ran for Police and Crime Commissioner convicted of electoral fraud

From the blog of Dr Mark Pack – who is assiduously following the cases of electoral fraud from the 2015 elections:

“Last year I covered the odd case of a man facing trial on electoral fraud charges who managed to get the trial delayed… because he was running for Police and Crime Commissioner.

When I published that earlier post, he commented on this site, saying, “with complaints about the investigating Policeman, the behaviour of the Judge, the incompetence of the Court, and the fact that the CPS have only circumstantial evidence, it is most unlikely that this case will ever go to trial”.

Well, the trial has now happened and Steve Uncles of the English Democrats found guilty:

“A disgraced far-right activist is facing jail for cheating the election system by submitting fraudulent nomination forms.

English Democrats regional leader Steven Uncles dreamt up fictitious names such as Anna Cleves and Rachelle Stevens – referred to by a judge as “the lady from S Club 7”.

The 52-year-old local politician, who has since resigned but remained an official in high office, was convicted of seven charges of using a false instrument with intent and two of causing or permitting a false statement to be included in a nomination form…

The case faced several delays caused by Uncles applying for adjournments – one being because he ran for the post of Police Commissioner in May last year.

He failed to appear on the first day of his trial on February 8 and was arrested on a warrant outside the court when he turned up the next day. He has denied breaching his bail. [Kent Online]

http://www.markpack.org.uk/148525/steve-uncles-english-democrats/

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

17 Feb 2017

Posted under

Accountability, Asset sweating, Austerity cuts, Health and Social Care (local), NHS (local), Sleaze, Spin

New business rates 19% higher for NHS hospitals, 9.6% higher for private hospitals

“People are saying local authorities shouldn’t have to develop local funding solutions to the meeting the rising costs of adult social care. This article reveals another challenging irony in the context of the devolution of financial responsibility. Local authorities are going to become increasingly dependent on business rates and yet by so doing they will potentially, as an unintended consequence, drive up the costs of healthcare in their localities.

In a world where we have been able to do so many technically brilliant things we must be capable of finding a better way forward than the chaos, which is beginning to embed itself at the heart of the way we pay for our services. There is a strong argument to suggest this policy, when allied to ongoing cuts to central Government funding for local authorities involves taking money out of the NHS to fill the gap left by Government cuts. This article tells us:

The government is under growing pressure to stop a sharp increase in business rates for hospitals that threatens to increase the strain on the NHS.

Changes to the business rates system mean that the 1,249 NHS hospitals liable for the property tax will see their bills increasing by £322m, or 21%, over the next five years from April.

However, a growing number of politicians are calling for the government to reconsider the tax hike for hospitals, including making them eligible for the same 80% discount that charities enjoy.

Some private healthcare providers, such as Nuffield Health, already enjoy an 80% discount because they are registered as charities. Furthermore, the business rates that the 581 private hospitals do pay will not increase as much as it will for hospitals.

The rateable value of private hospitals has increased by 9.6% in the last revaluation while NHS hospitals have seen a 19.8% rise, according to research by the property consultant CVS.

The cross-party group of politicians who have already expressed concern about the tax rise for hospitals include Steve McCabe, Labour MP for Birmingham Selly Oak, Royston Smith, Conservative MP for Southampton Itchen, and Annie Wells, Conservative and Unionist MSP for Glasgow.”

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/feb/15/government-urged-stop-tax-hikes-nhs-hospitals-business-rates

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

16 Feb 2017

Posted under

Accountability, Austerity cuts, Health and Social Care (local), NHS (local), Scrutiny, Sleaze, Spin, Transparency

Comments

1 Comment

Dame Ruth Carnall (Devon CCG chair): more questions, no answers

“Candy Udwin, from Camden Keep NHS Public

A CONTROVERSIAL shake-up in the way north London’s health services are run has already led to a cash bonanza for private companies, the New Journal can reveal.

While campaigners and some local politicians are still warning that the overhaul – known as the Sustainability and Transformation Plan (STP) – is cover for deep NHS cuts, the process has already begun, with consultants brought into advise on the changes.

Around £2.3million has been paid out by Camden Clinical Commissioning Group in return for help in drawing up a 68-page plan, which looks at how spending across five boroughs, including Camden and Islington, could be reduced by £1billion by 2022.

It has been criticised for being an obscure document which does not make clear where savings are going to be made.

Details of the payments to consultants show how one firm received more than £600,000 to set up and manage the STP office before a permanent team was hired and space offered up at Camden Council’s headquarters at 5 Pancras Square in King’s Cross.

Mark Porter, chairman of the British Medical Association’s council, said: “Doctors will find it galling to see that so much vital resource has been handed to consultancy firms for their part in failing plans which, ultimately, may never come to fruition, while frontline staff struggle to provide safe patient care in a service increasingly becoming unfit for purpose.”

Candy Udwin, from Camden Keep Our NHS Public, added: “It is truly shocking that at a time of such crisis in the NHS, Camden CCG has given over £2million to private consultancy firms, with a large amount of this going on STP plans which are meant to be finding ways to meet their deficit.”

Most of the companies earning payouts for help with STP have been set up by former public servants, including the former chief executive of NHS London, Dame Ruth Carnall.

Carnall Farrar – which received £115,882 for a STP “review of commissioning arrangements” – was founded by Dame Ruth Carnall and Hannah Farrar, a former director of NHS London, and Ben Richardson, who was a senior partner at McKinsey & Co, after NHS London was disbanded in 2014.

McKinsey & Co, the UK arm of the American management consultancy giant, is one of the big earners from the north London STP – being paid £360,000 from Camden CCG for help on “strategy assessment to investigate further options for the transformation of mental health services” and also “financial modelling of mental health programme initiatives”.

Financial advisers Deloitte netted £257,336 for “support for STP finance and activity modelling” while Methods Advisory was paid £617,850 for “programme management office (PMO) and strategy support”.

The New Journal contacted Methods Advisory for comment on details of the PMO but did not receive a reply.

Hunter Healthcare, which on its website states its values include integrity, tenacity and passion, also received £282,518 for interim administrative support for the PMO. GE Healthcare Finnamore, owned by the US multinational corporation General Electric, was paid £9,900 for more “support with STP finance and activity modelling”.

Health Finance and Economics – a company set up in September 2015 – is so small it is exempted from providing full accounts at Companies House.

It has no website or office, and is run by Jonathan Wise, a former chief finance officer at Brent, Harrow and Hillingdon CCG. It was paid £107,710 for “support for STP finance and activity modelling”.

The New Journal has contacted all of the companies on the list, with only Deloitte and McKinsey responding with short statements saying they could not comment on “client work” and recommending contact with the NHS.

None of the companies involved took up an opportunity to explain how the work of consultancy firms can help the NHS generally.

A spokeswoman for the STP said the large sums listed were partly caused by the new organisation being set up from a “zero base” and that consultants were hired only on an “interim basis” to assist in developing the plan.

“This work was completed by consultants and now a North Central London STP programme management team is in place,” she added. There would now be a “significantly reduced reliance on consultants”.

She added: “Contracts were put in place following a competitive tender using a national consultancy framework.”

Campaigners from Camden are set to join a national Save the NHS demonstration in central London on March 4.”

http://camdennewjournal.com/article/revealed-how-consultancy-firms-have-already-netted-2-million-in-nhs-shake-up

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

3 Feb 2017

Posted under

Accountability, Corruption, Democracy, Devolution, EDBF, Local Enterprise Partnership, Scrutiny, Sleaze, Spin, Transparency

Is Trump using the Local Enterprise Partnership model?

This is spookily like the way our Local Enterprise Partnerships (and before that, the East Devon Business Forum) were created – with business people in the driving seat and councils as passengers without seatbelts!

“President Donald Trump met with a roomful of top CEOs at the White House – and says he tried to install other titans of industry on his executive council only to have them nixed as ‘corporate raiders.’

Trump met with a group that included Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan, BlackRock CEO Laurence Fink, retired GE CEO Jack Welch – whom he called ‘legendary’ – and other business bigs.

As if that weren’t enough financial firepower, Trump said that he tried to get other financial bigs onto the panel, which meets about once a month to advise him the economy, taxes, and regulations.

‘So many people have called – friends of mine in big business,’ Trump said, ‘and that wanted to be on the committee.’

Billionaire Stephen Schwartzman of Blackstone private equity firm, who serves on the council, acted as gatekeeper. “I said, ‘Steve, can we get so and so?’ Trump said, with the CEOs gathered around him.

‘Nope,’ Schwartzman replied. ‘What do you mean no, it’s big business, massive business,’ Trump pleaded, in his telling.

‘How about this one?’ Trump would ask.

‘He’s a corporate raider, these people don’t want to be sitting with corporate raiders,’ was Schwartzman’s reply.

‘He’s been very very selective,’ Trump said, adding: ‘We’ll be putting a couple more on this.’

Introducing the group, Trump hailed BlackRock investment company CEO Larry Fink for having boosted his personal bottom line through investments.

Trump displayed no reservations about asking some of the world’s most influential bankers about their preferences for peeling back bank regulations enacted after the financial crisis.

‘We have some of the bankers here. There’s nobody to tell me better about Dodd-Frank than Jamie, so you’re going to tell me about it, but we expect to be cutting a lot out of Dodd-Frank.

The White House billed the event as a strategy and policy forum.
The group’s official title is the President’s Strategic and Policy Forum. It has 16 members.

Absent from the event was Uber chief executive Travis Kalanick, who announced just hours before that he had quit, following pressure from consumers over Trump’s new immigration order.

Trump didn’t mention Kalanick during his public comments.

The Uber boss quit the council, even as the company is facing blowback for its decision to drop its congestion pricing during a taxi boycott meant to oppose the immigration order.

He made his decision known in an email to employees, where he argued against Trump’s new immigration ban.

‘Earlier today I spoke briefly with the president about the immigration executive order and its issues for our community,’ Kalanick wrote. ‘I also let him know that I would not be able to participate on his economic council. Joining the group was not meant to be an endorsement of the president or his agenda but unfortunately it has been misinterpreted to be exactly that,’ he added.

Trump hailed another attendee, his Commerce Secretary nominee, billionaire Wilbur Ross.

‘When I campaigned for office I promised the American people that I’d ask for our country’s best and brightest, and we have that. Wilbur is representing us,’ Trump said.

Trump said of close confidante and business magnate Carl Icahn, ‘Carl Icahn called up and he goes, ‘I heard you got Wilbur. Everybody calls him Wilbur. I’ve never heard him called – we just know him as Wilbur, right?”

Trump met the business honchos as he prepared to sign executive actions asking the Treasury and the Labor Departments to examine reforms to roll back regulations intended to make markets safer and protect consumers.
The actions would examine the ‘Volcker Rule,’ meant to curb speculation, AFP reported.

‘(We) believe that Dodd-Frank in many respects was a piece of massive government overreach,’ a senior administration official told the outlet. ‘It imposed hundreds of new regulations on financial institutions, it established an enormous amount of work and effort for financial firms.'”

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4188962/Trump-meets-CEOs-says-ll-slash-bank-regs.html

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

27 Jan 2017

Posted under

Accountability, Corruption, Inequality, Scrutiny, Sleaze, Transparency

Comments

1 Comment

(First and second) jobs for the boys – easy when watchdog has no teeth

“A Whitehall watchdog was accused of an extraordinary cover-up last night over the lucrative investment job given to George Osborne’s former top aide.

Rupert Harrison, nicknamed ‘the real Chancellor’ when he was Mr Osborne’s chief-of-staff, got a six-figure salary to work for asset management firm BlackRock two years ago.

But now it has emerged that the official appointments committee, Acoba, was reprimanded for approving the job without disclosing meetings he held with the firm while he worked for the ex-chancellor.

An investigation by the Information Commissioner’s Office into the apparent cover-up denounced Acoba for a ‘shortfall in public interest transparency’. And last night Labour MP John Mann said: ‘The advisory committee is not fit for purpose and its chair must now resign.

‘There is far too much cosying up to banks. It is as if BlackRock had taken shares in the Treasury.’

The row comes as Mr Osborne himself faces controversy over his new job with BlackRock, which will pay him more than £200,000 a year to work as an adviser while he is still an MP.

His appointment was also waved through by Acoba and there are growing calls for reform of the committee and the rules surrounding MPs and second jobs.

Acoba is supposed to vet ministers and senior civil servants when they take jobs in the private sector. In the past eight years it has looked at more than 370 appointments without blocking a single one. …”

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4162438/Heads-roll-Osborne-storm.html

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

27 Jan 2017

Posted under

Accountability, Corruption, Economy, Inequality, Scrutiny, Sleaze, Tax avoidance, Transparency

One tax for the rich and one for the poor … and guess who wins out

“Britain’s wealthiest people appear to get preferential treatment from HM Revenue & Customs and are not being properly pursued for outstanding tax bills, parliament’s spending watchdog has concluded.

HMRC’s failure to clamp down on rich tax dodgers is undermining confidence in the whole system, the public accounts committee said.

The highly critical report released on Friday examined HMRC’s specialist unit, which collects tax from high net-worth individuals with more than £20m. It found that “the amount of tax paid by this very wealthy group of individuals has actually fallen by £1bn since the unit was set up” in 2009 – even as tax receipts rose to £23bn.

Meg Hillier, the Labour MP who chairs the committee, said HMRC’s claims about the success of its strategy to deal with the very wealthy did not add up.

“Cosy terms such as ‘customer relationship manager’ and HMRC’s reluctance to be open add to the picture of arrangements that, while beyond the reach of ordinary taxpayers, are also ill-suited to the increasingly sophisticated methods the super rich can use to reduce the tax they pay,” she said.

“If the public are to have faith in the tax system then it must be seen to have fairness at its heart. It also needs to work properly. In our view, HMRC is failing on both counts.”

Tax officials calculated that there were about 6,500 high net-worth people in 2015-16, about one in every 5,000 taxpayers. In 2009, a specialist unit was set up to bring in more money from them.

MPs questioned the role of the specialist unit and some of its practices.

“We were not convinced by [HMRC’s] assertion that there is a clear line between giving its view on potential transactions and giving tax advice and we do not think there is enough clarity about what customer relationship managers can and cannot do,” the report says.

The committee pointed out that advice from officials to wealthy taxpayers was not recorded. “While calls from most taxpayers to HMRC call centres are recorded routinely, meetings and phone calls with high net-worth individuals are not recorded,” the report says.

The committee also highlighted concerns about “potential abuse” of image rights by top footballers and entertainers to minimise their tax liabilities. It confirmed that HMRC had “open inquiries” relating to the use of image rights by 43 footballers, 12 clubs and eight agents.

Committee members said they were appalled to learn that not all clubs were providing HMRC with the data it required under the terms of a voluntary agreement with the Premier League.

However, they praised HMRC’s managers for trying take action against the clubs. “We were encouraged by the evidence HMRC’s senior management gave to the committee on image rights and we look forward to news of meaningful action in this area.”

HMRC said the pursuit of high net-worth individuals had resulted in the collection of an additional £2.5bn in revenues. But it was unable to explain why the income tax they paid fell by 20% – from £4.5bn in 2009-10 to £3.5bn in 2014-15 – when the overall income tax take rose to £23bn.

The committee said about a third of the individuals concerned were likely to be under inquiry by HMRC for unpaid tax – with cases with a potential value of £1.9bn currently under investigation.

However, the report found HMRC had a “dismal record” when it came to prosecuting the very wealthy for tax fraud in the criminal courts.

In the five years to 31 March 2016, it completed just 72 fraud investigations into high net-worth individuals, with all but two having been dealt with using its civil powers. Only one case resulted in a successful criminal prosecution.

Of the 850 penalties issued to the very wealthy since 2012, the average charge was £10,500 – a figure the committee said was likely to be too small to act as a deterrent.

The problem was likely to become more acute because wealthy people were moving from off-the-peg tax avoidance schemes – the “high street equivalent of Primark or Next” – to bespoke “made-to-measure Savile Row” arrangements, the report says.

An HMRC spokesperson denied there was preferential treatment for the rich: “There is absolutely no special treatment for the wealthy and, in fact, we give them additional scrutiny, with one-to-one marking by HMRC’s specialist tax collectors to ensure that they pay everything they owe, just like the rest of us do. We have secured an additional £2.5bn from the very wealthiest since 2010.”

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jan/27/uks-super-rich-appear-to-get-special-deal-from-hmrc-says-watchdog?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

18 Jan 2017

Posted under

Accountability, DCC, Devolution, EDDC, Local Enterprise Partnership, Scrutiny, Sleaze, Somerset County Council, Spin, Transparency

Lib Dems object to Local Enterprise Partnership CEO 26% payrise but there is nothing they or we can do about it

“The row over a £24,000 pay rise for the boss of a publicly funded enterprise partnership has deepened, with opposition councillors calling for Devon County Council to quit the body “until common sense prevails”.

It comes after the board of the Heart of the South West Local Enterprise Partnership approved a 26 per cent pay rise for its chief executive on Tuesday, January 17.

It means Chris Garcia, who is employed through Somerset County Council, will earn £115,000 a year for his role helping to promote economic growth in Devon and Somerset.

Unison’s Devon County branch secretary, Steve Ryles, branded the pay rise “absolutely disgraceful” at a time when pay increases for council workers have been capped at one per cent.

Now Devon’s Liberal Democrat councillors have submitted a motion calling on the county council to use whatever means it can to stop the pay rise being implemented.

Cllr Alan Connett, shadow leader of the council, said: “At a time of ever tightening pressure on the public purse and yet more cuts in council services in the region, it is our view that the 26 per cent pay rise sends the wrong message to people when they face rising council tax bills and, for some, cuts in council tax benefit schemes which help the poorest.

“As a matter of genuine urgency, the board of the Local Enterprise Partnership should reconsider the pay rise it has awarded.”

The motion, proposed by Councillor Connett and seconded by Councillor Brian Greenslade, states: “At a time of huge reductions in Government funding for local councils forcing cuts in health, education, care for older people and children, Devon County Council is offended by the reported 26 per cent pay rise for the chief executive of the Heart of the South West Local Enterprise Partnership.

“We call upon the council to take urgent steps to stop the annual pay rise of £24,271 and if it cannot do that, to withdraw from membership of the partnership until common sense prevails with regard to top management pay increases.”

Businesses, universities and local authorities are represented on the LEP board, including East Devon District Council and Devon County Council.

Asked how the proposal came about, the spokeswoman said: “The recommendation was made jointly by the chairs of the LEP board and of the LEP Finance & Resources Committee, in the interests of enabling the LEP to continue its momentum of success towards delivering its strategic economic plan.”

The LEP is chaired by Steve Hindley, chairman of Exeter-based construction firm Midas Group.

Before Tuesday’s board meeting in Tiverton, Devon County Council leader John Hart said: “As a local authority subject to significant government cuts, I cannot support a pay rise of 25 per cent for any high-level official.

“It is clear the CEO does a good job and the LEP has brought many millions of pounds into the Devon economy. But there has to be recognition of the tight financial times in which we live.”

A county council spokesman said on Wednesday the authority would be making no further comment on the matter.

The motion will be considered at the council’s budget and council tax setting meeting on Thursday, February 16.”

A spokeswoman for the LEP said it would not be releasing a breakdown of how board members voted on the CEO’s pay“

http://www.exeterexpressandecho.co.uk/lib-dems-condemn-24-000-pay-rise-for-devon-and-somerset-enterprise-chief/story-30069142-detail/story.html

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

17 Jan 2017

Posted under

Accountability, Austerity cuts, DCC, Democracy, Devolution, EDDC, Local Enterprise Partnership, Paul Diviani, Scrutiny, Sleaze, Transparency

Comments

1 Comment

That 26% payrise for LEP chief: neither Devon nor Somerset County Councils could stop it

So, here we are: Somerset County Council theoretically holds the purse strings – except it obviously doesn’t! There is no scrutiny or transparency, no way of stopping this juggernaut that we have never been consulted about.

AND we have no way of knowing how Diviani voted – the LEP doesn’t release such information.

“Chris Garcia, chief executive of the Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP), could see his pay jump nearly 27% from £90,729 to £115,000. [This was agreed today with the two councils objecting].

“Somerset council leader John Osman said: “The pay of £90,000 is already too much so I believe it should be at least 10% less than that.”

The LEP has declined to comment.

The LEP covers the Somerset, Devon, Torbay and Plymouth council areas.

‘Cannot afford 25%’

The pay rise is being proposed by board members who are councillors, lawyers, and business leaders.

“I’m sorry to say that in the public sector we are not about giving 25% pay rises – even if you are very good at your job, we cannot afford 25%,” added Mr Osman.

LEPs are partnerships between businesses and local authorities, which were set up in 2011 by the coalition government.

Their aim is to grow the local economy and support businesses in the region.
“The budget of the LEP itself, operationally, is £1.6m. It has four full-time members of staff and a few others who work part-time.

“If you’re comparing it to how I come up with my council salaries and how the NHS has to come up with their salaries, you will find that this position is overpaid for such a small budget and such small numbers of staff,” said Mr Osman.

Both Somerset County Council and Devon County Council representatives are expected to vote against the proposals at the meeting being held later.”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-38648435

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

17 Jan 2017

Posted under

Accountability, Democracy, Health and Social Care (local), NHS (local), Scrutiny, Sleaze, Transparency

Comments

3 Comments

Who guards the guards who guard the guarded guards?

From Save Our Hospital Services Facebook page:

“Question: The Case for Change document on which both the so-called ‘Success Regime’ and the STP are based was produced by a private-owned health service consultancy, Carnall Farrar which received £335,000 in consultancy fees

Is this the same company of which Dame Ruth Carnall is a founding partner and who is now the ‘independent Chair of the so-called ‘Success Regime’?”

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

6 Jan 2017

Posted under

Accountability, EDBF, EDDC, Lobbying, Scrutiny, Sleaze, Spin

Dirty lobbying

We do it the other way around in East Devon – we gave a senior officer to a lobbying group viz former EDDC Economic Development Officer Nigel Harrison who was offered up as Secretary to the East Devon Business Forum (a group of local developers under the Chairmanship of disgraced ex-Tory councillor Graham Brown) AND EDDC paid all its expenses!

“Whitehall’s lobbying tsar has launched an inquiry into concerns that informal parliamentary groups set up by MPs and peers are being used to bypass lobbying rules.

Alison White, the registrar of consultant lobbyists, has interviewed officials from all-party parliamentary groups (APPGs) after receiving reports that lobbyists are acting as secretaries to gain access to legislators.

The inquiry comes after a growth in the number of APPGs, which are allowed use of the Palace of Westminster’s catering facilities and can invite senior ministers and civil servants for meetings with donors.

There are more than 550 APPGs, which exist to help MPs and peers discuss major issues of the day, according to the parliamentary register. The groups have received more than £5.4m in external funding since the beginning of 2015. …

…Private firms and individuals can sponsor APPGs to help pay for “secretariat services”, trips abroad or reports. Any APPG is allowed to include a secretariat from an outside body, and it is this position that can be easily abused, according to White.

There are more than 200 people or organisations listed as secretariats for APPGs who are not registered on the register of consultant lobbyists, which requires that meetings with ministers or permanent secretaries be disclosed. White believes some APPG secretariats may be breaking this rule. White is planning to issue advice to all organisations that offer specialist services to APPGs later this month.” …

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jan/06/lobbying-inquiry-registrar-parliamentary-secretaries

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

3 Jan 2017

Posted under

Accountability, Democracy, Health and Social Care (local), Hugo Swire, Neil Parish, NHS (local), Scrutiny, Sleaze, Spin, Transparency

Could this sort of protest persuade our Tory MPs to back the NHS?

Conspiracy theorists and fake news enthusiasts are already saying that this was organised to make Trump look good – hhhm! And can we see parallels here – nationally and locally?

“WASHINGTON ―

After a torrent of bad headlines, countless phone calls to member offices, and two tweets from President-elect Donald Trump, House Republicans dropped their plans to gut the Office of Congressional Ethics Tuesday, just minutes before the House was set to gavel in for the 115th Congress and adopt their rules package for the next two years.

The amendment ― authored by Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) ― would have placed the independent congressional ethics office under the oversight of the House Ethics Committee, changed the OCE’s name and barred the office from releasing reports to the public. In effect, it would have neutered Congress’ most aggressive watchdog.

The decision to strip the Goodlatte amendment came just before noon on Tuesday as Republicans planned to begin the 115th Congress. Earlier in the day, responding to numerous news reports about Republicans gutting the OCE, Trump asked in a tweet whether Republicans really had to make the “weakening” of the ethics office their first order of business, though he also didn’t necessarily come out against the idea of eventually overhauling the OCE.

Ethics groups were quick to criticize House Republicans for the effort. A coalition of groups including the Campaign for Accountability, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the League of Women Voters sent a letter to House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Tuesday calling for the reauthorization of the OCE.

Several other groups, including the conservative Judicial Watch, called the move “shameful.” The nonpartisan group Common Cause even pointed out that exactly 11 years ago, lobbyist Jack Abramoff ― whose crimes helped lead to the creation of the OCE ― pleaded guilty to charges including fraud conspiracy and tax evasion. (Abramoff told Politico Tuesday that Republican’s efforts to gut the ethics watchdog are “exactly the opposite of what Congress should be doing.”)

Members reported that they had started getting a flood of phone calls from constituents concerned that Congress was neutering a key ethics watchdog.

“The calls we’ve gotten in my district office and here in Washington has surprised me, meaning the number of calls,” said Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.), who noted before the amendment was stripped that he would vote against the rules package if it remained in the measure. “People are just sick and tired.”

Some Republicans, including South Carolina Reps. Trey Gowdy and Mark Sanford, were reporting Tuesday that they would vote against the typically party-line rules package.

Facing public pressure and an internal mutiny, GOP leadership called a special meeting and told Republicans they needed to strip the OCE amendment.

Leaders told members they would instead work with Democrats to come up with a proposal to reform the OCE before the August recess, though a number of Republicans were unsatisfied by the promise.

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) said he would now work to completely abolish the Office of Congressional Ethics, citing concerns over anonymous whistleblowers making accusations against members and the OCE leaking information to the press.

Asked to provide an example of the OCE leaking information to the press, King failed to come up with one and got testy.

“Just google it,” he said.

Pelosi issued a statement after the amendment was dropped, noting the “clear contempt for ethics in the People’s House” that she said Republicans showed with their plan.

“Once again, the American people have seen the toxic dysfunction of a Republican House that will do anything to further their special interest agenda, thwart transparency and undermine the public trust,” she added. “Republicans should remember the strength of public outrage they faced in the space of 12 hours as they scheme to do lasting damage to the health and economic security of millions and millions of hard-working families.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/house-republicans-ethics_us_586bdb14e4b0de3a08f99e66?