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Mr. Dobson: There is a great deal of truth in what my hon. Friend says.
To give some idea of the preposterous nature of the ranking by which Westminster is placed fourth in the scale of deprivation, Rotherham--which has suffered severely from steelwork closures and engineering work closures in the past few years--is 284th in that scale of deprivation, and it is obviously a preposterous and unjustifiable position. Not only members of the Labour party say that.
Ministers claim that the list was produced independently, but it was nothing of the sort. It is produced in the Department of the Environment. Ministers have claimed that it has been accepted by the local authority associations. It has been accepted by them because they have no alternative, but they do not believe that it is right. Above all, the chief executive of Westminster--except that he has some other fancy title-- has acknowledged that Westminster gets £20 million more than it is entitled to.
Westminster gets special allowances for the number of visitors who come in each day, but it also gets in a year about £20 million from those self-same visitors by way of parking charges. For some reason, the parking charges are not offset against the extra grants the council receives because of the number of visitors. That is basically a racket. That leads to a third consequence, directly related to what the district auditor investigates.
According to the figures on the cost of providing services in Westminster, it is the most profligate, expensive and inefficient council in Britain. For example, refuse collection costs £53 per head in Westminster. I shall compare not Westminster with St. Helens or Scunthorpe, but with Camden, which is next door and is exposed to roughly the same inflation and higher costs that are incurred in central London. Camden's refuse collection costs £24 per head of population. Westminster spends £36 per head on street cleaning--the highest in the country. Camden spends £14.42.
Another matter of great importance is the administration of benefits. Westminster manages to pay housing benefit within 14 days to 66 per cent. of the people who apply, and that costs £226 per transaction in administrative costs. Camden, next door, manages to pay out within 14 days to 95 per cent. of the people who apply, at a cost of just £104 per transaction. Camden is 50 per cent. more efficient--at less than half the cost-- than Westminster. That shows how profligate and inefficient Westminster is. All those matters concern the audit service, nationally or locally.
But I come back to the main issue of the scandals in Westminster. Far from taking action on the scandals in Westminster--the misapplication of £106 million--the Government have done nothing. Far from condemning the wrongdoing in Westminster, the Government have done nothing.
Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours (Workington):
My hon. Friend might recall that I was the original objector in the late 1980s to the sale of the cemeteries by Westminster, and I went to the district auditor. One matter that concerns me arising out of the affair is the way that Mr. Magill was
It would be good if we could enshrine in legislation some form of protection for public servants who diligently do a job even when they are faced with the kind of attacks that Mr. Magill suffered, particularly from Lady Porter.
Mr. Dobson:
I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. In particular, I commend him for the distinguished part that he has played in attempting to bring Westminster council to book. As an objector, he may know that, far from toughening up the law and strengthening the hand of objectors to prevent a recurrence of what has happened in Westminster, the Government are excluding Westminster from their investigation of the role of objectors and the functions of the audit service. The Government are studying every council and every audit service in the country except Westminster.
Mr. Paul Boateng (Brent, South):
Bar one.
Mr. Dobson:
As my hon. Friend says, they are investigating all bar one. Their official report says:
It continues:
My hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) and other people who had to pay the poll tax or the council tax in Westminster raised formal objections. As I have explained, the district auditor is now investigating the wrongful misuse of more than
£100 million of ordinary people's money.
It makes every other financial scandal that has ever occurred in English local government pale into total insignificance. Such figures have never been bandied about. What happened, the length of time it continued and the obstruction by officers and elected councillors in Westminster demonstrated just how much the audit service needs to be strengthened.
There have been five major scandals. In any other council, the other scandals would be major ones, but in Westminster there have been five major scandals. There was the "homes for votes" scandal in 1987-89. Originally, the district auditor said that it had cost £21 million. Lady Porter and her friends objected to the quantum of
£21 million, and, having looked again at the matter, the district auditor agreed that £21 million was the wrong quantum, and that in fact £29 million had been lost.
The next item was the second part of the "homes for votes" scandal, between 1989 and 1994, involving losses of another £21 million. Then there was the council's failure to collect service charges and to bill many new leaseholders. It cost £13 million. Councillors knowingly did not collect service charges, because it might upset the voters. They knew that it was wrong. They were advised by their lawyers and finance officers that it was wrong, but they still persisted, and they are now being investigated.
There was also an indemnity and abatement scheme that was intended to help leaseholders, at a cost of
£18 million. The district auditor is investigating whether the council even had the power to start an indemnity and abatement scheme.
The final scandal, which has cost a great deal of money and will cost more, was the absolutely scandalous decision to put homeless families into life-threatening, asbestos-ridden tower blocks. That was totally unjustified, and, once again, against the advice of the council officers.
In case anybody should think that is the sum total of the scandals in Westminster, I shall whizz through the others, as they would represent enormous sums of money for any other council. There was the scandal of the property disposal of Cheylesmore house--costing
£3.5 million--and the Ambrosden hostel--costing
£2.5 million; a scandal involving Monck street and Bishop's Bridge road cost another £1 million; the famous cemeteries reacquisition cost £3.5 million; MRS redundancy costs when Westminster privatised some of its services were £1.5 million; and what were described as "Quality of Life initiatives" and were probably unlawful cost £5 million. Some £1.5 million of local taxpayers' money was spent on propaganda in the run-up to the 1990 election, and another £400,000 was spent on consultants. Other capital grants, which may very well be unlawful, cost another £3.5 million.
On any other council, those would be absolutely momentous items of wrongdoing and misexpenditure, but they pale into insignificance compared with the really major scandals in Westminster.
One of the problems is that the inquiry has been extremely protracted. That is because the inquiry has been extremely obstructed, both by those who were charged with losses and by present councillors and council officers, who are trying to protect those who have been charged.
At one stage, the district auditor was told that some of the most important papers could not be found. They had been issued to a dozen or more people, but not one example of them could be found. The district auditor resorted to a dawn raid on some of the offices. Lo and behold, he found the papers. It was a bad mistake on the part of those who were trying to put him off, because he picked up as well many other papers that he did not know existed. I understand that the other papers were extremely illuminating, and put the council in an even worse light.
I am told that obstruction of the sort that I have described is not an offence under current law. If it is not, it clearly should be. I cannot believe that anyone disagrees with me on that.
It is clear also that both council members and officers have repeatedly lied to the district auditor during his investigations. It seems that, if individuals have said things that are plainly contrary to the written evidence
of what happened at meetings or to written advice--for example, people saying that they were given legal advice that they could do something and that advice, when examined, revealing that they were told that they could not do what they wanted--that should also be an offence. There may be genuine difficulty in recollecting exactly what happened, but plain lying to the auditor should be an offence.
Enormous costs have accrued. The district auditor has had to run up an enormous bill in carrying out his work. The council is running up enormous bills in trying to obstruct him.
The obstruction has not stopped: as recently as 21 November, the district auditor complained to the council that it was not supplying him with material on the notorious cemeteries sale. He is investigating the council's decision to bring a legal action against its previous legal advisers on the sale. It claims that it has been wrongly advised by its legal advisers.
The decision to spend money trying to initiate a legal action against the council's previous legal advisers was against the legal advice of those advising the council when it took that decision--in other words, another lot of legal advisers. That is clearly a waste of public funds.
In other areas, Labour councillors had been told that, if they, against the advice of council officers, turn down applications for opencast coal mining against legal advice--this turns on certain principles that have been laid down in earlier cases--they will lay themselves open to surcharge. What is sauce for the Labour goose must be sauce for the Tory gander at Westminster.
The unique feature of the Westminster case has been the spending of public funds to mount political campaigns of vilification against the auditor, simply because he has been doing the job that Parliament gave him. The case is unique in another respect, because Members have been involved in it up to their ears from the start. That includes Cabinet Ministers, former Cabinet Ministers, current occupants of the Government Front Bench, Members who were on that Front Bench, and Back-Bench Members. They have all been involved as Members or councillors throughout the piece. That is one explanation why they are reluctant to criticise what has been going on.
For instance, councillors tried to get the official press officer of Westminster to plant hostile stories against the district auditor in the news media. They made a fatuous charge, and wanted to blame the district auditor for not stopping them not collecting the service charges. The problem with that charge is that the district auditor is on record repeatedly telling them that they were breaking the law in not collecting the service charges, so it is another lie.
It is quite clear, and it is becoming clearer, that that council knowingly moved homeless families into blocks that were known to be dangerously riddled with asbestos. The council has still produced no apologies. An independent inquiry was carried out, and a report is due to be published, but people familiar with Westminster council are becoming more and more concerned that the report may not be published.
The Minister here today has responsibility for housing--we know that he is excluded from all other things--in Westminster as well as the rest of the country,
and this is a housing issue. I challenge him today to tell the House that he will insist on receiving a copy of the report, either as a Tory Member of Parliament or as Minister--I do not mind which--and to undertake to place it in the Library of the House, so that this wrongdoing and the official inquiry into it is not hidden away. I will give way if he is willing to get up and give that undertaking, but I can see that he is not giving any sign that he will do so--the usual thing.
It is a matter for the audit service and the Audit Commission, but I also think that it is a matter for the Health and Safety Commission, the police and the Director of Public Prosecutions. I have therefore written today to ask the DPP, the police and the Health and Safety Executive to investigate the scandal of people who knowingly moved children, women and men into places that were known to be dangerously contaminated with asbestos.
It is my view that, before the asbestos scandal arose, Westminster had dragged London politics into the gutter. It has now got it down into the septic tank. There is no excuse for anyone knowingly endangering the lives of other people's families. That is what it did.
"The study will exclude Westminster City Council which has already been the subject of a separate inquiry"--
they can say that again--
"following objections to the council's 'designated sales policy' in relation to housing."
That is an inadequate description. There have been objectors and objections to about another 25 items of expenditure.
"The Department wishes to avoid the high profile and significant costs of this case from distorting the results of the current project, which will focus on the generality of cases.".
I bet it will focus on the generality of cases. The last thing they want it to do is focus on what has gone wrong in Westminster when they have done nothing about it for so many years.
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