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4.43 pm
Mr. Ken Livingstone (Brent, East): I apologise in advance because I fear that I shall have to speak at some length. When I learned about this debate I realised that it gave me a chance to bring together several issues that I have raised, many of them when you, Madam Deputy Speaker, had the misfortune to be in the Chair. For that reason you may recognise some of the issues. Sadly, I cannot say that these matters have been resolved. I shall do my best to be brief, but hon. Members will see that I have a pile of papers about 9 in high from which I have extracted half an inch. If I were to go through my entire file on corruption in Brent council I fear that we would soon run out of time.
It is quite opportune that this debate is taking place today because yesterday members of Brent council were able to get round the most extraordinary conditions imposed on them, as reported by my hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson). Of course, completely ignoring the nonsense of forbidding the council to talk to anybody else, I immediately met members of the council, asked to see the report and shall now report its conclusions to the House since every attempt is being made to prevent that from being done.
Before I start down that route, I should like to support the comments of the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Smith). No one is suggesting that corruption solely concerns one party. There have been corrupt Labour councillors and corrupt Labour councils. There is corruption in all parties. The issue before the House is whether we are sufficiently engaged in rooting it out, not only among our opponents but on our own side, and whether we are interested in a district auditor having the powers to be able to react much more swiftly than has been the case.
Events surrounding occasions on which corruption has occurred--in both major parties--have tended to drag on for months. Now it is becoming the norm that they drag on for years--usually beyond the next election. The issues of corruption in Westminster between 1986 and 1990 may not be resolved until the next century. That is absolutely bizarre.
Therefore, in all that I say about Brent council--I am restricting myself to Brent council--I do not for one minute suggest that corruption is simply and solely a problem only of the Conservative party. I went to the Metropolitan fraud squad and asked it to investigate four Labour councillors on Brent council almost a decade ago. I regret the fact that the Metropolitan fraud squad was unable to find sufficient evidence to proceed, because I had not the slightest doubt that there was a real case to answer.
The problem with the Bill, as much as everyone welcomes it and will vote for it, is that it will not really help root out corruption. What I have discovered in
endless sessions with Price Waterhouse and Co., the current auditors for Brent council, the district auditor, who was the council's auditor until recently, the Metropolitan police fraud squad, and in other communications with the charity commissioners and everybody else, is that there is not one body with which one can raise a concern which has the whole range of powers to get in there and sort it out quickly.
I have not the slightest doubt that corruption relating to public officials, whether councillors or Members of Parliament, and however small the sums of money, is more damaging than corruption in the private sector, because it corrupts the whole structure of government and the public perception of it. When people get away with corruption, the way is opened for people who want to get involved in politics in order to enrich themselves.
Therefore, I would like an audit service with almost a subsidiary police department that would be able to haul such people in for some pretty grim questioning and to keep them in custody, without any right of silence or legal representation, until the issue is resolved. A much tougher standard should apply to public figures than to the general public. When one volunteers to enter public life, one should be prepared to accept and work under such a constraint.
Given the amount of time that the Government spent investigating what went on at the Greater London council without ever finding any discrepancy or anything on which they could proceed, I make it clear that I had no objection to the work of the GLC being investigated and took considerable pride in the fact that nothing was ever produced to stain its 1981-85 administration.
I turn to the Ad Shop and the scandal on Brent council. I have tabled two early-day motions that summarise the report. It is a vast and bulky report which, in the way that it has been presented, has attempted to intimidate councillors and therefore prevent them from raising its contents. How bizarre!
The loss of £400,000 of public money by one small council department comes to light, and an independent police officer is appointed to investigate it. He conducts a detailed investigation and produces an enormous report-- pretty much the size of a substantial English dictionary-- yet it is not then given to councillors so that they can discuss it openly. Instead, the leader of council, Councillor Blackman, insists that it is dealt with in the closed session of the council meeting. He insisted that it was given to Securicor to distribute. Presumably, Securicor staff turned up with their helmets and batons in case the councillors turned nasty. Securicor was told by Councillor Blackman, "You cannot give it to the councillors until they have signed an undertaking that they will not talk about it to anybody"--including local Members of Parliament--"otherwise they will be at risk." There were all sorts of threats.
The report is printed on bright red paper so that it cannot be photocopied. To be doubly certain, every sheet of the report, which is several inches thick, has the name of the councillor receiving it woven into the paper. Can hon. Members imagine the cost of producing a report on that basis, in an attempt to suppress debate? It will not work because the report says that the allegations about corruption are true. It says that the Ad Shop, the semi-privatised section of Brent council that placed adverts and recruited staff, managed to lose £400,000.
Why cannot the auditor investigate that? Why does Brent council have to go outside the normal audit service and, at additional expense, bring in a former police officer to investigate it?
Councillor Buckley, who was the chair of the Brent Business Board and therefore directly responsible for the Ad Shop, had what is now called "a clear and substantial non-pecuniary interest" in respect of Ruth Jackson, the officer concerned. I understand that, in Private Eye, it is to replace the concept of "Ugandan conversations".
The affair was reported to the chief executive-- a change in local government procedure of which I was not aware. Apparently, when a councillor has an affair with a council officer it is one's duty, under the national code of conduct, to report that matter to the chief executive. The affair was reported to the chief executive in November 1993, a month after it began. Therefore, we must ask whether the chief executive told the leader of the council about the affair and whether he warned the councillor concerned that it would be unwise of him to chair meetings dealing with the particular area of council business where he had a personal involvement with a member of staff.
Now, the district auditor is to be called in. The former police officer, Derek Owen, says that he has found
£23,800 of the expenditure--out of the £400,000 that has been lost--and which has been spent on alcohol, lunches and flying the entire department to Schiphol international airport, where it hired the VIP lounge for a one-hour business meeting of the department. We can only imagine what would have happened if Lambeth council had done that. Conservative Members would have been very unhappy. Of course, there could be no justification for any council doing that. I hope that the district auditor, even with the present limited powers, will investigate the matter and, if it is necessary, issue a surcharge.
The report shows that at every stage Councillor Buckley intervened to try to prevent the matter from coming to light. He had the support of the leader of the council, Councillor Blackman, who was complicit at every stage.
The final devastating point is that the report concludes that the problem arose because of the drive to privatise everything without proper thought and planning. I shall directly quote the report as it is another matter that should be investigated. It is clear that it has incurred considerable losses for the council, not just the Ad Shop. The report states that the drive to privatise Brent council into 170 separate business units was flawed by
I hope that, as the auditor begins his investigation, other hon. Members on both sides of the House will sign the early-day motion calling on Councillor Blackman to ensure that the matter is debated in public and that both he and Councillor Buckley do not vote on an issue for which they clearly have a direct responsibility.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Janet Fookes):
Order. Before the hon. Gentleman continues, I should point out that we are debating the Second Reading of a
"the failure . . . to implement a sound infrastructure in support of the business units from inception, coupled to an almost total lack of positive or effective monitoring"
and that this
"was the primary cause of the Ad Shop's demise and subsequent closure."
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