A farce at Wirral Council’s public question time (Act 2, Scene 1) Is Wirral Council “open and transparent”?

A farce at Wirral Council’s public question time (Act 2, Scene 1) Is Wirral Council “open and transparent”?

A farce at Wirral Council’s public question time (Act 2, Scene 1) Is Wirral Council “open and transparent”?

                                                                

A question on councillors expenses to Cllr Adrian Jones Wirral Council 14th December 2015
A question on councillors expenses to Cllr Adrian Jones Wirral Council 14th December 2015

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Wirral Council’s Public Question Time 14th December 2015

Before I write about the question I asked of Councillor Adrian Jones at public question time, I am going to explain some of the legal background, what’s happened so far and why there are echoes of the extreme lengths that the former Speaker of the House of Commons Michael Martin went to over MPs’ expenses.

There are a number of different laws (and a bit of history) here that apply to this, so I am going to start by explaining my understanding of them and explain why Cllr Adrian Jones has unfortunately fallen into the trap of believing things officers tell him and also getting bamboozled by some of the legal jargon. Here is a link to a transcript of a previous answer he gave.

I’m a local government elector here on the Wirral (basically that means I get to vote in elections to Wirral Council).

Each year, during the audit there is a period of about three weeks when local government electors have a legal right to inspect and receive free copies of accounts to be audited and copies of all books, deeds, contracts, bills, vouchers and receipts relating to them.

Wirral Council can remove any details of employees, but has to seek the external auditor’s permission (in this case Grant Thornton) to remove anything else.

This is detailed in this piece of legislation Audit Commission Act 1998, s.15.

Once the inspection period ends, there is then a period when questions can be asked of the auditor followed by a period when formal objections can be raised or requests for a public interest report.

In case Wirral Council thinks I’m picking on it, this year I made requests to Merseytravel (part of the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority), Merseyside Waste Disposal Authority (also called Merseyside Recycling and Waste Authority), Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority and Liverpool City Council.

Each of those other bodies managed to respond and provide the information for inspection more or less within the inspection period.

Two of these authorities (Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority and Merseyside Waste Disposal Authority) provided some of what I requested in electronic format.

For example this one contract that MFRA (Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority) has that comes to over 11,000 A4 pages I could’ve requested in paper format, but didn’t as I was quite happy to receive it on one DVD as opposed to three large boxes of paperwork. The £1.2 billion contract that Merseyside Waste Disposal Authority provided is over 800 pages long.

Wirral Council however decided that providing me with what I’d estimate at 10% of what I asked for was reasonable. It’s not!

These other public bodies I refer to are much smaller (in terms of staff and budget) than Wirral Council, yet by being flexible saved to give the example as outlined above the internal costs of copying a contract of over 11,000 pages in length. Had I requested such a contract from Wirral Council I would still be waiting as they would insist on supplying it in paper format!

So getting back to what I did request. I requested the 44 page contract that Wirral Council has for providing taxi services to councillors, the Highway Services Contract with BAM Nuttall (you can read the first 83 pages here) Wirral Council spend roughly £5 to £6 million a year on this and the contract variations to the Biffa contract (I’m still waiting for the latter).

In addition to this I requested various invoices and to inspect the councillors’ expenses (I haven’t seen any of the latter and received about one in ten of the former).

To give an example of some of the invoices I requested, it answered the details of Wirral Council spending ~£7.2 million on agency staff/consultants as opposed to hiring to these positions. It showed that in one case Wirral Council made a senior member of staff redundant, then hired agency staff (at a vastly increased cost) to do their job. You can view some of the invoices relating to that here.

There are other categories of public expenditure that I requested from Wirral Council that are in the public’s interest to know about too.

Indeed, Wirral Council’s Cabinet itself has referred to this blog in its decision making. The accompanying report to the decision refers to the lease for the New Brighton Marine Point development at 2.5 which was published on this blog.

By reversing this decision Wirral Council saved ’thousands in the costs of perhaps adding an extra hour to the next Highways and Traffic Representation Panel public meeting, the cost of it then going on the agenda of the next Regeneration and Environment Policy and Performance Committee public meeting and the cost of a Cabinet Member finally making a decision (along with the associated costs of officers trying to persuade objectors to drop their objections).

I might point out that as I put this information in the public domain had Cabinet reversed their decision at an earlier stage the costs of consultation on the proposed traffic regulation order (an expensive public notice in the local newspaper etc) would have been saved too.

However going back to councillors’ expenses. As I have not seen any councillors’ expenses for 2014/15, my question to Cllr Adrian Jones must be classed as a request to exercise this legal right (The Local Authorities (Members’ Allowances) (England) Regulations 2003, regulation 15 to inspect such documents.

I do not like having to ask twice! Cllr Adrian Jones as far as I remember in his answer stated that these amounts were included in the annually published list both in answer to my question this week and earlier this year.

I would suspect that councillors’ use of taxis would be broadly comparable from year to year. So let’s test Cllr Adrian Jones’ assertion.

In response to this FOI request the taxi bill in 13/14 was ~£3k and Cllr Adrian Jones confirmed in answer to my question that for the 14/15 financial year the total cost was roughly the same.

Here are three councillors that got taxis in 13/14 and the costs:

Cllr Moira McLaughlin £755.30
Cllr Pat Hackett £700
Cllr Steve Niblock £493.90

Had anyone of those stopped getting taxis at Wirral Council’s expense the total amount for 14/15 would’ve dropped dramatically.

Yet here are the relevant amounts from the 2014/15 published list:

Cllr Moira McLaughlin £NIL
Cllr Pat Hackett £NIL
Cllr Steve Niblock £NIL

If these three councillors had all decided to give up getting taxis and the £NIL amounts were correct (the latter point Cllr Adrian Jones states in answer to my question) then the total amount would drop by ~£2k (the combined total of all three). However it hasn’t!

You can see the full exchange between myself and Cllr Adrian Jones below.

Cllr Ron Abbey (who is a member of Wirral Council’s Audit and Risk Management Committee) makes the point before Cllr Adrian Jones that it is implied that this is unlawful and isn’t that terrible to imply such a thing?

If Wirral Council is as strongly suspected from what is outlined above publishing incorrect figures, then it is breaching breach of The Local Authorities (Members’ Allowances) (England) Regulations 2003, Regulation 15(3).

Clearly as clearly outlined above, had Wirral Council not flouted a number of its other legal responsibilities I would be able to answer that question and Wirral Council’s cultural attitudes towards its legal responsibilities continue to have the effect of interfering with the freedom of the press and triggering the Streisand effect.

Councillor Adrian Jones makes the point that councillors are trusted not to misuse the public purse paying for their taxis.

Below is a claim form (as I’m being seasonal) from one of Cllr Adrian Jones’ party colleagues, a Councillor Peter Brennan (a councillor at Liverpool City Council) who claimed from Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority (and was paid for) £5.64 for car mileage expenses to and from a carol concert at St Nicholas’ Church. In the grand scheme of things you may point out that £5.64 doesn’t matter and at least he didn’t get a taxi! However it’s the cumulative cost to the public purse of these matters and the excessive secrecy at Wirral Council that is leading to suspicion as to why despite Cllr Adrian Jones’ claims about openness and transparency that at Wirral Council they are being anything but on this politically sensitive topic!

Cllr Peter Brennan car mileage claim November 2014 to February 2015 page 1 of 2 thumbnail
Cllr Peter Brennan car mileage claim November 2014 to February 2015 page 1 of 2 thumbnail

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MFRA Chair Cllr Hanratty wants to “move on” on issue of councillors’ expenses

MFRA Chair Cllr Hanratty wants to “move on” on issue of councillors’ expenses

MFRA Chair Cllr Hanratty wants to “move on” on issue of councillors’ expenses

                                                                

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Video of the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority meeting starting at the agenda item on the delegation

Cllr Dave Hanratty (on the right) speaking at a meeting of the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority 20th October 2015
Cllr Dave Hanratty (on the right) speaking at a meeting of the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority 20th October 2015

Here’s an exchange between myself and the Chair of the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority Cllr Dave Hanratty at a public meeting of the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority today.

The reference to note 29 which is part of the statement of accounts for 2014/15 is below.

29. Members’ Allowances

The Authority comprises of 18 councillors from the 5 districts of Merseyside. The total allowances paid to members within the year were:

  2014/15 2013/14
£000 £000
Allowances 225 239
Expenses 14 23
239 262
         

The amounts reported to the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority AGM in June 2015 are in this table here show allowances of £213,690.44 (total of the first eight columns) and expenses of £7,708.34 (total of scale subsist, trav & subsist, overnight & mileage columns).


JOHN BRACE: Earlier this year, on the 11th June, the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority met. Agenda item 9 (Members Allowance Payments), included a table of allowance and expense payments for councillors on the MFRA for the previous financial year (2014£15).

The report that accompanied the table referred to the regulations. They require publication each year of the amounts paid out under the Members Allowance Scheme for each councillor in the categories of basic allowance, special responsibility allowance, dependants’ carers’ allowance, travelling and subsistence allowance and co-optees’ allowance.

However the expenses in that table only included amounts claimed back by councillors through expense claims. That table did not include amounts where the MFRA was invoiced directly for travel and accommodation expenses rather than councillors being reimbursed. These amounts where MFRA were invoiced directly total around six thousand pounds.

The regulations however require the table to include all payments made under the Members Allowance Scheme irrespective of whether they are paid directly by MFRA or claimed back by councillors using expense claims.

The table of figures for allowances reported to the AGM on the 11th June also didn’t include the employer National Insurance costs of £10,151.59p paid on the allowances.

Ultimately councillors are accountable to the people of Merseyside, so what reassurances can you give that next time the figures are published for 2015/16 that they will reflect the actual cost of councillors’ allowances and expenses?

CLLR DAVE HANRATTY (CHAIR): OK, thank you Mr. Brace. I understand that there’s been a number of email exchanges between yourself and officers of the Authority to explain to you the breakdown of the cost of how they’ve been calculated. Is that correct?

JOHN BRACE: Yes, there have been emails between us.

CLLR DAVE HANRATTY (CHAIR): I also understand that this has been shared with the District Auditor? Is that correct?

JOHN BRACE: Grant Thornton, yes.

CLLR DAVE HANRATTY (CHAIR): I also understand that this has been approved the way the finances have been reported to the Authority, it has been found it’s been confirmed, there has never been an issue with that? They’ve accepted the way it’s been calculated, the way it’s reported.

JOHN BRACE: They accepted the note in the Statement of Accounts includes the amounts I’ve referred to yes.

CLLR DAVE HANRATTY (CHAIR): Well in that case Mr. Brace I think you’ve received the response from the Authority and that’s been sufficient. OK?

Just before we finish on that, I know that the government have brought in freedom of information and it’s open to the public to ask questions about documents of the Authority, but what I would say is that because of the diminished resources that the Authority now finds itself in, I think when you look at the time that officers and resources are given to individuals who according to the Authority are asking for certain information, I think they need to consider the impact this has on the Service, on the officers? time and also on our financial resources and this shouldn’t be for somebody’s pastime or for somebody’s hobby when you think about the financial situation that we find ourselves in and I think the Authority needs to examine this and maybe report back to the appropriate minister about maybe if circumstances may be open to abuse.

I’m not happy with that myself, we’ve got a lot of demands within the Service, within the Authority and I don’t want any officers’ time being wasted by somebody coming in just to fill their own pastime. I think it’s absolutely appalling and I think there’s something that should be done about it.

So on that point, I think that the deputation should just be noted and we’ll move on.


As Cllr Hanratty refers to Grant Thornton’s approval of the way the figures are presented in the Statement of Accounts, I thought it best to include the only two emails from Grant Thornton to myself on this in full here.


      

11th September 2015 email from Grant Thornton

Dear Mr Brace

Thank you for your email, the contents of which are noted.

I have forwarded your email to ‎Mike Thomas who is the Director responsible for our audit of Merseyside Fire & Rescue Service. Mike will respond to you in due course.

Yours sincerely


15th September 2015 email from Grant Thornton

Dear Mr Brace

I have been copied into your email regarding the queries you have raised with Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority regarding members expenses. In the first instance this is a matter for the Authority to deal with and to respond to you. My staff are aware of the issue and will keep in touch with MFRA regarding this matter. Hopefully this can be resolved very quickly in the next couple of days.

Yours sincerely,


In other words the issue of whether the correct figures were used in the table for the AGM meeting was never addressed by Grant Thornton (at least in emails to me) which Grant Thornton said was a matter for the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority.


This is what MFRA’s Treasurer stated in an email on the 16th September 2015.

Mr Brace,
        With regard to items B) and C), the Statement of Accounts disclosure of £14k for expenses, as allowed per the CIPFA CODE of Practice, informs the reader of the accounts of the total gross non-employee costs associated with supporting the governance/member service. It goes beyond the disclosure required under legislation and therefore exceeds the £7k reported in the AGM.

        I have explained this to the Authority/s Auditors Grant Thornton and they are satisfied with this explanation.

CIPFA CODE of practice – Final Accounts
 
Members’ Allowances (5)
I77 Authorities are required to disclose the totals of members/ allowances (and expenses) paid in the year …. Authorities in England and Wales might consider whether it would be helpful to provide the wider disclosures in order to give a full picture of the amounts received by members.

Yours

Ian Cummins

Treasurer
Merseyside Fire & Rescue Authority
Headquarters
Bridle Road
Bootle
Merseyside
L30 4YD


However look closely at the table reported to the AGM and you/ll find nothing in the travel and subsistence column for Cllr Newman. Below is a two page invoice for taxi expenses for Cllr Newman.

Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority councillors expenses page 47 Cabfind.com Cllr Ted Grannell £13 80 Cllr Newman £25
Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority councillors expenses page 47 Cabfind.com Cllr Ted Granell £13 80 Cllr Newman £25
Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority councillors expenses page 48 Cabfind.com Cllr Newman £22 Cllr Newman £22
Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority councillors expenses page 48 Cabfind.com Cllr Newman £22 Cllr Newman £22

And yes, that/s only £69+VAT of the ~£6k. The other 47 pages of this information not included in the expenses figure for councillors at the MFRA AGM are here.

In fact the report on the figures to the AGM states “It is important to note that these are reimbursements for time and expenses incurred by Members, and are not payments in relation to travel and event bookings made directly by MFRA.”

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Rt Hon Frank Field MP asks for report on The Hive

Rt Hon Frank Field MP asks for report on The Hive

Rt Hon Frank Field MP asks for report on The Hive

                                          

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The video above is of the Birkenhead Constituency Committee meeting held on the 8th October 2015 (public question and answer agenda item). The video should start at the point I asked a question which is at the 36 minutes 17 seconds mark.

Rt Hon Frank Field MP (Chair) and Ken Abraham (solicitor (Wirral Council)) at the meeting of the Birkenhead Constituency Committee on the 8th October 2015
Rt Hon Frank Field MP (Chair) and Ken Abraham (solicitor (Wirral Council)) at the meeting of the Birkenhead Constituency Committee on the 8th October 2015

Below is a copy of my question for the Birkenhead Constituency Committee. I submitted it on the 18th September 2015 for its meeting on the 24th September 2015. However the 24th September 2015 meeting was then cancelled and rearranged to the 8th October 2015.


  

The Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority decided recently to transfer the land by Birkenhead fire station to Wirral Council for a Youth Zone which will be called The Hive.

I also discovered that councillors on Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority were receiving their allowances in full, but the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority was paying any tax or National Insurance due (an arrangement costing Merseyside council taxpayers an extra £10,820.28p). These amounts for tax were not deducted from the allowances they received but instead were paid by the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority.

Could the Birkenhead Constituency Committee:

a) give an update on progress on the expected timescales for the Youth Zone called “The Hive”

and

b) explain why some councillors are paying payroll taxes directly out of their allowances, whereas in other cases these taxes are paid not by the politician but by the public? It just seems a basic issue of fairness.


  

The written answer is below.


  

Response from CYPD and Merseyside Fire Service:

a) The Hive is due to open in December 2016.

b) Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service (MFRS) have advised that they have given John Brace an explanation of the figures on a number of occasions. If John Brace would like further information he should contact MFRS directly.


  

However a verbal answer was also given at the meeting which was more detailed. Sadly some of what Jo Burrell said at this point is unclear on the video.

Rt Hon Frank Field MP (Chair) Great, on a) we’ll ask for a report. On b) this is not actually relevant to this Committee because we have no say in it. I’m all in favour of extending our authority but I gather they have written and will continue to take up your points and Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority will answer your issues on that John.

On where are we with the Hive? [Cllr] Jean [Stapleton]’s not here about this, do you know?

Cllr ??? ???: … Chief Exec.

Jo Burrell (Constituency Manager) That’s the information we’ve received. I don’t know exactly where the, this building is up to, it’s something I would probably have to ask …

Rt Hon Frank Field MP (Chair): Yes but I think whatever the target date is it’s on target, and most of the money seems to have been raised, hasn’t it? So I think it’s actually, it’s huge sums, it’s brilliant that people have made contributions so that will actually go ahead. The police, the Fire Authority John are very happy having a conversation with you by correspondence.

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EXCLUSIVE: Wirral Council continues its multi year battle to keep the 320,000+ Wirral people and press completely in the dark on councillors’ expense claims but in an exclusive you can now read 44 pages of the taxi contract for councillors

EXCLUSIVE: Wirral Council continues its multi year battle to keep the 320,000+ Wirral people and press completely in the dark on councillors’ expense claims but in an exclusive you can now read 44 pages of the taxi contract for councillors

EXCLUSIVE: Wirral Council continues its multi year battle to keep the 320,000+ Wirral people and press completely in the dark on councillors’ expense claims but in an exclusive you can now read 44 pages of the taxi contract for councillors

                                           

Updated: 16:56 7th October 2015: 3 minutes after this blog post was published Wirral Council got in touch about my request under the The Re-use of Public Sector Information Regulations 2015. Wirral Council asked for more time to reach a decision (which seems to be on line one page one of their big book of responses. 😉

However I have written back (and carbon copied in Surjit Tour) explaining that Regulation 5(5) excludes such documents because in order to access them I had to prove a legal interest (in this case being a local government elector for the Wirral area) during the 2014/15 audit.

I have made a request for the information Wirral Council are required to provide because of regulation 16(7)(a) and 16(7)(b).

This does mean that as this matter has been resolved, I will be publishing more information unearthed during the audit in the future, such as the Bam Nuttall contract.

Those who pay close attention to this blog will realise I haven’t published anything on this blog for a week. Apologies for that and here is an explanation. For some of that time I wasn’t well and the combination of nights of disrupted sleep due to dogs barking outside/helicopters/extremely noisy weather*(*take your pick as that’s just one night) resulted in severe lack of sleep that made me feel so ill that the last thing I wanted to do is write (and believe me I have to feel very ill not to want to write).

The closest I can describe it to is like suffering from something like jet lag from sleep deprivation (which didn’t help me get better as quickly as I should and had the opposite effect). So apologies if I have either been slow (or not responding at all) to emails and comments. I just haven’t been particularly up to the art of stringing together words into real sentences as typing and actually using my joints to type just made the pain worse. So if I’ve written any emails to you over the past week or so where I seem unusually cranky or cheesed off hopefully this explains why.

However I was better yesterday but was busy doing writing of a different sort, which forms part of what I’m going to write about today.

This blog post is a new chapter in a long running saga about taxis, Wirral Council and secret expenses system. However the story has got far wider than that.

First, before I get into fourth gear of what is a story that seems to now have more interesting angles than the Watergate affair and as this blog is read in many countries around the world I need to explain.

For reasons far too complex to go into here, Wirral Council tends to go in for similar types of high political drama that surrounded the Watergate affair, except people very, very rarely resign (resigning being a once in a blue moon event at Wirral Council that tends to really take people by surprise). This was summed up by the attitude of the former Improvement Board at a public meeting who I will paraphrase here, no one is ever held personally accountable and you mustn’t name names (as if you name names that’s blaming people)! My own personal political philosophy is there are always matters people are personally accountable for, but organisational failings of checks and balances and abuses of power have more serious outcomes for society as a whole than people (or even groups of people) behaving badly. However I digress and I need to briefly summarise the story so far as this is starting to have echoes of the MP expenses scandal. In fact not just echoes but marked similarities.

Wirral Council (official long name the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral) has sixty-six councillors (for foreign readers unfamiliar with the word councillor it’s a form of politician). Nearly every year the people who get to vote on the Wirral (Wirral’s population was estimated at 320,295 in mid-2013 according to the Office for National Statistics) get to choose a candidate. The candidate with the most votes (and I’ll leave out a long argument as to why the First Past the Post system that is used for this is unfair and the merits of STV [single transferable vote] for another day) becomes a politician called a councillor. The person who is elected (unless it’s in a by-election) is then elected and called a councillor generally for a four-year term of office.

During their term of office they receive allowances, but there is also an expenses system too. Under our "democracy" (although technically the United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy) politicians such as councillors are answerable to the people.

Many politicians stand for re-election (there are no term limits for being a councillor so for some people it can become a "job for life" (however as councillors on Wirral Council are not employees and not MPs (Members of Parliament) they don’t get a gold-plated pension)) so if you’ve been a bad sort of politician and stand for re election (or if you’re a good politician but are very bad at actually communicating this to the public and/or your political party does bad things) you’ll lose your seat. This is the greatest form of accountability to the public.

During their term of office (on top of their generous allowances) councillors can claim expenses (or have expenses paid on their behalf) under a set of rules written into Wirral Council’s constitution called the Members Allowance Scheme (pages 329-338) of Wirral Council’s constitution. Members in local government jargon means councillors.

A law called The Local Authorities (Members’ Allowances) (England) Regulations 2003, SI 2003/1021 (later amended by the The Local Authorities (Members’ Allowances) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2003, SI 2003/1692 and The Local Authorities (Members’ Allowances) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2004 places various legal responsibilities on Wirral Council.

Wirral Council are legally required to keep a record of all payments made under the scheme (whether to councillors themselves or to third parties). These records are required to be "be available, at all reasonable times, for inspection and at no charge" to any local government elector for the Wirral area.

However the right to copies of such information is wider than that as under the regulations "any person" can request copies.

This is a bit of a laugh really, as it takes Wirral Council months merely to assemble such information on councillors (therefore strictly speaking the information isn’t available at all reasonable times for inspection breaching one of the regulations).

I am however taking about a thousand words so far and slightly digressing from the points I wanted to make (which wasn’t just about local government record keeping).

Another part of the regulations requires an annual list to be published by Wirral Council for each councillor for the total of allowances & expenses claimed by each councillor for the previous financial year. This way the public can see what councillors are personally receiving (or is being paid on their behalf to third parties) in relation to their duties. Some councillors chose to claim no expenses at all.

However it probably requires a certain amount of forensic accountancy to prove that the expenses lists as published by Wirral Council have been incorrect and they have been for many years.

I am now going to refer to why this happened and what Wirral Council needs to do to correct this and why despite it being pointed out to them they probably won’t bother as to Wirral Council getting things right seems to be too much effort and too expensive as the politicians decide on an annual revenue budget of hundreds of millions of pounds a year and large amounts of capital expenditure too.

At the moment the published expenses lists are only part of the story. Based on looking at a similar situation at Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority, what the public are actually told about is probably only approximately 50% (or half for those who don’t understand percentages) of what is actually claimed in expenses.

It has become a party political issue which is illustrated by this quote from the Leader of Wirral Council Cllr Phil Davies in this Wirral Globe article earlier this year. Again members is referring to councillors (our members refers to the councillors who are part of the ruling Labour Group on Wirral Council).

Asked why only Labour councillors appeared on the list, Cllr Davies said: “The reality is that quite a lot of our members don’t have cars, so they need to use taxis to get to council meetings. If they had cars then they would be making a claim on council expenses for their car allowance, but they don’t. There are more Labour councillors who don’t have a car than those from other parties. These are legitimate claims within the budget of the council for elected members to allow them to do their jobs. Quite often taxis are the only form of transport they can use to get to their meetings.”

Apart from this having echoes of militant Labour delivering redundancy notices to all Liverpool City Council staff by taxi, basically this is a councillor (Leader of the Labour Group) somewhat begrudingly explaining about a secret expenses system for claiming taxis that the public and the press are presumably deliberately kept in the dark about. Wirral Council has known about this corporate governance matter about councillors expenses but despite claiming it would fix it has refused to do so. These figures for taxis (which come to £thousands) don’t appear in the annually published lists) and as detailed in the Wirral Globe article (based in part on my earlier story on the matter) that are used exclusively by one political party (Labour) are according to Cllr Phil Davies justified.

Cllr Phil Davies wears many hats, one as Leader of the Labour Group of councillors, one as Leader of Wirral Council (with the Cabinet portfolio for finance and corporate governance) and a third as a local councillor. The quote referred to above makes Cllr Phil Davies sound like a union rep for the other Labour councillors trying to keep hold of an expensive perk for his fellow politicians.

This has parallels with the approach by Michael Martin MP when he was Speaker of the House of Commons over the MP’s expenses scandal. Michael Martin MP saw himself as a representative of his fellow politicians and eventually had to resign because of the fallout over MP expenses when a national newspaper (in an example of chequebook journalism) bought and published the information. This ultimately led to a lot of embarrassment and prison sentences for some politicians (but ultimately reform of the system) whereas councillors at Wirral Council don’t even get the bare legal minimum of scrutiny of their expenses due to poor corporate governance (which is a matter that the person with democratic acccountability to the public is Cllr Phil Davies).

He compares Labour councillors’ use of taxis to a car mileage allowance used by other councillors. However the latter appears in the annual lists, but Labour’s use of taxis doesn’t. In order for the people to know what’s going on and compare one to the other they have to both appear.

I hope this doesn’t come across to people as an attack on Labour politicians or Labour Party, it’s not. If this was being done by Conservative, Lib Dem, Green Party or other sorts of politicians I would be writing this same sort of blog post.

However it reminds me of an email exchange I had before the General Election with a Labour Party member. They told me that they couldn’t campaign against their own party on an issue (I think it may have been about Lyndale School or possibly some other controversial issue) as instead their efforts were better put into getting Labour elected nationally into government in 2015.

Their view was once elected a Labour government in 2015 would have power and therefore be able to solve the policy problem. It was a stark example of how political parties may have individuals that care about policies, but ultimately as a group the Labour Party wasn’t interested in campaigning for something popular with the public (therefore winning votes and support) which may have ultimately led to them winning the 2015 General Election. This point was pointed out to them many times in the lead up to the election by the press and others.

Instead the Labour Party decided to pursue a strategy of ignoring public opinion, brazenly going for power at all costs, then got confused when the Conservatives got a majority and Labour lost seats.

I will point out that when I was a former member of the Lib Dems, there was a controversial joint Labour/Lib Dem policy decision to close half of Wirral’s libraries. I expressed my views against this in Lib Dem party meetings, stubborn councillors decided play brinkmanship, there was a public inquiry and the whole thing descended into farce and fiasco with a lot of people losing face over the whole matter. I even got ticked off by Sue Charteris as I unfortunately turned up about fifteen minutes late to the public inquiry (which was being filmed) and was told off for having the temerity to discreetly take a photo of what was going on (an omen of the later long running battles over filming public meetings).

At no point do I remember telling anyone within or outside the Lib Dem party (I decided to leave the Lib Dems in January 2012 and indeed sued the entire Liberal Democrat party for breaking the law, had my day in court and won), sorry I personally believe half of Wirral’s libraries shouldn’t close, but I refuse to campaign against the combined Labour & Lib Dem Parties as it’s important that I instead put my efforts into making sure the Lib Dems became the sole party of national government in 2015.

I think if I had made such claims fellow party members would’ve asked me if I was being sarcastic or not thinking straight. My position on the disastrous policy was well known, my views were dismissed partly because of my youth (one party member referred to me as a "baby" during a party meeting) although I doubt the full story about what happened internally within the Lib Dem Party over its politicians setting an unlawful budget will ever be told. The problem with that coalition is the buck could always be passed to Labour just as two halves of the recent 2010-2015 Coalition government could do with each other. The Lib Dem Party has always made it clear to me that they don’t care about the reputational consequences of its politicians or employees breaking the law. As obeying the "rule of law" is a part of democracy it makes me wonder how they have the gall to truthfully call themselves the Liberal Democrats.

However I am going off track in an explanation of the terrible policy failings of party politics and the errors of judgement of politicians (who seem to have a blind spot when it comes to abuses of power) that make unpopular decisions that are not only unlawful but not supported by their own political party either.

This article is going to be about the nuts and bolts of the Passenger Transport Contract issue though.

Last year, Wirral Council agreed to a one-year Passenger Transport Contract worth about £4.1 million. It’s possibly worth more than this as there’s an option in the contract for a one year extension. However I’m not sure if the £4.1 million figure relates to the one or two years of the contract.

This contract is with a company called Eyecab Limited based in Upton (Upton makes a lot of geographical sense for a taxi company to base itself as it’s in the middle of the Wirral).

The contract is divided up into four parts called lots. I’d better describe what each lot is about.

LOT 1

This lot is for transporting children with special educational needs and/or disability from home to school and school to home. It also covers transport for children in care. Children in care is a term that those involved in social work might be more familiar as looked after children. If you’re still not familiar with the term looked after children it refers to for example (but not exclusively) to those in foster care for whom Wirral Council is their "parent". It also covers transport for vulnerable adults to day centres.

LOT 2

Lot two is for ad hoc travel for children with special educational needs and/or disability, vulnerable adults and children in care by taxi, people carrier or hackney carriage (black cab).

LOT 3

The third lot is for journeys by taxi to work and training for Wirral residents (where journeys start or end in East Wirral) known as the "Maxi Taxi". This is to "support individuals travelling to locations not served by traditional public transport and too far or too unsafe to cycle to."

On that latter point, in my younger days I classed a 16 mile cycle ride as not too far and for many years regularly used to cycle a 7 mile round trip to work and back. I’m presuming the "too unsafe" comments are in relation to the rise in people killed and seriously injured on Wirral’s roads since that time. However as you can take the bike on a Merseyrail train (and most areas of Merseyside are within one mile of a train station). It is possible to use bike, train, bike as I did for many years as a university student and for work travelling all over Merseyside as the trains run from very early in the morning to very late in the evening.

LOT 4

I’ll just quote the official description for this lot. "This contract is for ad hoc journeys by taxi to allow Wirral Councillors to travel to various venues across Wirral.
This contract will allow Wirral Councillors to travel around Wirral on official Council business. The times will vary and may include evenings and weekends.
"

Much as I would happily write about the millions spent by Wirral Council on lots 1-3, effectively lot 4 is the focus of this piece.

During the audit I requested the contract with Eyecab Limited. I did this as I’m a local government elector for the Wirral area using Audit Commission Act 1998, s.15. I will add here that this is the last year I can do this as that right has now been repealed by the previous Tory/Lib Dem government.

It’s been replaced with a much more watered down right which has the following two major changes (amongst others).

(a) the safeguard of the independent auditor deciding what is personal information (not relating to officers) rather than the body itself and whether this can or can’t be redacted from information supplied has been removed,

(b) showing perhaps a Tory philosophy that will no doubt fill my Labour-leaning readers with glee as another example of government pandering to the sorts of commercial interests that make large donations to the Conservative Party, an extra category of withholding information on grounds of "commercial confidentiality" has been added.

I will point out that Wirral Council has withheld some information from the contract supplied to me. The phone number for Eyecab Limited is such a secret that presumably Wirral Council got permission from its auditors to withhold it.

When the phone number for Eyecab Limited is in the Yellow Pages as 0151 201 0000 (therefore hardly confidential after all please leave a comment if you ever heard of a taxi company that deliberately keeps its phone number a secret?), I do wonder why Wirral Council just make work for themselves (and me) in blacking such information out.

Other information that has been withheld has been pricing information and routes.

On the subject of Wirral Council and its well paid auditor Grant Thornton, when I complained to Grant Thornton about one of contacts to blow the whistle to (Ian Coleman on page 36) having received early retirement from Wirral Council two years before this contract even started, I got an email back stating that contracts weren’t to do with the accounts, therefore weren’t the auditors’ responsibility.

Auditors it seems such as Grant Thornton don’t know what they’re doing (maybe Wirral Council could ask for a refund of their fee when they get things wrong) so they just seem to spout nonsense like this in an attempt to fob people off.

As nobody is ever personally accountable in local government I will spare the particular auditor’s blushes by merely quoting from the email and my reply without naming names. It shows however that some auditors in my opinion are about as much use as a chocolate fireguard (a general point aimed at the entire accounting profession rather than this particular auditor).

I think the term is fobbing off as from other bloggers I know that auditors up and down the country are trying to evade their responsibilities in law by giving this sort of reply to local government electors. The likes of Cllr Ron Abbey (who I recently heard being critical of local government electors exercising their rights with auditors at a Merseytravel meeting because of the cost) would probably not approve of me teaching an auditor they’re wrong as the cost of this (in the form of increased external audit costs) is falling on the taxpayer (whereas sadly my advice and grumpiness is not something I can charge them for).

"Dear Mr Brace

I have now had an opportunity consider the contents of your email to me of 6 September 2015.

I understand from your email that you have exercised your rights under the Audit Commission Act to inspect certain documents associated with Wirral Council’s accounts for 2014/15, including a Passenger Transport Contract with a specific contractor named in your email. You highlight that page 36 of the contract identifies the individuals who should be written to in the event of a whistleblowing complaint. The second of these names is the former Director of Finance who left the council 2012. You have asked us to explain why someone who ‘was not an employee of Wirral Council at the time the Passenger Transport Contract was put out to tender (or when the contract was agreed) … was he included as a whistleblowing contact in the contract?’

I have carefully considered this matter and I am not sure this is a valid question that it is appropriate for us to answer. As you highlight the power to question the auditor is set in section 15(2) of the Audit Commission Act 1998. Although interested persons can ask questions of the auditor, the questions must be about items in the Council’s account. It seems to me that your question is not about an item of account and therefore we are not in a position to respond to your question. It seems to me that your question is more appropriately addressed to the Council.

In summary, I would suggest that you contact the Council with your specific request for information.

It is currently our intention to close the audit of the Council’s 2014/15 accounts by 30 September 2015.

I hope that is helpful in clarifying the position.

Yours sincerely"


I however have learnt the art of being concise in emails and played this game of re educating the external auditor in the trump suit of 3 High Court Judges. Here is one of my replies (which meant the auditor had to change their mind).

Dear all,

I would also like to point out that a Court of Appeal case established beyond a doubt that contracts are part of the accounts. See [2010] EWCA Civ 1214 .

So as three High Court Judges seem to agree with my interpretation, I would ask you to reconsider..

Thanks,

John Brace


As you would probably say in tennis, game, set and match to me (not that I’m competing with an auditor, it’s just well whether deliberately or by accident they don’t really seem to know what they’re actually doing or the legal framework within which they operate properly but what’s new eh?).

However if I wanted to blow the whistle on the contract about taxis for councillors (and there are many reasons why one should), the contract suggests I blow the whistle to a person who was granted early retirement by Wirral Council in 2012.

Bear in mind this contract isn’t just about councillors and their taxi journeys. It’s also about children with disabilities & vulnerable adults. It is possible a family member might have cause for concern that they wish to raise. If so they could be directed to a person who doesn’t even work for Wirral Council.

Back however to lot 4 and taxis for councillors. As a reward for having to read through nearly 3,000 words of my ranting about poor corporate governance, I have a reward for you dear reader but I want to first explain the price at which publication of this contract comes.

First I had to request it during the audit. Wirral Council exceeded the time limits set down in law for giving it to me so I had to wait a bit longer. I then had to travel for a meeting at a Wirral Council building just off Hamilton Square to inspect it and pick up a copy.

It comes to 43 pages (even after the information has been removed I referred to earlier). I then had to scan these pages in one at a time (because that’s the way my A3 scanner works). I made a request to Wirral Council under The Re-use of Public Sector Information Regulations 2015 to publish it.

Despite this request being made some time ago, I have not received a response back from Wirral Council. As my communications to Wirral Council often seem to disappear into if I was being charitable what must be a black hole operating in one of its departments that sucks up my emails, I’m having to use my editorial discretion to use the part of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998, s.30 that deals with criticism, review and news reporting. I’m also covered bythe Data Protection Act 1998, s.34 in that its been made available to the public (myself) therefore isn’t subject to the non-disclosure provisions of the data protection legislation.

The way I have digitised this contract was by taking the 73 image files, putting them in OpenOffice Writer one at a time and creating a PDF file. However this file (as each page is an image) comes to 124 megabytes. As Wirral Council raided a reserve for high speed internet access some time ago, not only would this use up a lot of space but peoples’ internet speeds would mean it would take a long time to download.

I therefore spent one work day (yesterday) initially typing up the contract only using images for those that needed it (a MaxiTaxi logo and some signatures). This is very boring and time consuming work, but part way through I found a way to speed things up dramatically by putting the multi-page pdf file through FreeOCR.

The problem was as you can see from my earlier post about page 36 is that the pages given to me by Wirral Council were in a very poor state with many artifacts (a technical term for blemishes on the page). The artifacts cause massive problems for OCR as OCR software can try and guess what they are (for example a full stop).

Passenger Transport Contract Wirral Council page 36 of 40 thumbnail compressed
Passenger Transport Contract Wirral Council page 36 of 40 thumbnail compressed

The versions of the contract I finally ended up with are far easier to read than the version provided to me by Wirral Council. For those with disabilities, the text can now be magnified without just blowing up the blemishes too. The file sizes of the new files (and I’m providing it in multiple versions because I’m trying to be helpful) are massively smaller.

I have not included the Wirral Council logos and replaced these with (Wirral Council logo). As you can see from the image above it’s the five Ws logo with WIRRAL in bold letters. The typographical errors in the contract (such as the many instances of Disclosure and Baring (rather than Barring) Service), missing full stops etc I’ve left in and not corrected. I hope people appreciate the work put into producing it and I realise it has probably been hard work reading through over 3,000 words to reach this point.

A bit like Schrödinger’s cat, although I requested this contract and the what must be about ~6 monthly invoices that relate to it during the audit, I can only at this point in time observe one (the contract).

Wirral Council are still stalling me on inspecting and receiving copies of the monthly invoices for councillors journeys by taxis. Anyone would think that Wirral Council hasn’t quite got the staff to deal with the sort of investigative journalism I tend to be good at. However as the taxi contract is used solely by the ruling Labour Group councillors I can see how it would be in no officers’ interests to actually comply with the legal deadline for this as no doubt I would publish them which would cause politicians to be embarrassed. Wirral Council are &improving& their website, the legal notice they’re required to publish on their website with the deadline on has also vanished at the time of writing.

Certainly I await to see what other corporate governance horrors Wirral Council get up to and will (hopefully) keep readers of this blog advised of what’s happening. In the meantime at the end are the pages of contract information.

This does raise a lot of questions but I will just concentrate on one which seems to demolish one of the reasons given for this contract. When Councillor Adrian Jones read out an answer to me prepared for him by officers at a public meeting as reported previously he stated, "The Council has negotiated competitive prices and entered into contracts with a local taxi company to provide transport for Members in accordance with the Members Allowances Scheme. The taxi company submits its invoices and the details of the Members that used the taxis each month directly to the Council for payment. The advantage of this arrangement is that the cost of transport by taxis is always at the negotiated rate and is a more efficient way to manage the service."

It does raise an interesting point though as the pricing information for councillors’ journeys by taxi are included. In the method statement that Eyecab Limited completed when bidding for lot 4 (councillors’ taxi journeys) Eyecab Limited stated on page 34 of 40 "Eye Cab is an all Hackney taxi firm vehicles range from five passenger seats to seven passenger seats at present we operate approximately twenty seven vehicles this number is increasing on a regular basis."

When I heard Cllr Jones’ answer about "competitive prices" anyone hearing it would think that it was stating that taxis through this contract are better value for money (in terms of the actual cost of the taxi ride) than a councillor paying for it themselves, then claiming the money back.

However having read the contract and that I know now that Eyecab Limited is an all hackney carriage company, I’m puzzled. That’s because the prices at which all hackney carriages on Wirral charge is set by Wirral Council. Therefore for the same journey surely all hackney carriages would charge the same amount and it wouldn’t be cheaper doing it through a contract. When you factor in the costs of putting this contract out to tender (yes I realise lot 4 is part of a wider contract however potential contractors had to bid on each lot separately), the costs of procurement will outweigh any efficiency saving from just having to pay a monthly invoice rather than when councillors claim on an ad hoc basis.

A small saving does occur because Wirral Council isn’t actually doing it legally and including these amounts in the annual lists but by small saving I’m talking about an employee cost time of maybe £50-£60.

However by not doing it that way it increases costs elsewhere at Wirral Council, for example the cost of processing FOI requests, providing me with a redacted copy of the contract during the audit, providing me (hopefully eventually) with the underlying invoices etc and of course the expensive cost in senior officer time (probably an employee on ~£80 an hour) in having to answer questions posed by me to Councillor Adrian Jones at a public meeting.

The point I will finish on is that Wirral Council doing things the right way and legal way saves money in the long run in the communications you get from people trying to persuade Wirral Council just to do things the right way.

However officers across local government (in fact some have even said this to my face) see this sort of press scrutiny as a drain on "scarce resources".

In other words, the kind of major embarrassing politically sensitive fiascos (politicians’ expenses just being the tip of an absolutely massive corporate governance iceberg) I write about on my blog probably cause no end of awkward questions behind the scenes from politicians to those on high 5 figure and 6 figure salaries as to why things aren’t right.

I’m sure some people paid by the taxpayer well above my pay grade don’t always see the sort of journalism as a good thing for their future career prospects. I’m pointing out things to the world that if the checks and balances that these employees are supposed to be were working properly would be spotted internally and corrected.

Some bureaucrats (while stating they welcome accountability) I’m sure don’t really feel it’s right that they should be under a legal requirement to hand over embarrassing information to me, that’ll then form stories that politicians will read (or in the case of video watch) and use to hold the bureaucrats to account.

It’s the way I’ve been trained though and the independence of the press is something that this country should value.

Please note, although I proofread the contract before publishing due to the poor quality of the original pages at times the OCR program has misidentified one character incorrectly such as the postcode CH44 8ED, the OCR program has outputted as CH44 BED (page 23 of 40). The other errors (typographical such as baring for barring & punctuation such as missing full stops) were made in the original document.

Passenger Transport Contract Eyecab Limited Wirral Council complete (Word document version) 331 kilobytes

Passenger Transport Contract Eyecab Limited Wirral Council complete (OpenOffice ODF Text Document) 72 kilobytes

Passenger Transport Contract Eyecab Limited Wirral Council complete (Adobe Acrobat pdf version) 257 kilobytes

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10 more pages of MFRA councillors’ expense claims for car mileage, taxis and a meal

10 more pages of MFRA councillors’ expense claims for car mileage, taxis and a meal

10 more pages of MFRA councillors’ expense claims for car mileage, taxis and a meal

                                                

Earlier this month I published pages eleven to twenty of the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority councillor’s expense claims for claims where councillors were claiming the money back. This continues from 10 more pages of MFRA councillors’ expense claims for car mileage, taxis and parking.

Below are ten more A4 pages of expense claims submitted by councillors on Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority for the 2014/15 financial year. It’s pages twenty-one to thirty of eighty-nine pages and each thumbnail below should link to a more high-definition (and therefore readable) image for each page.

The councillors these pages are for are Cllr Dave Hanratty, Cllr Leslie Byrom, Cllr Linda Maloney and Cllr Ted Grannell.

HQ stand for headquarters, LGA means Local Government Association, FIG (also known as FIGUK) means Fire Information Group and I’ve no idea what SRB refers to.

Cllr Dave Hanratty October November 2014 car mileage taxis page 1 of 2
Cllr Dave Hanratty October November 2014 car mileage taxis page 1 of 2
Cllr Dave Hanratty taxi receipt £13 page 2 of 2
Cllr Dave Hanratty taxi receipt £13 page 2 of 2
Cllr Leslie Byrom October 2014 car mileage taxi train
Cllr Leslie Byrom October 2014 car mileage taxi train
Cllr Leslie Byrom Virgin Trains receipt £8 page 1 of 3
Cllr Leslie Byrom Virgin Trains receipt £8 page 1 of 3
Cllr Leslie Byrom Virgin Trains receipt £12 page 2 of 3
Cllr Leslie Byrom Virgin Trains receipt £12 page 2 of 3
Cllr Leslie Byrom receipt taxi £20 page 3 of 3
Cllr Leslie Byrom receipt taxi £20 page 3 of 3
Cllr Linda Maloney October November 2014 car mileage taxis and meal page 1 of 3
Cllr Linda Maloney October November 2014 car mileage taxis and meal page 1 of 3
Cllr Linda Maloney taxi receipt £23 page 2 of 3
Cllr Linda Maloney taxi receipt £23 page 2 of 3
Cllr Linda Maloney Jacques Wine Bar receipt £12.50 page 3 of 3
Cllr Linda Maloney Jacques Wine Bar receipt £12.50 page 3 of 3
Cllr Ted Grannell taxi September to November 2014 £63
Cllr Ted Grannell taxi September to November 2014 £63

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