What were the top 10 most popular stories on this blog last month in June 2016?
What were the top 10 most popular stories on this blog last month in June 2016?
Below are links to the ten most popular stories read on this blog last month (June 2016). Eight involve Wirral Council, one Liverpool City Council and the other Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service/Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority. All except one (the one about the regeneration of Birkenhead Town Centre) were published in June 2016. Two are on the topic of the recent First-tier Tribunal (Information Rights) public hearing involving myself and Wirral Council.
I’m surprised the EU Referendum stories didn’t feature higher up in the list, but as the EU Referendum was held in the last week of June, those stories have had less time to be read than articles published nearer the start of June.
Councillor Steve Foulkes (left) at a Merseytravel Committee meeting (7th January 2016)
Disclosure of 46 pages of PFI contractor’s banking details by Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service described as “oversight”
The author of this piece is an Appellant in a First-Tier Tribunal (Information Rights) case involving Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority.
Today, the eighteen councillors on the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority met. One of the decisions they agreed was a constitution which includes the following (Members means councillors), “Members should avoid public criticism of individual Officers, as it is unfair and oppressive.”
Last year during the 2014/15 audit, I requested the North West Fire and Rescue PFI contract. This is the PFI contract with Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority for the Belle Vale, Birkenhead, Bootle/Netherton, Formby, Kirkdale, Newton-le-Willows and Southport fire stations on Merseyside as well as fire stations in Lancashire and Cumbria.
When it was published on this blog in October 2015, a former press officer working for Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service Lyndsay Young phoned me asking me to remove the contract from my blog. I explained why I wasn’t going to do so and alerted her to the 46 pages of bank account mandates and specimen signatures that I had not published.
Last week Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority’s Audit Sub-Committee met and discussed the Corporate Risk Register which included the risk of data loss and the possibility of regulatory action by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). I requested a press officer be present for this meeting so I could ask for a quote from Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service about its disclosure of this information. This request was denied.
Deputy Chief Fire Officer Phil Garrigan (bottom left) tells Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority’s Audit Sub-Committee 9th June 2016 about the risk of data being compromised
After Deputy Chief Fire Officer Phil Garrigan’s glowing comments at that meeting about the efforts Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service had taken to prevent data loss at the Audit Sub-Committee meeting, I emailed the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Services’ auditors Grant Thornton alerting them to this and also asked the contractor Balfour Beatty for a quote.
Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service’s position changed from their original “no comment” to an email requesting that the information be destroyed or returned (offering to pay any costs of doing so).
Louise McCulloch, Head of Media & PR for Balfour Beatty kindly gave us the following quote, “Last year, information relating to [the] North West Fire and Rescue (NWFR) [contract] in which Balfour Beatty has an interest, was inadvertently shared with an individual as part of a response to their request to the Fire and Rescue Authority under s 15(1)(a) of the Audit Commission Act 1998.
The Authority made NWFR fully aware of the oversight immediately. NWFR has taken the necessary steps to ensure no adverse impact.
NWFR has asked the Authority to request the individual destroy or return the information which has no public interest, which Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service has done.”
The 46 pages of disclosed information contain details of sort codes, account numbers, specimen signatures and names of those authorised to use various Barclays Corporate bank accounts connected to the PFI fire stations project run by Balfour Beatty.
Clearly this information should not have been disclosed to me, but it is worrying that Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service seemed to only realise this had happened after I told them first in October 2015 and again in June 2016!
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Interviews to happen with 8 consultancy firms over tender for confidential advice on cuts to Merseyside’s police and fire services
In the interests of openness and transparency I’ll declare at the outset that I’m the Appellant in a sub judice First-Tier Tribunal (Information Rights) case involving Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority (2nd Respondent).
I was briefly remembering what happened five years ago in 2011.
Five years ago (well four years and ten months ago) if you remember it was the summer when there were riots. The riots were so widespread the police had difficulty coping. It was similar reasons that led to the 1981 Toxteth riots.
The Lib Dems’ attitude towards ethnic minorities was unfortunately the kind of attitude (especially from one of the two parties in the Coalition government at the time) that led to the riots. I remember vividly being at a North West Lib Dem regional conference where a party member stood up and proudly stated to the entire room of dozens of party activists that he would never choose a candidate from an ethnic minority background. So if you wondered why all the Lib Dem MPs (and indeed many of their councillors) were white, male and pale you should understand now!
There was of course an uproar from those from ethnic minorities in the room and the chair had to settle things down before the person who’d said it got drowned out through a lot of shouting.
In 2011 a black man Mark Duggan was shot dead by the police, in 1981 the Toxteth riots followed the Brixton riots which were also triggered by poor relations between the police and ethnic minorities.
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Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority’s Police and Fire Collaboration Committee 7th June 2016
However what’s the point of mentioning the above? Well Tuesday’s meeting of the Police and Fire Collaboration Committee (you can watch video of the 13 minute meeting above) reminded me of a change in the culture of the police. A long time ago I used to report on the Merseyside Police Authority (before there was a Police and Crime Commissioner who started in November 2012), so I remember how matters involving Merseyside Police used to be.
In fact when I used to report on the Merseyside Police Authority it was obvious from the statistics shown to councillors that you were still far more likely to be stop searched in the Wirral area (although there were problems all over Merseyside to varying degrees) if you were from an ethnic minority background.
When Deputy Chief Constable, Andy Cooke, QPM (soon to be Chief Constable) didn’t use his microphone during the Police and Crime Collaboration Committee and my wife said she couldn’t hear, he apologised to my wife and turned it on.
Deputy Chief Constable Andy Cooke (with his microphone on) at the Police and Fire Collaboration Committee meeting of Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority 7th June 2016
This shows things have changed. The police "half" of the committee has learnt from bitter experience that it is better to apologise, learn from and correct their mistakes and move on. This is indeed the very hard to learn cultural lesson to be take away from high profile matters that happened a long time ago involving the police as a whole.
One of the nine Peelian principles is, “To seek and preserve public favour, not by pandering to public opinion, but by constantly demonstrating absolutely impartial service to law, in complete independence of policy, and without regard to the justice or injustice of the substance of individual laws, by ready offering of individual service and friendship to all members of the public without regard to their wealth or social standing, by ready exercise of courtesy and friendly good humour, and by ready offering of individual sacrifice in protecting and preserving life.”
However the fire service/fire authority culture is different. The Chair interrupted the meeting to tell my wife off for interrupting (which he does while looking directly at me rather than her).
I’m really am not entirely sure why he looked at me when he was saying this rather than her? Did he want me to say something to her? Is he not aware of Article 21(1)?
Just for clarity I was standing up behind the camera, she was sitting down to my left. So you’d have to look in completely different directions to face myself or Leonora. You can hear clearly my response to him on the video above.
Bear in mind that already during the meeting two people had commented on the minutes and hadn’t ask permission for the Chair to speak and aren’t on the Police and Fire Collaboration Committee itself.
The Chair indeed didn’t say anything to them (for the purposes of clarity those two were I think from memory the Deputy Chief Constable referred to above and if I am correct the Chief of Staff for the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner)!
The recently elected Police and Crime Commissioner for Merseyside Jane Kennedy wasn’t there. Her Deputy PCC Cllr Sue Murphy was (yes Jane Kennedy had previously stated she wouldn’t have a deputy but changed her mind part way through her previous term of office). Thankfully this meant the meeting started on time as a previous meeting of this Committee had been delayed from starting because Jane Kennedy arrived late and the person chairing the meeting didn’t want to start without her.
The meeting of the Police and Fire Collaboration Committee agreed to hire consultants to advise them on how Merseyside Police, Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service (and Authority) and the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner for Merseyside can work better together.
I realise some may well comment along the lines of isn’t this what managers in the public sector on six-figure salaries are paid to do? However have you ever heard of a public sector manager either volunteering to offer themselves the sack or massively reducing the headcount they manage?
Yet in these times of seemingly never ending austerity, you the 1.4 million members of the public on Merseyside who finance the fire service may well ask why does more money need to be spent on consultants?
Eight organisations have applied for the role and there will be interviews later this month. You can read the detail here.
There are many areas within the Corporate Services Review, you can read the list on page 3 here.
Unusually (as they seem to have been quite vocal at previous meetings about the impact on jobs) as far as I could tell the trade union representatives weren’t present for this meeting.
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What happened while Cllr Denise Roberts was Chair of MFRA’s Audit Sub-Committee?
Cllr Denise Roberts (Chair, MFRA (Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority) Audit Sub-Committee at a previous meeting of the MFRA)
The author of this is the appellant in a First-Tier Tribunal (Information Rights) case involving Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority.
There have been serious corporate governance allegations raised about how MFRS (Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service) has been managed and led during the period when Wirral Council Councillor Denise Roberts has chaired the MFRA (Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority) Audit Sub-Committee.
MFRS’s press office was approached to provide a press officer for today’s public meeting of its Audit Sub-Committee. However that request for a press officer was refused. A reply received from a senior manager who intervened in our request stated that a press officer is not able to attend this and indeed future public meetings due to “other responsibilities”.
Ultimately it is up to you dear reader to try and understand the reasons why such a decision would be taken.
Clearly Wirral Cllr Denise Roberts (Chair of MFRA’s Audit Sub-Committee) is not entirely to blame as reports to the Audit Sub-Committee she chairs (including to today’s meeting) have been either inaccurate or misleading (or indeed both at the same time) and indeed her time on the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority comes to an end in a week.
Instead, Cllr Brian Kenny and Cllr Chris Meaden will replace Cllr Denise Roberts and former Labour Cllr Steve Niblock as two of Labour’s representatives from Wirral Council on the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority. Both Conservative Cllr Lesley Rennie and Labour’s Cllr Jean Stapleton remain.
It remains to be seen whether a future Chair of the Audit Sub-Committee continues with Cllr Denise Roberts’ approach and what happens next.
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What links FOI, ICO decision notice FS50591795, audit, a class A drug, barristers and Liverpool City Council?
There is a form of direct accountability during the audit of local councils when for a short period each year local government electors can inspect information about that financial year such as invoices and contracts.
Here is a legal reference to that right (Audit Commission Act 1998, s.15) which has been a direct form of democratic accountability that in one form or another has been around since Victorian times.
It’s tied in to rights of local government electors to ask questions of the external auditor (which for Wirral Council is Grant Thornton), to make objections to the accounts, to request public interest reports. After all how can you do all that without seeing the information in the first place?
It’s a form of direct democratic accountability.
Unlike making a freedom of information request (time limit of 18.5 hours) there is strictly very little legal limits on what can be requested (well apart from on the insular peninsula at Wirral Council where they have a habit of deliberately shifting the goalposts and coming up with bizarre interpretations of legislation to suit themselves). Last year I made requests under this audit legislation to Wirral Council, Liverpool City Council, Merseyside Waste Disposal Authority, Merseytravel and the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority.
The Liverpool City Council request was connected to an earlier FOI request and there’s been a recent decision notice issued in that matter on the 1st February 2016 which hasn’t been published yet by ICO.
Ironically ICO seemed to have met a stumbling block with Liverpool City Council on that one as they asked me for the information that I’d been refused under FOI (happy to oblige). This implies Liverpool City Council weren’t being entirely cooperative with ICO.
I’ve been sent a paper copy of the decision notice through the post, but it’s not published on ICO’s website yet. The reference is FS50591795. It’s a mercifully short eight pages and requires both Liverpool City Council to issue a fresh response with 35 days of 1st February 2016 (or appeal to the Tribunal) and states that Liverpool City Council breached s.10(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. If anybody wants me to I can scan a copy in and publish it here.
Basically LCC’s arguments are that I’m being unfair to barristers by requesting invoices they’ve submitted to LCC. Because as we all know, the purpose of a self proclaimed "socialist" Council like Liverpool City Council is to stick up for downtrodden, oppressed groups on the margins of society like barristers!
Cllr Paul Brant (left) speaking at a recent public meeting of Liverpool City Council (11th November 2015)
Let’s take the example of one barrister (pictured above on the left), a barrister I might point out who is not the subject of the invoices I requested, but who is in addition to being a barrister, a Labour Liverpool City Council councillor called Cllr Paul Brant. He resigned as a councillor in 2013 (although has since been re-elected) after receiving a police caution for possession of a class A drug. He was also the subject of a The Bar Tribunals & Adjudication Service disciplinary tribunal.
Below are the details.
Defendant Paul Brant (Lincoln’s Inn)
Type of hearing 3 Person Disciplinary Tribunal
Panel members Mr William Rhodri Davies QC (Chair)
Ms Pamela Mansell
Mr Mark West
Paul Brant engaged in conduct which was discreditable to a barrister contrary to paragraph 301(a)(i) of the Code of Conduct in that on a day between the 1st January 2013 and the 21st September 2013 he committed the criminal offence of being in possession of a controlled drug of class A contrary to The Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, for which offence on the 20th September 2013 he receive a simple caution."
It would be a conflict of interest for Cllr Paul Brant to do work for Liverpool City Council but according to his Chamber’s website he has been instructed to represent Wirral Council in the past (yes Wirral Leaks I can get trees into a story too!):
“Jayne Spencer v Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council (2008); LTL 1/10/2008 (Highway liability claim, tree root in Port Sunlight conservation area causing personal injury – whether breach of duty. Mr Brant appeared successfully at first instance and on appeal).”
This is an aside but I do remember one year during the audit, Wirral Council weren’t happy with me requesting the invoices for their legal invoices for these sorts of liability claims. “
However there should be some transparency as to who Liverpool City Council are paying! All Liverpool City Council councillors are responsible for budget matters including Cllr Paul Brant.
To give the example of Paul Brant above, it shows he works at Oriel Chambers and was subject to a disciplinary tribunal in September 2014 (the outcome of which is detailed above).
One of my other arguments to the regulator was that Liverpool City Council is under a legal obligation to publish the names of its suppliers for invoices over £500. In fact the guidance they’re required by law to follow specifically states that being self-employed (which is their argument surrounding barristers) doesn’t mean they can keep the suppliers’ name out of the public domain (but Liverpool City Council do).
However the above legislation (surrounding rights of inspection, objection etc) during the audit was scrapped by the government. You can’t use it any more to do this after the 2014/15 financial year.
Instead for 2015/16 financial year onwards it’s been completely watered down.
Previously (apart from information about its own staff) local councils during the audit had to get permission from their external auditor if they wanted to withhold from inspection in the category of "personal information" (which was very narrowly defined). This was a safeguard to prevent public bodies abusing their powers.
Bear in mind however that each time the public body contacts their external auditor it increases what they’re charged.
However this check and balance on misuses of power in local government was repealed (scrapped) by the last Coalition government (Conservative/Lib Dem).
Oh but there’s more!
There’s a rather infamous recent case (well infamous in those familiar with "citizen audit") where a local government elector called Shlomo Dowen requested (during this period each year during the audit) a waste management contract between Nottinghamshire County Council and Veolia ES Nottinghamshire Ltd.
The case reference is [2009] EWHC 2382 (Admin), [2010] PTSR 797, [2010] Env LR 12. Anyway interestingly at that stage a High Court Judge said Mr. Shlomo Dowen should be allowed to inspect and receive a copy of the contract (despite Veolia bringing a judicial review about it).
However Veolia weren’t happy at all by this (in fact if you read through the judgements in both cases you’ll find that even if Mr. Dowen was given the contract they wanted restrictions on him sharing it with other people) and brought an appeal in the Court of Appeal ([2010] EWCA Civ 1214, [2012] PTSR 185, [2010] UKHRR 1317, [2011] Eu LR 172). Veolia claimed that allowing Mr. Dowen to inspect/receive a copy of the contract would infringe that companies’ human rights.
I quote from part of that judgement, “I am not entirely convinced that English common law has always regarded the preservation of confidential information as a fundamental human right”.
Rix LJ, Etherton LJ, Jackson LJ upheld the appeal however.
The irony of all that was that Shlomo Dowen already had access to the information as Veolia’s lawyers did not seek a stay following the earlier judgment.
Interestingly withholding information on grounds of commercial confidentiality, this is a quote from the legislation,
“(5) Information is protected on the grounds of commercial confidentiality if—
(a) its disclosure would prejudice commercial confidentiality, and
(b) there is no overriding public interest in favour of its disclosure.”
is subject to a public interest test.
However there are other changes on the horizon too. Previously the inspection period was 15 days (3 weeks assuming there are no holidays).
When that inspection period was published in a public notice in at least one newspaper in the area and on the public body’s website.
I only have until the end of the 2015/16 local government financial year to get up to speed on these changes as being the Editor here I’ll have to schedule time for responding to the public notices, arranging appointments to inspect, as well as spare capacity for dealing with the moaning of the public sector (example moan last year being, it’s been 7/8 years since someone did this!).
As Wirral Council was somewhat uncooperative last year over the size of my request (only responding to the 10% of it they didn’t deem to be particularly sensitive), I will be having internal discussions here on avenues that can be explored to either embarrass Wirral Council into legal compliance (by censure (not to say that always works) or take more formal action.
Weirdly some of the politician’s expenses that they refused me under the audit legislation and Cllr Adrian Jones refused to make an appointment for me to see, they released in response to a later FOI request.
Which just goes to show that if you ask for the same information three times from Wirral Council (audit rights, a politician, then FOI), you might finally get it! Obviously by the third time, it starts to get embarrassing and seems like they have something to hide. I really don’t like having to ask three times when once should be enough though!
Anyway what was going to be only a short article about local government, barristers, ICO, FOI and audit is now rather on the long side so I’ll draw this to a close and give you an opportunity to comment.
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