Last month, Andrew Gilligan blogged about a debate called by former Local Government Minister Bob Neill in Westminster Hall in which the MP used Parliamentary privilege to accuse Tower Hamlets council’s legal chief Isabella Freeman of aiding and abetting an abuse of the standards regime by Lutfur Rahman-supporting councillors.
For more than a year now, council taxpayers have been underwriting the appointment of various outside consultants and Elizabeth Laing QC to help investigate complaints made against the likes of Peter Golds, the leader of the Tory group, and Josh Peck, his Labour equivalent.
How much has been spent on these vendettas is as yet unknown, but today we had conformation that one of them was a complete waste of time. Under Freeman’s direction, the council had tried to take Peter Golds to court. But it lost.
The following was issued by the Upper Tribunal today.
The Upper Tribunal
(Administrative Appeals Chamber)Upper Tribunal Case No: GLGSE/2861/2012
Ruling on Withdrawal of Appeal
Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rules 2008, rule 17
- The appellant has applied to the Upper Tribunal to withdraw the appeal in this case on the ground that this tribunal has no jurisdiction to hear the appeal.
- The Upper Tribunal’s consent is required for an appellant to withdraw an appeal.
- I give that consent.
- The proceedings in this case are now at an end. The oral hearing listed for 7 February 2012 is vacated.
Signed on original
on 5 February 2013Edward Jacobs
Upper Tribunal Judge
What this means is that the council, after taking some very expensive advice from a top QC, decided at the last minute to withdraw its appeal to the tribunal, an appeal against a decision that had cleared Peter Golds.
Whoever decided that going to the tribunal was a good idea might well be in a bit of trouble tonight…
And then we have the longstanding complaint against Josh. For more than a year now, the council has been keeping secret from the glare of voters a long running internal battle involving town hall director Aman Dalvi, Ms Freeman, Josh and Cllr Alibor Choudhury, who is Lutfur’s cabinet member for finance.
I won’t go into too much detail now but here’s a bit of background. Aman Dalvi wanted to be the new council chief executive following the departure of Kevan Collins in late 2011. At the beginning of 2012, Josh became concerned that Aman was too close to Lutfur (I know what triggered this concern, but I won’t go into detail here).
Josh and Aman had a private row. The precise wording of that row was disputed, but only Josh and Aman were there. However, in June 2012, Alibor seems to have been convinced by someone that Josh had acted out of turn. So he submitted a hefty complaint against Josh to the council’s Standards body accusing him, among other things, of being biased against Aman and of bullying the Labour group into supporting his view.
The reason this mattered is because a formal recruitment and assessment process was taking place to appoint an interim chief executive. There had been an impasse in that process. Labour, as the largest group, had the constitutional right to dominate the appointing Human Resources panel; however, Lutfur was threatening to boycott it. It would have been impossible to have a new chief executive who did not have the mayor’s support, so Josh agreed with Lutfur to give up Labour’s majority position in return for Lutfur’s participation.
There was one condition, to which they both agreed: that any vote by the Human Resources committee would have to be unanimous. Both agreed, as did the committee itself.
However, whoever advised the committee that that was lawful turned out to be very wrong. Calamitously wrong. The panel interviewed two candidates: Aman and AN Other. There was a split vote and when AN Other was informed of this, he withdrew. That left Aman as the only choice, and although the panel had voted unanimously that Aman was “suitable”, they had not unanimously voted for his appointment. Ms Freeman then provided some new advice to councillors: that they must appoint Aman.
This new advice infuriated a number of Labour members, including Josh…and to cut a long story short, we still have no chief executive but a temporary head of paid service…and a legal chief who is not trusted by several senior members.
So back to Alibor’s complaint. Josh had been advised by his own lawyers that as a result of his row with Aman, he should withdraw from the appointment process and avoid using his position as leader to influence or whip others.
Alibor alleged he had misused his position to plot a campaign to veto Aman.
Alibor’s complaint was rejected on all counts.
I’ve had another of those lovely brown envelopes through my door. The last one, about Murziline Parchment, sparked a leak inquiry and I suspect this one will as well. The document in that envelope was the full and confidential report on Alibor’s complaint by external investigator, Belinda Shaw.
It runs to 38 pages and in the interests of transparency and full public interest disclosure I’m making the entire document available for download from this blog. It contains fascinating detail, including some clear rifts within the Labour group. At one point you can see that David Edgar, who announced his candidacy for Labour mayor yesterday, disputed Josh’s version of events at one point.
However, the most important detail comes on p7 of the executive summary and in particular the final paragraph 1.6:
Having carefully considered Cllr Peck’s conduct, it is my view that he
– did not fail to treat others with respect
– did not bully another person
– did not bring his office or authority into disrepute
– did not use his position as councillor improperly to secure an advantage for another person
– did not fail to disclose the existence and nature of a personal interest at a meeting of the counci.
As such it is my view that Cllr Peck did not fail to comply with the Code of Conduct.
And as such, that seems Game, Set and Match.
Now we need to know how much it all cost. Maybe the Cabinet Member for Finance can tell us….
Anyway, here are the first few pages in jpeg format and all pages are available in pdf via the links below. Happy reading.
Trial by Jeory 
You’ve done it again Ted. Thank You. What is Freeman getting from this relationship? Is she expecting a rise? Is she doing this for ideological reasons? Does she feel threatened? Maybe she’s so far committed her only hope now is in Lutfur surviving? Non-rhetorical question, did she work for the council from before Lutfur took over as chair from Abbas?
38 pages of documents, but Ted keeps quiet on the motives of Josh Peck. I’m so glad the Labour party as a true friend in you, Ted.
Wow. You read that document quickly….or did you?
And what would those motives be, given the depth of your own investigation?
As en (ex) Lib Dem I used to believe wholeheartedly in devolving power to the lowest level possible. Living in Tower Hamlets it’s therefore probably a good job I am no longer a Lib Dem then…..
I know quite a lot of people who would support the creation of parish councils like they have done in Queen’s Park in places like Wapping and Spitalfields… such structures could have councils made up of independents not subject to warped Labour Party selection criteria and block votes.
Knowing how crap some in English Local Government are, I am amazed that LBTH even attempted to appeal to an Upper Tribunal particularly as, in the words of the council’s subsequent assertion,
“The appellant has applied to the Upper Tribunal to withdraw the appeal in this case on the ground that this tribunal has no jurisdiction to hear the appeal. ”
How on earth could any competent lawyer, including Isabella Margaret Freeman admitted as a practising solicitor on 15 January 1991 with 21 years experience as a lawyer, be a party to an appeal the LBTH submitted to the Upper Tribunal and then discovered, or let someone else discover, the Upper Tribunal was, in the professional legal opinion of the LBTH, lacking all jurisdiction to hear that appeal ?
Does this mean the LBTH now proposes to seek an appeal in a different court; perhaps a Judicial Review in the Administrative Court of the Queen’s Bench Division of the English High Court or has LBTH abandoned all interest in appealing ?
Is Mrs Freeman also the statutory Monitoring Officer for LBTH ?
It is alleged Mrs Freeman has sought alternative employment elsewhere and prospective employers have been dissuaded by Mrs Freeman’s record, or what purports to be her record, at LBTH.
I would appreciate *all* the background papers and the council’s charges and evidence etc., in Word or PDF copyable format, for verbatim publication on the net. This scandal should not be buried on a blog but placed on a site which Google and all the others, including Russian and Chinese, crawlers visit many times every day of the year. This is a genuine request. Sent material to sailing22—at—gmx.at All emails will be acknowledged, usually within a few days. If the material turns up, even anonymously, it will be put on web pages for everyone to read (in a larger font than on here).
Its time Eric Pickles pulls his finger out and gives the long suffering public a robust and capable Regulator for English Local Government. The pitiful Local Government Ombudsman (LGO) is so weak it blows over at every gentle breeze and, of course, is devoid of any statutory ability. It is a senseless waste of public resources whose present merely encourages sleaze, misconduct, fraud, bribery etc. in English Local Government.
Got to blame Labour and the Tories for the pitiful lack of any regulation of the affairs of English Local Government.. Got to blame Labour for creating the environment at LBTH which allowed the present alarming abuses to take place with apparent impunity.
“Its time Eric Pickles pulls his finger out and gives the long suffering public a robust and capable Regulator for English Local Government. The pitiful Local Government Ombudsman (LGO) is so weak it blows over at every gentle breeze and, of course, is devoid of any statutory ability. It is a senseless waste of public resources whose present merely encourages sleaze, misconduct, fraud, bribery etc. in English Local Government.
Got to blame Labour and the Tories for the pitiful lack of any regulation of the affairs of English Local Government.. Got to blame Labour for creating the environment at LBTH which allowed the present alarming abuses to take place with apparent impunity.”
Ain’t that the truth, sister? Do we blame the despicable Rahman (of whom little better could be expected) for the mess we see, or the system which has allowed it to happen? Both, I’d say.
Tim.
Good post Ted. However Cllr Peck did end up signing a compromise agreement with Aman Dalvi costing the tax payer over £100k. I assume there was some wrongdoing which Cllr Peck was keen to contain?
I’m hoping I’ll get a brown envelope on that one as well. At the moment all we have is conjecture.
Isn’t this one of the trademarks of the Islamofascism that is destroying the East End; a nervous trigger-finger when it comes to calling in lawyers? I once heard that something like 30% of the annual spend of the Whitechapel Mosque is on lawyers, creating lawsuits against people they don’t like. What a susprise that LBTH is doing the same, and in such a disgusting way.
Is there any reason why an FOI access request wouldn’t be able to find out the cost of this particular misguided action?
Tim.
Gratuitous, cheap and pointless shot. I can’t believe I’m wasting a minute of my time replying to it but just for the record constant resort to lawyers is an activity not confined to any one group in society as a whole. And any comment starting “I once heard that…” can be roundly ignored. Show some real evidence or shut up. Things are bad enough in this borough without your smear and innuendo.
Original source was Gilligan’s blog, for what it’s worth. But I can’t find the article so I guess you’ll dismiss this out of hand as well.
Smear and innuendo are not the commodities I tend to trade in. Neither do I intend to trade insults with you – please leave them out of sensible discussion.
I can’t help thinking that if there were fewer lawyers “in the frame” in Tower Hamlets – in terms of running “the affairs” of the Council – then there would also be fewer legal cock-ups and a lot less wasted cash. Let us never ever forget that all this wasted cash is provided by the taxpayer and that this is a matter of public interest!
Interestingly in other Councils which manage to run their affairs with a lot less acrimony and a good deal more competence, the lawyers do not feature prominently in the management of the Council – amongst the Councillors or the Officers.
Says a lot really about where the real problems lie in Tower Hamlets………..