Regular readers will be aware of Wembley Matters' attempt to hold Brent Council and its leader Muhammed Butt to account. No one has been more consistent and persistent in this than Philip Grant who has written this Guest Blog. Philip is not affiliated to any political party but deeply committed to upholding standards in public life.
This post is much longer than I usually publish but I urge readers to read it and its attachments so that they are fully aware of the issues involved. The 'Challenge' document lists the full allegations against Muhammed Butt.
Standards at Brent Council – an open letter to Carolyn Downs
In a recent “blog” I referred to the “scales of justice”,
which form part of Brent Council’s Coat of Arms
LINK. Experience suggests that “scales of
injustice” is now a more accurate symbol of the Council, where the interests of
Cllr. Butt and his closest allies outweigh the rights of Brent’s citizens (and
of its employees who were victims of the Cara Davani HR regime). The
inscription that I visualise over the Civic Centre reads: ‘Punish the weak and
protect the wrongdoer’. If you cannot see it too, perhaps that is because it
has been covered up! I invite you to read this blog, and to add your views as
comments.
Question: When is a breach of Brent’s Members’ Code
of Conduct ‘outside of the scope of the Code’?
Answer: When you are Cllr. Muhammed Butt.
Five months ago (on 18 June 2015) I made a complaint to
Brent Council’s Monitoring Officer, Fiona Alderman, alleging a number of
breaches of the Members’ Code of Conduct by the Leader of the Council. I added
further allegations against him in emails of 21 July and 18 September. The
breaches included failures to comply with all seven of the general conduct
principles which Council members must comply with, under the Code, in order to
maintain the high standard of conduct required of them: selflessness,
integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership.
These allegations should have been referred to the
Council’s Standards Committee at its meeting on 1 October 2015. On the eve of
the agenda for that meeting being published, I was told by the Monitoring
Officer that she would not be referring them, as ‘these matters are beyond the
scope of the actions or behaviours of an individual member and are therefore
outside of the scope of the Code.’ I immediately wrote to Ms Alderman and to
Brent’s new Chief Executive, Carolyn Downs, to challenge that decision, and it
was agreed that they would review the case in discussion with ‘the Independent
Person’.
After a further two months, I received the result of that
review, which effectively restates the Monitoring Officer’s original view, as
if it were fact, that the detailed allegations of breaches of Brent’s Members’
Code of Conduct which I made do not come within that Code of Conduct. When I
read the absolute nonsense contained in Ms Downs email to me of 18 November, I
knew that I had to reply, not only to show that it was wrong, but to set out in
detail why it was wrong.
As well as being serious allegations which quite clearly
related to breaches of the Code by Cllr. Butt in the performance of his role as
a Council member, the Monitoring Officer’s failure to follow the rules in
Brent’s Constitution and its adopted Standards procedure meant that the
allegations could not be dealt with openly and transparently. My allegations
against Cllr. Butt were being covered up, and the Standards Committee (the body
which could be held publicly to account for its decisions) was being prevented
from dealing with them. I was also concerned to find, when trying to discover
who the ‘Independent Person’ was who had been consulted over my challenge, that
Brent does not appear to have had a properly appointed ‘Independent Person’ for
Standards purposes (under the Localism Act 2011) for the past 18 months!
I am setting out below, in the public interest, the text
of my open letter to Carolyn Downs. The appendices to the letter are in a pdf
document attached, as is the text of my “challenge” to the Monitoring Officer
of 23 September. How Brent’s new Chief Executive and Brent’s Standards
Committee (whose members have also been sent copies of these documents) deal
with my letter will tell us much about their openness and integrity.
THIS IS AN OPEN LETTER
27 November 2015
Dear Ms Downs,
Failure by the
Monitoring Officer to refer my allegations of breaches of Brent’s Members’ Code
of Conduct to Standards Committee
I am writing in reply to your email to me of 18 November
2015. You will see that I am treating this as an open letter. I intend to copy
it to the members of Brent’s Standards Committee, for reasons which I will
explain below, and to make it publicly available, in the interests of openness
and transparency.
I do not accept the justification(s) which you have given,
on behalf of the Monitoring Officer and the ‘Independent Person’, for why the
detailed allegations which I made to the Monitoring Officer on 18 June, 21 July
and 18 September 2015 should not be referred to Brent Council’s Standards
Committee. I will set out my reasons for this at 1. and Appendix A
below. As some of my points refer to a document which I sent to you and Ms
Alderman on the evening of 23 September, I am attaching a copy of that
document, for ease of reference.
By not referring my allegations to Standards Committee,
the Monitoring Officer has failed to abide by Brent’s Constitution, and the
Standards procedures adopted by the Council. My reasons for this statement are
given at 2. below.
There also appear to be irregularities, and a possible
breach by Brent Council of the Localism Act 2011, over the ‘Independent Person’
who is said to have been consulted over my allegations, as set out in Appendix
B below.
1.1 I believe I have shown, both in my
“challenge” of 23 September and in Appendix A of this letter, that the
statements made, as if they were facts, by or in support of the Monitoring
Officer’s view, are arguments which are plainly incorrect. The serious
allegations I have made, in good faith, are allegations of breaches of
the Members’ Code of Conduct by Cllr. Muhammed Butt, and cannot be dismissed as
if they were matters which do not fall within that Code.
1.2 To give one example, the serious nature of my complaint of 18
June can be seen by the fact that the allegations include improperly conferring
an advantage on two senior Council officers. One of those officers (according
to separate allegations which are in the public domain, and for which Ms
Alderman’s department may hold at least circumstantial evidence) may have had a
“hold” over Cllr. Butt, which in turn may have influenced his behaviour as a Council
member. If the Council’s Leader is party to actions which do not serve the
public interest, but instead serve the mutual self-interests of himself and one
or two senior officers, that would be a very serious breach of the principle of
selflessness, which the Code requires all members to follow.
2.1 As I pointed out to Ms Alderman, by
reference to Part 5 of Brent’s Constitution, in my email of 24 July, and
repeated on 23 September at paragraph 1.3 of my “challenge” (attached), the
Monitoring Officer has a duty to refer those allegations to Standards
Committee. It is that committee which then decides ‘whether to ask the
Monitoring Officer to investigate allegations … or to take no further action.’
2.2 The position I have just set out is
confirmed in Part 2 of the Constitution. Article 9.3 states:
‘the function of the Standards Committee is to promote and
maintain high standards of conduct by councillors and co-opted members and hear
allegations of misconduct against members.’
The functions of the Monitoring Officer, at Article 13.5,
include:
‘© Supporting the Standards Committee:
The Monitoring Officer will contribute to the promotion
and maintenance of high standards of conduct through the provision of
support to the Standards Committee.’
By not referring my allegations of breaches of the
Members’ Code of Conduct to Standards Committee, Ms Alderman is not supporting
the functions of that committee, she is usurping them. The committee cannot
carry out its function of hearing allegations of misconduct against members if
those allegations are concealed from them by the Monitoring Officer.
2.3 Although Ms Alderman has not referred to
it in her correspondence with me on this matter, I am aware that there is a
“Procedure for dealing with complaints under the Members’ Code of Conduct”,
which was adopted by the Council in July 2012. Section 4 of that procedure
(“Will the complaint be investigated?”) does give the Monitoring Officer the
right to review every complaint made, and to decide, in some cases, to take no
further action over the complaint. However, that is not a power which she can
use at her own discretion - she can only do so within the detailed rules set
out in Section 4.
There are three possible outcomes for complaints which are
allegations of breaches of the Members’ Code of Conduct. The first two are:
(i)
‘No formal investigation and no further action paragraph (4.6)
below;
(ii)
No formal investigation and local resolution paragraph (4.8)
below.’
The nature of my allegations does not fall within those
listed at 4.6, and they are not matters which could be dealt with by local
action under 4.8 (and have not been dealt with as such).
The third outcome is that the allegation will be dealt
with under Section 5, which begins:
‘5.1 Where a complaint does not fall within paragraph 4.6
or 4.8 the case shall be referred to the Standards Committee for a decision as
to whether the complaint merits formal investigation.’
If the Monitoring Officer had been following the proper
procedure set out by the Council for dealing with Members’ Code of Conduct
complaints, 5.1 would have been the outcome.
2.4 The failure by the Monitoring Officer to refer
my allegations to Scrutiny Committee also goes against the principles of
openness and accountability (which are supposed to be enshrined in Brent’s
Constitution, through the purposes set out at Article 1.4). In order for
Brent’s residents to have confidence that high standards of conduct are being
promoted and maintained in the borough, it must be seen that Standards
Committee is considering allegations made by citizens (or by other Council
members). The committee needs to carry out its role openly, rather than the
matter being secretly covered-up by a Council Officer, so that there is an
effective means of holding those who make decisions on such allegations to
public account.
2.5 It appears that the Monitoring Officer’s
treatment of my allegations against Cllr. Butt may not be an isolated case. I
am aware of a complaint made on behalf of a residents’ association in February
2015, against another Cabinet member. The Monitoring Officer’s reply, received
more than two months later, was that ‘the complaint does not fall within the
Brent Code of Conduct.’ When the complainant challenged this, on the grounds
that the member had failed to comply with the Code’s principles of
accountability and openness, the reply remained:
‘I do not accept that this falls within the Members’ Code
of Conduct …’
3.1 Throughout this matter, I have put my points to
the Monitoring Officer, and since 23 September to you also, in a reasoned and
reasonable way. In response, I feel that I have been “fobbed-off”. That is why
I am making this letter publicly available, and copying it to the members of Standards
Committee. I hope that the committee will be able to persuade the Monitoring
Officer to properly refer all of my allegations to them, where I have failed to
persuade her. I do not personally expect to receive a reply to this letter from
you, other than an acknowledgement that you have received it. You may, however,
need to reply to any points arising from this letter raised by others who may
be concerned by its contents.
3.2 I hope that you will treat this letter as
a complaint, although it is not a complaint to which I require a formal answer.
I do not wish this complaint to be directed at a single individual, but I would
like the various errors I have highlighted to be properly considered, and
lessons learned from them. I realise that you have been Brent’s Chief Executive
for less than three months, but (as I tried to say in the Deputation to Full
Council, which I was not permitted to present on 7 September) I believe there
are problems with the “culture” which Senior Officers and members have allowed
to develop at Brent Council in recent years.
3.3 Here are some quotations, which I am sure
you will recognise from your former role at the Local Government Association:
· ‘a council in denial’;
· ‘a culture of covering up uncomfortable truths’;
· ‘some members have not set and modelled the high standards
expected of those in public life’;
· the council ‘has a culture of suppressing bad news and ignoring
difficult issues’;
· the council ‘goes to some length to cover up information and to
silence whistle-blowers.’
Although not in the same context, I believe (from my own
experience) that these criticisms are as applicable to Brent Council as Louise
Casey found them to be in her “Report of Inspection of Rotherham Borough Council”,
published in February 2015.
I wish you luck in your efforts to turn Brent Council around.
Promoting high standards of conduct, and dealing properly with breaches of
those standards, must be a key part of the necessary improvements.
Yours sincerely,
Philip Grant
