Guest blog by Philip Grant
“Wembley
Matters” readers may be interested to know what happened at Brent’s Scrutiny
Committee meeting this evening (Thursday 30 April).
Before it
started, I was treated to the sight of Cllr. Butt sitting next to Cara Davani
(Director of HR and Administration), laughing and joking with her, and
pointing me out as the person who had come to present a Deputation about
Equalities and HR. I don’t know why the Council Leader was there, except
perhaps to impress on the committee members sitting opposite him that Ms Davani
was under his protection, so they had better not do anything that might annoy
her.
The Chair, Cllr.
Aslam Choudry, soon got on to the question of the Deputation from Phil Grant,
and said that there was a matter to sort out before I presented it. He asked
for my agreement that if I were allowed to speak, I should not refer to any
individual legal cases, as Brent’s Chief Legal Officer had advised me earlier
in the day.
I replied that I
could not accept this restriction, for the reasons I had set out in an email
sent to all of his committee members, and copied to the Legal Officer, some
hours ago, which had not been answered. The legal case I wished to refer to was
the one which Cllr Pavey’s review had been set up, as Christine Gilbert
(interim Chief Executive, and also present) had announced last September, to
learn the lessons from that case. As one of the points I wished to make was
that an important lesson had not been learned, and both of the points
required reference to the case in order to explain the reasons for what I
wanted to say about the draft Action Plan, which Scrutiny Committee was being
asked to give its views on, that case was relevant to committee’s
consideration, and could not be ignored.
There was some
further discussion with the senior Brent Lawyer, Arnold Meagher, at the
meeting, who said that as the case involved had not been fully concluded, I
should not be allowed to refer to it. I responded, saying that I would only be
referring to “findings of fact” from the judgment in the case, and that
judgment was final as it was no longer under appeal. I could not see how any reference
to that part of the case would prejudice the position of any party to the
remaining “remedy” hearing, at which the compensation award would be decided. I
don’t think that this point was ever answered by Mr Meagher.
Cllr. Choudry
said that he would discuss with his committee whether they should allow me to
speak, as I would not accept the condition he had set out. There was a rather
disjointed “discussion”, with several members of the committee speaking, but I
could not follow what they were saying because they forgot to turn their
microphones on. It seemed to be about the Legal Officer saying that I could not
refer to the legal case I wanted to, but whether they viewed this as legal
advice, or a legal instruction to the committee, was unclear. It appeared that
the Chair was about to ask the committee to vote on the matter (which under
Brent’s Standing Order 69(a)(i) he should have done, with only a simple
majority being required to allow a Deputation to be received), but after
further mumbled discussions Cllr. Choudry announced that I would not be allowed
to present my Deputation, and moved on to the next item on the agenda.
Before leaving
the meeting, I handed out the dozen printed copies of my Deputation I had taken
with me to members of the public, co-opted members of the committee and other
councillors present who wanted them, and I am setting out the text of what I
would have said below, for anyone who wishes to read it.
Deputation to Scrutiny Committee on 30 April, in respect of item 9:
Cllr. Pavey’s Equalities and HR Policies and Practices Review and draft Action
Plan.
I am speaking as an individual, but am aware that many local people, including
Council employees and some Brent councillors, share the concerns I am raising.
In September 2014 an Employment Tribunal gave a judgment against Brent
Council and its Director of HR, Cara Davani, finding that a former employee had
suffered racial discrimination, victimisation and had been constructively
dismissed.
Cllr. Pavey’s review of Equalities and HR policies and practices was set
up ‘to ensure that we learn lessons from
this case’. In the foreword to his review he says:
‘Policies are
mostly sound. But policies are implemented by people and we need to do more to
ensure that they are consistently applied.’
What Cllr. Pavey could not say, because his review’s terms of reference did not allow him to actually consider the Rosemarie
Clarke case, was that an important lesson which should be learned is that even the best HR policies and practices are
of little use if they are ignored by the officers who are supposed to follow
them.
As an example, in guidance issued by Brent’s HR Director you can find
statements like: ‘bullying and harassment will not be tolerated’. Rosemarie Clarke
had raised a grievance against Cara Davani, because she felt she was being
bullied and harassed by her. This led to a succession of acts of victimisation
against her, recorded as findings of fact by the Tribunal, such as in para. 302
of the judgment:
‘'The tribunal is satisfied that the action of Ms
Davani in seeking the claimant's suspension when she did, was a direct
consequence of the claimant having raised a grievance against her. The tribunal
finds that the claimant was thereby victimised.'
There were other findings of fact by the Tribunal about total failures
to follow HR policies, which provided evidence of Brent’s constructive
dismissal of Ms Clarke. Para. 176 of the judgment says:
'The tribunal finds that, from the correspondence
from Ms Gilbert on 21 February, addressing the claimant's grievance of 18
February, so as to conclude and dispense with the grievance, this was not in
accordance with the first respondent's [Brent’s]
procedure and a breach of contract.'
If the Senior Officers responsible for such findings ignore Brent’s HR
policies, what example is that setting to the Council’s other staff? The Action
Plan is totally undermined, because why should managers bother to put the policies
into practice, when those at the top ignore them and get away with it? Even
if disciplinary action was taken against more junior staff for policy breaches,
they could argue at any hearing that it would be unfair to penalise them, when
no action was taken against Brent’s Director of HR for far worse misconduct.
Scrutiny Committee may wish to ask Ms Davani why she did not do the
honourable thing, and resign, following the findings of fact in the Rosemarie
Clarke case. It may also wish to ask Ms Gilbert why she did not institute
disciplinary proceedings against Ms Davani when she failed to resign. If,
having heard anything those Officers wish to say, committee members agree that
the Equalities and HR Action Plan cannot move forward with Cara Davani still at
Brent Council, I hope they will not be afraid to say so.
The second point I would ask Scrutiny Committee to consider is at
Section 2 of the draft Action Plan [see page
5 of Appendix 2]. This has been
prepared by Cara Davani, and is entitled ‘Achieving Excellence in Employment
Policies’.
I am deeply concerned at one of the “success criteria” which she
proposes. This reads:
‘Number of employment tribunals is low against
benchmarked councils (benchmarks TBA) and ET cases are successfully defended.’
It is the second
part of this that I find most worrying. “Success”, according to Ms Davani,
should be measured by successfully defending Employment Tribunal cases. The
risk of setting such a “target” is that it might encourage Council staff
involved in these cases to fabricate or falsify the evidence that they give.
As an example, in
the Rosemarie Clarke case, a key factor in the finding of ‘racial
discrimination’ against Brent Council was the decision to continue disciplinary
proceedings against her after she had ceased to be a Council employee. In Para.
240 of the judgment it says:
‘With regards to the decision being taken to pursue disciplinary action
against the claimant [Ms Clarke],
following the termination of her employment, the respondents [Brent Council and Cara Davani] have
been unable to state by whom or when that decision was made.’
As there would
have been very few Council employees who could have made that decision, and at
least some of those were witnesses at the Tribunal, this totally undermined the
credibility of the Council’s evidence.
Scrutiny
Committee may wish to ask Ms Davani and Ms Gilbert to tell them who did
make that decision, and why. The stain of the ‘racial discrimination’ verdict
against Brent Council cannot be removed, nor the Action Plan succeed, until a
full and honest answer is given.
“Success” over
Employment Tribunals is having none, and to achieve this I would recommend that
the “criteria” should be:
100% of managers honour in
practice the core value set out in Cllr. Pavey’s review:
‘Every Brent Council employee deserves to be treated with dignity and respect.’
Thank you.
Philip Grant
30 April 2015.
Note from Martin Francis: Readers may be interested in seeing the Scrutiny Committee in action discussing whether Philip Grant should be heard. Unfortunately most councillors did not switch on their microphones so the public could not hear what was being said. Muhammed Butt is sitting with Cara Davani in the right hand corner of the horse shoe.
