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Monday, March 18, 2024

Imposing a cap

At least one national politician is concerned enough about the way that political parties rely on substantial donations from businesses and businessmen with a financial stake in government that he wants to do something about it.

The Guardian reports that Liberal Democrats leader, Ed Davey has used his spring conference speech to call for a cap on donations to political parties so that “even the wealthiest racists cannot buy power and influence”:

In his speech in York on Sunday, Davey said the prime minister – whose government unveiled its new definition of extremism on Thursday – was “right to warn about the dangers of extremism and division” but said the Conservatives needed to take a “long look in the mirror”.

“If this week’s news has shown anything, it’s that we must also cap donations to political parties. So that even the wealthiest racists cannot buy power and influence over the Conservative party,” he said.

It sounds like he has been reading my blog. 

In the light of the Vaughan Gething affair in Wales we also need to limit donations to individual politicians. 

Something to question candidates on during the general election, I think.

Sunday, March 17, 2024

Sunak's close links with Frank Hester

The Guardian has an interesting follow-up to the ongoing story of Diane Abbott-abuser Frank Hester's ten million pound donation to the Tory Party.

They reveal that Rishi Sunak was flown to Leeds by Frank Hester for a private tour of the businessman’s offices on the day after the autumn statement last year, raising further questions about the access afforded to the £10m donor who is bankrolling the Tories’ election campaign:

Sunak’s relationship with Hester is under the spotlight after a Guardian investigation revealed on Monday that the mega-donor made comments about Diane Abbott which have been widely condemned for being racist and misogynistic.

Sunak initially declined to comment on Hester’s 2019 remarks that looking at Diane Abbott makes you “want to hate all black women” and that the MP “should be shot”. But after an outcry, the prime minister’s spokesperson said the comments were “racist and wrong”.

It has now emerged that the prime minister visited Hester’s healthcare IT company in north-west Leeds on 23 November, with the £16,000 of travel costs by helicopter met by the businessman.

The trip was made roughly three weeks after Hester’s company, the Phoenix Partnership (TPP), gave a second £5m tranche to the Conservatives last November. Hester himself donated £5m in May of last year, while a further £5m is reportedly under discussion.

Sunak was pictured on a “political visit” in Farsley in north-west Leeds hammering jewellery at a workshop that morning, and No 10 has refused to “get into details” about whether Sunak met Hester after that.

However, sources have told the Guardian that Sunak and his entourage were at TPP’s offices in Horsforth in outer Leeds in the late afternoon that day, and those present were asked to keep the visit confidential. Sunak and his team are understood to have been there for about an hour.

They add that Hester, who is the sole owner of TPP, which has been paid more than £400m by the NHS and other government bodies since 2016, primarily to look after 60m UK medical records, and whose company has profited from £135m of contracts with the Department of Health and Social Care in four years, also attended an event at Lancaster House where Sunak discussed AI with the billionaire Elon Musk in November, and was present at two party fundraisers attended by Sunak in London last June and in February this year.

Maybe Sunak should apologise for being so closely involved with this man.

Saturday, March 16, 2024

Bad habits

Like the Bourbons, it seems that this Tory government has learnt nothing and forgotten everything when it comes to awarding lucrative public sector contracts.

The Mirror reveals that a pair of wealthy former Tory donors are set to profit from a £6.4million Home Office contract to practice forcing asylum seekers onto planes to Rwanda:

The Mirror revealed earlier this year that the Government had taken over a vast film studio at the disused Cardington airfield ahead of the deportation training. Security firm Mitie will work with elite prison “riot squad” officers to train up escorts in the former hanger building containing three airplane fuselages.

Now details of the £6,425,285 contract for the “provision of facilities for Use of Force training”, which started in October and runs until the end of 2024, have been published. It was signed with HCP LR Cardington LP, a property partnership with complex ownership but linked to a pair of super-rich Tory donors.

The “HCP” stands for Hackman Capital Partners, a privately-owned property investment firm based in Los Angeles which specialises in film and TV studios. The “LR” stands for UK-based London and Regional Properties, which is owned by billionaire brothers Ian and Richard Livingstone.

They gave nearly £150,000 to the Tories between 2005 and 2018, including a £10,000 donation to Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron’s 2005 leadership campaign. The website for HCP states: “The studio is owned by Hackman Capital Partners in partnership with London and Regional Properties.”

A spokesperson for LRP said the firm “declined to comment”, which HCP did not respond. Hanger 2 at Cardington, near Bedford, has been used as a film set for a string of top Hollywood productions, including Netflix’s Squid Game: The Challenge, two Christopher Nolan Batman films, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and Tim Burton’s Dumbo.

Private security and outsourcing firm Mitie is advertising for £36,000 a year “use of force instructors” who will “work alongside” the Prison Service’s National Tactical Resource Group, a small elite group of prison officers specially trained to deal with riots and similar violent situations in the UK’s jails.

As well as the £6.4m in rent, the Home Office is spending £670,000 on hiring three aircraft fuselages. Another £315,000 bill is for catering but it is not known how much will be paid to Mitie for the training.

These costs are on top of the £240m the UK government has already paid to Rwanda so far before a single asylum seeker has been deported to the African country. A further payment of £50million is likely to be made this year.

You'd think that they would have learnt by now after the row over expensive PPE contracts being given to donors and friends of ministers, but bad habits are hard to break.

Friday, March 15, 2024

Those missing WhatsApp messages in Wales

Was it inevitable that Welsh First Ministerial contender, Vaughan Gething would lose all his WhatsApp messages when he upgraded his phone? Apparently, not.

Nation Cymru reports that the very suggestion has riled up the Senedd's Presiding Officer, who has pointed out that ahead of an upgrade in 2022, MSs were “advised” to back-up any data on phones and were offered support to do this.

The Senedd Commission added in a statement that WhatsApp is “not managed or supported” by the Commission’s ICT Service:

Despite initially denying using the messaging app, evidence which emerged this week showed that Mark Drakeford was in a specific messaging group with Mr Gething.

The Inquiry was shown Welsh Government advice, which said that “any and all” official business conducted through personal mobiles and email must be “summarised and saved”.

Mr Gething accepted that, having now looked into the rules “in much more detail” he should not have used the messages in the way he did.

During First Minister’s Questions on Tuesday (March 12), presiding officer Elin Jones appeared to defend Senedd staff saying lost data was not down to the ICT department.

Her comments came following questions from leader of the Welsh Conservative Senedd group, Andrew RT Davies who pressed the First Minister on Senedd protocols regarding ministers phones.

Mr Davies said: “The economy minister highlighted how it was embarrassing that data was lost because the Senedd IT department lost that data when they were upgrading his phone.

“And you’ve alluded to the fact that you’ve used your Senedd device to have exchanges on WhatsApp – how the protocols that the Welsh Government work to in retention of information reaches into devices that are provided by the Senedd.

“Surely there’s a discrepancy there, and, if it doesn’t get captured by the protocols that the Welsh Government undertakes, how on earth can people have confidence that important information is contained and held ready for descriptions and evidence in the Covid inquiry or other inquiries that might require that information?”

At the end of Mr Davies’ weekly slot to quiz Mark Drakeford, the Llywydd, who’s job it is to chair Plenary meetings and remain politically impartial at all times, interjected.

Elin Jones, Y Llywydd | Presiding Officer, AS | MS by Senedd Cymru / Welsh Parliament

She said: “I am responsible for the Senedd Commission staff, and I’m sure the leader of the opposition did not seek to imply any criticism of the ICT Senedd staff, in his questioning of the First Minister, on any data that was lost by the ICT department.

“Software updates are very complex and have consequences on all our devices, and it was most definitely not as a result of the Senedd ICT department that the data was lost. So, any criticism of the staff of that department, I’m sure you did not imply that.”

We contacted the Llywydd’s office and asked for clarity on whether the messages were on Mr Gething’s phone when it was handed in to the Senedd for maintenance.

A spokesperson for the Senedd Commission said: “In April 2022, an upgrade to our security protection on Member phones was rolled out. Ahead of the upgrade, Members and their offices were contacted and advised to back-up any data on the phone including non-supported applications. Members were also offered support to do this, if needed.

“Members are able to download any application to their Senedd provided phone. The Senedd Commission facilitates this, but any application which falls outside of Microsoft 365 is not managed or supported by the Commission’s ICT Service. Non-supported application.

Actually, none of this story of lost WhatsApp messages makes much sense to me. It is, as pointed out in the article, perfectly possible to back up messages so that they're not lost. You can also download WhatsApp to your computer, which I do regularly for the convenience of having a larger keyboard to work on and to download attachments.

But also it's not clear which phone Gething had his WhatsApp messages on. Was it actually his Senedd phone, as these devices are not on the government secure information network? MInisters are required to use devices issued to them by the government. Was it that phone which swallowed his messages?

And if he was using a non-secured phone for government business, is that a breach of the ministerial code? I ask because I don't know. Either way losing this valuable dialogue was an act of unforgiveable carelessness.

Thursday, March 14, 2024

Who are the extremists?

The Guardian reports on the latest initiative by the UK Government that will ban ministers and civil servants from talking to or funding organisations that undermine “the UK’s system of liberal parliamentary democracy”.

However, not everybody is happy with the new definitions, not least the government’s own terror watchdog and Muslim community groups:

Michael Gove, the communities secretary, will tell MPs on Thursday that officials should consider whether a group maintains “public confidence in government” before working with it.

Groups that will be effectively cancelled by ministers for falling foul of the new definition will be named in the coming weeks, government sources said.

There will be no appeals process if a group is labelled as extremist, it is understood, and groups will instead be expected to challenge a ministerial decision in the courts.

The new definition, which will be distributed across government and Whitehall, will say: “Extremism is the promotion or advancement of an ideology based on violence, hatred or intolerance, that aims to: 1 negate or destroy the fundamental rights and freedoms of others; or 2 undermine, overturn or replace the UK’s system of liberal parliamentary democracy and democratic rights; or 3 intentionally create a permissive environment for others to achieve the results in (1) or (2).”

The previous guidelines, published in 2011, said individuals or groups are only defined as extremist if they show “vocal or active opposition to British fundamental values, including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and the mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs”.

Gove, who has overseen the formulation of the new definition, said it would “ensure that Government does not inadvertently provide a platform to those setting out to subvert democracy and deny other people’s fundamental rights”.

But deep concern was expressed by Jonathan Hall KC, the government’s independent reviewer of state threat legislation who referred to a lack of safeguards and the labelling of people as extremists by “ministerial decree”.

“The definition focuses on ideas, on ideology, not action. So it’s a move from the previous definition … Moving the focus from action to ideology or ideas is an important one because I think people will be entitled to say: ‘What business is it of the government what people think, unless they do something with that?’” he told the Guardian.

“There’s no appeal body and where you have this lack of safeguards, it’s going to be really important to make sure that this labelling does not bleed into other areas.”

“If the government says that someone is an extremist, and is essentially saying ‘You are unacceptable’, then what would stop a local authority, another public body or even a private body from deciding they will adopt it as well?”

These are good points by Jonathan Hall. Will the next step be the establishment of a Ministry of Truth? It is little wonder that Muslim organisations, including the Muslim Council of Britain, are preparing to take the government to judicial review over its new definition. Crucially, as well, there appears to be no attempt by Ministers to define Islamophobia.

The real question though, is what about the extremism within the ranks of government ministers and Tory MPs themselves?

Whether it is seeking to stoke up public opinion against asylum seekers, blatant islamophobia, or failing to act to properly to disassociate themselves from donors who make racist and theatening remarks about ethnic minority MPs, the Tory Party has a real problem.

The culture wars that Tory ministers are embarking on are acts of extremism as well. Will they now stop talking to themselves?

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Accident prone?

Dr Who fanously toppled a prime minister by asking the six word question, 'Don't you think she looks tired?', but a far more damning question to ask of a politician's colleagues would be 'do you think he's accident prone?'

Accident prone in politics is not just tripping over your own feet, though that's involved as well, it's attracting the sort of bad publicity that embarrasses you and your party. It's when the level of embarrassment becomes too much that the knives start to come out and plots and cabals start to form.

First Ministerial candidate, Vaughan Gething must be approaching that threshold by now, and he hasn't yet been elected to the top job, which must be worrying for the MSs who sit in his Senedd group and the wider Wales Labour Party. Is the latest revelation the last straw.

The BBC report that Gething lobbied regulators in favour of a company that has been prosecuted for waste crimes and whose owner has since given him money.

THe broadcaster says that the Welsh Labour leadership candidate asked Natural Resources Wales (NRW) to ease restrictions on Atlantic Recycling in 2016:

Its holding company recently donated £200,000 to Mr Gething's campaign.

The economy minister defended the correspondence.

Mr Gething said it was "routine practice" for elected politicians to correspond with a range of public bodies regarding constituency issues.

The minister is standing against Jeremy Miles in the race to be the next first minister. Voting ends on Thursday and the result is due to be declared on Saturday.

Atlantic Recycling and its director David Neal were prosecuted in 2013 for illegally dumping waste on the Gwent Levels, and in 2017 for failing to clean the waste up.

Mr Neal was fined £10,000 and given a three month suspended sentence in 2013, and was handed an 18 week suspended sentence in 2017, together with fines and costs of £230,000.

NRW has now revealed that, in 2016, Mr Gething wrote to the regulator asking it to reconsider a notice ordering work to be suspended on the site, accusing it of having a "closed mind".

He raised concerns about public money being spent on disputes with the company. He followed his letter up with a meeting, an email and another letter.

In 2018, in a further letter, he told NRW officials they were unjustified in delaying a decision regarding a permit.

Later that year, companies linked to David Neal donated £38,000 to Mr Gething's previous leadership campaign, in addition to the more recent donations of £200,000 from Mr Neal's Dauson Environmental Group.

The Member of the Senedd (MS) for Cardiff South and Penarth, whose constituency is home to Atlantic Recycling's Cardiff base, was a Welsh government minister through the whole period. NRW is funded by the Welsh government.

A Labour source said there was a "real sense of anger" in the party over the whole donation issue.

Meanwhile former Welsh government minister, Leighton Andrews, said the donations were damaging devolution.

Gething in his response, stresses that he was acting in his role as a constituency MS and that he had no role in any decision affecting the company, while Natural Resources Wales say that the interventions had no impact on its decision making.

Nevertheless, one can see why one nameless Labour MP said: "This just isn't going away. He's certainly got questions he needs to answer,". while a separate Labour source said: "Everyone is furious. There is a real sense of anger about this."

Has Vaughan Gething become a liaibility to Welsh Labour even before the ballot papers have been counted?

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

'Arrogant and Incompetent'?

The Welsh media (and indeed some of the UK media) is full of news about Vaughan Gething's evidence to the Covid inquiry yesterday with representatives of the families livid over the way he answered the questions posed to him and the inadequate time made available for a deep dive into the issues.

The Guardian reports that bereaved families who lost loved ones to Covid came out of the meeting accusing the former Welsh health minister of incompetence and arrogance after he revealed that all his WhatsApp messages from the time had been lost:

Vaughan Gething, who is standing to be the next Welsh first minister, said the messages had been a way of “blowing off steam” rather than being used to make government decisions but said he was embarrassed they had vanished.

Appearing at the Welsh leg of the UK Covid inquiry in Cardiff, Gething denied that the fact the Labour government’s cabinet did not formally discuss Covid until a month after the administration was warned of the risk showed it had been too slow.

He also defended his government for taking almost two weeks longer than the Westminster government to begin Covid testing patients being sent from hospital into care homes, claiming Wales did not have the capacity to do this.

Speaking outside the hearing, Anna-Louise Marsh-Rees, who leads Covid-19 Bereaved Families Cymru, said: “He makes [the former UK health minister] Matt Hancock look like a strategic planning pandemic genius. He wasn’t prepared. He didn’t react. It was all just so casual. Thousands of people died in Wales because of these decisions. There was no sense of urgency. He was meant to be in charge of protecting our loved ones and he just didn’t. His arrogance is astonishing.”

Marsh-Rees said the revelation that all Gething’s WhatsApp messages had gone was “flabbergasting”. “If it wasn’t so tragic it would be like something out of The Thick Of It,” she said.

Another member of the group, Sam Smith-Higgins, was so angry that she walked out of the hearing, describing the Welsh government’s response to Covid as “chaotic”.

She said: “This is a socialist government but they are acting like a dictatorship. They don’t want to learn from this. The complacency that we’ve heard today from a man who could be first minister next week. We cannot allow the Welsh government to point to Westminster and say they were terrible. They were terrible but we made huge mistakes in Wales.”

Gething blamed a “security rebuild” of his Senedd mobile phone for the deletion of his WhatsApp messages.

He said: “It is a matter of real embarrassment, because if I’d been able to recover those messages then we wouldn’t be having this conversation.” Gething said the messages had been used in place of “conversations you have in the corridor” and not for decision-making. He characterised discussions as “largely blowing off steam and being supportive”.

The Welsh cabinet had its first formal discussion about Covid on 25 February 2020, a month after Wales’s chief medical officer, Frank Atherton, told the first minister, Mark Drakeford, there was a significant risk of the disease arriving in Wales. Even then, it was only in “any other business” on the agenda.

Gething said fellow ministers were aware he was making weekly statements about Covid and attending UK government Cobra meetings.

Asked why the Welsh government did not order patients to be tested for Covid before moving from hospitals to care homes until 13 days after England, he seemed to criticise the UK government, saying: “There wasn’t the sharing of information you’d have expected between the department of health and others … I certainly do wish we’d been able to move more speedily.” He also said he did not think Wales had the testing capacity to do it.

Gething was asked why the government had been prepared to allow 70,000 people to gather in Cardiff for a Wales v Scotland rugby game on 14 March 2020. The match was eventually cancelled by the Welsh Rugby Union but not until 20,000 Scottish rugby fans had arrived in the Welsh capital. He said: “In hindsight I think we’d do that differently … of the awkward choices we made that is definitely one that jars.”

Essentially, Gething gave an evasive politician's performance when everybody was hoping for frankness and insight. It doesn't bode well if he becomes First Minister on Friday.

Monday, March 11, 2024

Vive la difference

Any notion that the next general election is going to focus on the state of public services was roundly debunked by the shadow chancellor yesterday, when she refused to rule out having to make cuts in public expenditure.

Rachel Reeves may have blamed Tory carnage for this stance, but the bottom line to her statement was that Labour are not about to stick their neck out to improve health and education.

The Mirror reports that Reeves said she's "under no illusions" about the scale of the challenge she'll face if she gets into No11. And she refused to rule out real-terms cuts to some Government departments:

Ms Reeves told the BBC's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg that although public services need more money, the financial position the next Government will inherit is the worst since World War Two. But she said she doesn't yet know how bad things are, she said, because the opposition can't carry out a proper spending review.

The Labour frontbecher said she has to be "honest that we're not going to be able to turn things around straight away". But she vowed keep promises on education and health spending, while trying to grow the economy.

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) says Tory plans "imply no real growth in public spending per person over the next five years". Meanwhile the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) accused both main parties of a "conspiracy of silence" about public spending after the election.

Asked if she planned public service cuts, Ms Reeves replied: "It is clear that the inheritance that a Labour government would have if we do win the next election will be the worst since the Second World War. And I have to be honest that we're not going to be able to turn things around straight away. But we will get to work on all of that."

So the choice we will be faced with when the election comes is actually no choice at all and Labour will be presenting as just a slightly less right-wing Tory Party.

Sunday, March 10, 2024

Helicopters R Us

According to the Mirror, Rishi Sunak's obsession with helicopters has paid off for the Tory Party.

The paper reports that the Rishi took a £10k helicopter ride to a supermarket tycoon's back garden to rattle his tin and came away with a £250k donation:

And figures just released by the Electoral Commission reveal how lucrative Mr Sunak's trip was.

Mr Arora donated £250,000 to the Conservative Party in December - one of the party's biggest single donations of the year.

It's Bobby Arora's first political donation, according to the Commission's records - though his brother Simon has previously given £50,000 to the Tories.

The £10,000 cost of the helicopter ride was covered by another tycoon - Ferrari driving businessman Steve Parkin.

In total, the Tories were handed around £48million in cash donations and public funds in 2023.

The party had recorded an overall loss in 2022 amid a year of political turmoil which saw three different prime ministers enter Number 10.

Including donations to both the central party and local branches as well as all payments from trade unions, companies, individuals and public funds, Labour received around £31 million across 2023.

But despite being behind the Tories overall, it was Labour’s biggest ever year in donations from individuals and companies - who gave more than £13 million in total.

The Conservatives trousered £10million in donations from health tech tycoon Frank Hester and his firm the Phoenix Partnership (Leeds).

And two Tory MPs donated their own cash to the party in a desperate bid to get re-elected. Chancellor Jeremy Hunt handed his local party £18,084 in November - taking the total he's donated since the last election to £123,345.

And John Penrose gave £10,000 to his Weston Super Mare constituency. Polls show both seats are under threat at the next election.

Labour's biggest backer overall was former Autoglass boss Gary Lubner, who gave £4.5million, while the largest single donation of £3million was provided by Lord David Sainsbury, the long-standing Labour supporter.

Lord Sainsbury was a major donor when the party was last in power, serving as a minister in Tony Blair's government.

My first reaction to this is that I will not be stepping foot in a B&M for sometime, if ever again. However, the real questions have to be what do all these donors expect to get for their money? And why do we have a system that allows people to buy influence in this way?

If you're poor and existing on benefits, the chances of you sitting down to dinner with a cabinet minister to put your case range from negligible to zero, but if you donate money then that is not a problem. Surely it is time for some serious reform.

Saturday, March 09, 2024

Police State?

The Guardian reports that nearly 50 organisations have joined forces to condemn what they call a “crackdown” on the right to protest by the UK government.

The paper says that n response to Rishi Sunak’s recent remarks on extremism and “mob rule” linked to protesters, Amnesty International UK and 45 others have sent a letter to the prime minister calling for “leadership, not censorship”. Other signatories include Article 19, Greenpeace UK, Liberty, the Runnymede Trust and Oxfam:

In the open letter, the groups say the recent introduction of a patchwork of new legislation and policing powers has placed “draconian” restrictions on the right to protest in the UK.

Recently announced moves to place further limits on protests in specific locations are likely to have a further “chilling effect” on people’s right to protest in this country, say the groups.

The signatories of the letter say that by using terms such as “extremism” and “hate mobs”, ministers and other politicians have sought to demonise an overwhelmingly peaceful movement of individuals concerned by recent loss of life in Gaza.

Sacha Deshmukh, Amnesty International UK’s chief executive, said: “When the prime minister addresses the nation, we expect him to show leadership, not censorship.

“From racist language used by ministers, plans to expand the definition of extremism to directly attacking our right to protest are clear violations of international human rights laws.

“Peaceful protest and freedom of expression are fundamental to our democracy. We cannot stand idly by and allow the government to raze our rights to the ground.”

The letter also challenges Sunak over his stated intention to redouble support for the Prevent scheme, in which the groups allege “Islamophobic stereotypes” play a major role in referrals.

The groups call on the prime minister to reverse the “recent crackdown” on the right to protest and stop conflating protests with extremism, abandon the expansion of the definition of extremism and proposals to bar MPs from engaging with certain groups, and to refrain from amplifying divisive language that could inflame tensions within and between communities.

“We have wider concerns about the manner in which your government has come to discuss protesters and others that engage in legitimate political activity on important issues of the day,” the letter reads.

“Our organisations have emphasised the necessity of using considered language in recent months. Yet the deployment of certain terms, such as ’extremism’, ‘radical’, ‘hate mobs’, by your government, creates division and exacerbates existing fears amongst minoritised communities.”

This legislation and the demonisation of legitimate protest by government ministers could easily be the precursor to a police state. Any party who values freedom and democracy should pledge to reverse it.

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