Westminster whistleblower

In 1986 Labour came within 106 votes of winning the council for the very first time. It was a total shock for Porter and her colleagues and they vowed it would never happen again. What followed – the notorious ‘Homes for Votes’ scandal – ended up with her and her deputy, David Weeks, being surcharged over £42 million, the biggest in local government history.

As leader of the opposition I led the Labour group team that uncovered the ‘Homes for Votes’ and 15p cemeteries scandal. More recently, I blew the whistle on the council’s ‘go slow’ in collecting the £42 million surcharge owed by Porter. That episode got me in to very deep and very hot water with the Standards Board. Two years later and £46,000 worse off, I survived to tell the tale. Spurred on by my experiences I wrote The Westminster Whistleblowers, which has just been published by Politico’s.

All my political life I have been an opposition councillor. I was fortunate to be in very good company and was surrounded by colleagues who have gone on to become members of parliament, senior advisers and ‘captains of industry’. And after nearly 20 years I have learnt one or two things that might be of use to others.

First, don’t let anyone tell you that opposition is easy or serves no purpose. I learned that opposition is not only hard work and very tough, it is also vital in keeping the democratic process alive. And in these days of ‘streamlined local government’, holding the executive to account can be very difficult. As ever, you have to be very organised – and prepared to be unpopular with council officers.

The party running the council and the people who serve them have a vested interest in keeping you in the dark about anything that might embarrass them. You have to probe and constantly ask questions.

The vast majority of councils, not just Westminster, are very good at scrutinising other organisations and finding faults – the Royal Mail, the water authorities, the health service, for example. But, they find it very difficult to scrutinise themselves effectively. It should be obvious to everyone that the new scrutiny arrangements simply do not work. And the new cabinet system is not much help either! In the past, the party running the council had to defend its policies and decisions at committee meetings open to the public.

Opposition councillors had the opportunity to scrutinise proposals before decisions were taken. The public had a right to attend committees and hear the debate. Now, all that has disappeared. Decisions are taken by Cabinet members behind closed doors. The administrative processes are manipulated so that ‘call in’ mechanisms are no more than a fiction.

In Westminster it requires three members of a scrutiny committee to secure a ‘call in’ but there are only two opposition councillors on the committee. Not surprisingly, in the past four years at Westminster only one decision has ever been ‘called in’. So much for the supposed ‘non-party political’ nature of scrutiny committees. After all, what incentive is there for a majority party backbencher to risk their political future and side with the opposition? So, three cheers for the Freedom of Information Act which has made it difficult for the bureaucracy to clam up completely.

Second, proving allegations of wrongdoing against the rich and powerful is never easy. Believe it or not, we had a tough job to persuade people of the scale of Shirley Porter’s wrongdoing. Even the excellent district auditor, who mounted his determined investigations over a seven- year period, delayed his inquiries for a full year after we told him what Porter and senior council officers were up to.

Because it was Westminster, many people’s first instinct was to believe that everything that went on at city hall was totally above board. Even when we produced the evidence we had an uphill struggle to get the authorities to take action.

The district auditor’s initial reaction to our allegations was to believe the fiction and half-truths he was told by council officers. Every step of the way it was up to us – working in our own time and with no financial or professional help – to produce the evidence to persuade the authorities to investigate.

Third, you need teamwork and an array of skills to do opposition well. We were incredibly lucky at Westminster. The Labour group was full of talent. We shared jobs and played to peoples’ strengths. We had no rows about who should get the kudos for blowing the whistle. We shared the plaudits. And when the votes went against us – as they did spectacularly in 1990 – we shared the grief and there were no recriminations.

Fourth, you need to be organised to be effective. Unlocking the Westminster scandals involved putting together detailed ‘chronologies’ of events. The more we dug, the more information we found. Gradually, these small fragments built into the ‘big picture’. Doing this required access to all kinds of information, much of it held by the council. And this leads to the next point.

Our experience at Westminster was an example of how those in power manipulate information, particularly ‘confidential’ information, to keep their grip on power. Westminster’s use of the ‘confidential’ label was a classic way of keeping politically embarrassing information secret. Until, that is, it suits them to make it public for their own political purposes.

Fifth, being a ‘whistleblower’ is not to be undertaken on your own. You need a great deal of support to get through everything that is hurled at you by a powerful organisation. I was lucky. I had a very supportive family and a great set of colleagues.

Being a ‘whistleblower’ is not just about passing information about wrongdoing to the authorities and hoping that they will do something about it. It is also about protecting yourself against the attacks you will get from those who have a lot to lose from what you have revealed.

Finally, holding decision-makers to account is a vital role in a democracy – and even more so in a council like Westminster where a change of political control is no more than theoretical. Without the Westminster whistleblowers, the biggest scandal in local government history would never have been uncovered. Working closely with the media was the only way that this could be achieved. A free press and determined, skilful journalists made everything possible. Indeed, working closely with local, London and national journalists was the key to exposing the wrong-doing at the heart of Westminster.

Although the evil events at Westminster began more than 20 years ago their impact is still felt today. Indeed, Porter’s young prot g s back in the 1980s now run the council! And we are still using the same tried and tested ways of uncovering scandals – working closely with local residents at the front line of the council’s actions, asking questions, never taking no for an answer, attention to detail and briefing the press.

Shirley Porter’s Westminster was an extreme case, thank goodness. There is a huge amount of excellent public service that is delivered by councils of all political persuasions. But no council is perfect all of the time and the job of an effective opposition is to help root out poor performance, bad practice or straightforward wrongdoing.

People sometimes ask whether Porter and her colleagues would have been caught in 2016 if ‘Homes for Votes’ was happening now. Well, the district audit processes have been changed with the abolition of the ‘surcharge’ and my recent experience of pursuing an objection to the council’s accounts is that the district auditor places the cost of an investigation at the top of the list of criteria to be considered in whether or not to mount an inquiry. These days, the district auditor appears to have put a price on exposing wrongdoing and this can only help those who are in the wrong.

Councillor Paul Dimoldenberg is leader of the Labour group on Westminster City Council. The Westminster Whistleblowers is published by Politico’s, price £12.99