Tag Archives: Cabinet Office

Priti Patel bullying claims aren’t as dead as we’ve been led to believe

Priti Patel and Boris Johnson: allies against the civil service?

Isn’t this interesting?

Way back at the end of April, we were all being told that Priti Patel would be cleared of all allegations that she bullied civil servants in three separate government departments

Yes, the claim prompted condemnation of the Cabinet Office inquiry process, which is conducted in secret and offers no recourse for complainants.

And Boris Johnson has already been criticised for compromising the process by insisting, before the inquiry had concluded, that he would continue to support Patel.

When This Site published a story about it, I wrote that the courts had yet to hear the case of Sir Philip Rutnam, the former permanent secretary to the Home Office, who had brought a case of constructive dismissal against Ms Patel.

I pointed out that the whole Cabinet Office inquiry process would be brought into question if the courts find against Ms Patel.

Now it seems the result of the inquiry has been delayed by the senior civil servant carrying it out, Helen MacNamara, after she heard evidence supporting Sir Philip’s claims.

Here’s The Independent (because The Times is behind a paywall):

The Times has reported a stand-off between Ms MacNamara, the Cabinet Office’s head of propriety and ethics, and her political masters.

The article suggested the inquiry report will never be published, unless the prime minister is able to say the investigation found no conclusive evidence of bullying, an outcome that Ms MacNamara is resisting.

It would be corrupt if the government suppressed the inquiry’s report to save the blushes of a bullying cabinet member.

If Patel has behaved inappropriately towards civil servants in the Home Office, Department of Work and Pensions and Department of International Trade, then she should be removed from any position of responsibility.

Basically, she should be sacked in disgrace.

If Boris Johnson, the prime minister, is shown to have tried to exert undue influence to prevent the facts from reaching the public, then he should resign.

No wonder the Labour Party – and others including the FDA union that represents public service managers – is demanding the report’s release.

And the court case still hasn’t taken place. What will Johnson do about that?

Source: Labour demands release of Priti Patel bullying report, amid claims of ‘political interference’ | The Independent

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The Establishment went to extraordinary lengths to protect this child sex abuser

Hubert Chesshyre: Not Of the Normal Criminal Element.

It seems remarkably reserved of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse to suggest that heraldry expert Hubert Chesshyre was given “preferential treatment” after he was found to have committed two specimen counts of indecent assault against a child.

The perpetrator had been made a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (CVO) in 2014 but by the time he was accused, the following year, he was found to be suffering from dementia and unfit to plead. How convenient.

A trial of the facts led to a unanimous verdict that he had committed two specimen counts of indecent assault against a child, with a third ordered to lie on file. But because he had been found unfit to plead, he was awarded an absolute discharge. How convenient.

Later that year, the victim approached the honours and appointments secretariat at the Cabinet Office, requesting that Chesshyre’s honour should be rescinded. He was told to contact Alan Reid, Keeper of the Privy Purse (as the honour is the gift of the Sovereign).

Reid received help in drafting his response from Thomas Woodcock, Garter Principal King of Arms, the senior officer of the College of Arms, of which Chesshyre was a member for 40 years  – and said that, as Chesshyre was given an absolute discharge, “it would be wrong to submit a recommendation to the Queen”. How convenient.

After an intervention from the victim’s MP, Jim Dowd, the forfeiture committee recommended the Queen remove the honour. But the victim did not learn of this until five months after the decision because the forfeiture committee was considering “representations and new information provided to it by Chesshyre’s brother on his behalf”. How convenient.

The committee took the almost unprecedented decision not to publish the forfeiture in official journal of record the London Gazette, in “reflection of how the case had been handled and, to a lesser degree, in light of Mr Chesshyre’s ill-health”. How convenient.

The failure to publish confirmation of the forfeiture had made it difficult for the victim to bring Chesshyre’s abuse to the attention of prestigious organisations of which he continued to be a member, so they saw no reason to end their association with him. How convenient.

Buckingham Palace has said it does not comment on individuals, but that it has reviewed its processes and changes have been made to reflect lessons learned. We are not informed of the nature of those changes. How convenient.

And a government spokesman has said the forfeiture process is confidential and it would be inappropriate to comment on individual cases. How convenient.

So it seems a convicted child abuser got off free as a bird because the government and Buckingham Palace conspired to hide his guilt.

And all the inquiry could say was that Chesshyre had received “preferential or exceptional treatment … because of their status and contacts, regardless of the known involvement of child victims”.

Is that good enough?

I think the victim deserves a grovelling apology, at the very least, from the bureaucrats who hid the facts of his abuse from the public and other organisations. Don’t you agree?

Source: Child sex abuser given ‘preferential treatment’, says damning report | Child protection | The Guardian

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It’s civil servants v Boris Johnson over Priti Patel’s bullying. Who’s going to believe the known liar?

Priti Patel: smug as ever – perhaps because she’s got Boris Johnson making sure she’ll remain as Home Secretary no matter what is said against her.

Civil servants are now lining up to condemn Home Secretary Priti Patel, while she has support from liars like Boris Johnson and other former – disgraced – ministers like Liam Fox.

A civil servant writing in The Guardian tells us: “Civil servants are supposed to silently get on with it while ministers take the flak… But this very British convention of public life… is now being shredded by an emboldened administration still flexing its muscular majority.

“More colleagues are now coming forward with further allegations against Patel during her time as an employment minister in 2015. That’s in addition to claims that she, as international development secretary, openly called her staff “fucking useless”.

“So it might not be a stretch to say that this feels like like a sort of #MeToo moment for the civil service. Those who, like me, have been around government for several years reckon more allegations are on the way. There may be blood.”

But the writer says it probably won’t be Ms Patel’s.

Yes, there will be a Cabinet Office investigation – but the minister for the Cabinet Office, Michael Gove, has already given her his support.

Not only that: Boris Johnson told MPs he was “sticking by” Ms Patel during Prime Minister’s Questions, saying she was “delivering change, putting police out on the street, cutting crime, and delivering a new immigration system”. He is a known liar, of course.

Oh, and how about this endorsement?

Liam Fox was, if I recall correctly, the very first member of the Conservative government from 2010 onwards who was forced to resign in disgrace.

That is the kind of support she is getting.

Ms Patel may stay on as Home Secretary – let’s face it, it seems clear that Johnson is rigging any investigation in her favour – but she’ll never live down the scandal.

Civil servants don’t make this kind of fuss about nothing.

And she has already been forced to resign from a previous Cabinet job after she tried to carry out her own foreign policy, independent of even the Tory government’s.

As far as This Writer is concerned, she is poison. If she stays, she’ll become a symbol of Tory government bullying, lies and corruption.

Source: The Priti Patel allegations are turning into a #MeToo moment for the civil service | The civil servant | Opinion | The Guardian

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92-year-old man arrested while supporting Extinction Rebellion – because the Tories don’t like it

Arrested: John, 90-something, was protesting with Extinction Rebellion – as is his legal right – outside the Cabinet Office when the police decided to arrest him anyway. It’s nice to know the law doesn’t stand up for you, isn’t it?

This is the depth to which the UK has sunk under Boris Johnson.

John is 91 or 92 years old (it’s not clear from the reports). He came to protest outside the Cabinet Office in London, in support of Extinction Rebellion and because he wants to preserve the environment for his descendents.

And he got arrested.

John had every legal right to protect outside the Cabinet Office – or anywhere else that is a public area.

“We all have the right to come together with others to express our views. That means we must be allowed to take part in peaceful assemblies like marches, protests and demonstrations. We also have the right to set up or join a political party or trade union.”

That’s unless the Tories don’t like it, of course.

The arrest has itself sparked a wave of protest:

There was no reason to arrest this man.

The police picked him up because he was calling on the government and the people of the UK to help save the environment in which we live.

It seems the government does not want to help save the environment in which we live.

So Boris Johnson’s brigade used the police as political tools and had John’s collar felt.

Conclusion: John was committing an offence against nobody but Boris Johnson. A Boris Johnson government is an offence against the very environment in which we live.

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Inquiry launched into Corbyn ‘frailty’ claim by civil servants – but it isn’t independent

Not so frail: Jeremy Corbyn looked perfectly healthy when he scaled the wall at a climbing centre in Leeds last October. If senior civil servants have been briefing that he is ‘frail’, perhaps they had an ulterior political motive.

The Cabinet Office has launched an inquiry after senior civil service sources were said to have claimed that the considered Jeremy Corbyn “too frail” to be prime minister – but it won’t be the independent inquiry that Mr Corbyn wants.

The prime minister’s spokesman stated: “The Cabinet Office is investigating this potential breach of the civil service code fully and fairly just as it would any other. If we are able to identify an individual responsible we will take disciplinary action.”

Mr Corbyn, 70, had demanded a “speedy and thorough” independent inquiry after The Times reported that two senior civil servants had claimed that he might have to stand down due to health issues.

In a letter to Cabinet Office secretary Mark Sedwill, he stated that the matter had “undermined confidence in the principle of civil service neutrality”, adding that “such discussions, based on false assumptions, should not be taking place, nor shared with a newspaper”.

He also stated: “For there to be trust in any investigation, there need to be assurances on its scope and independence. In the light of this, I would urge you to ensure that there is a speedy and thorough independent investigation, rather than one carried out by the Cabinet Office.”

In spite of this, the Cabinet Office has launched its own inquiry.

Will we be able to trust the findings of the report – and any action taken on those findings?

That will depend on what those findings are – and the manner in which they are reported.

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Another one bites the dust: Damian Green ousted over pornography cover-up

Gone: Damian Green has been forced to resign from the minority Conservative government.

Damian Green has been forced out of the government after a Cabinet Office investigation found he had misled the public and MPs over pornography found on a computer in his Parliamentary office.

Mr Green is the third Cabinet minister to be forced out of office in the last two months, following Michael Fallon and Priti Patel.

The inquiry, run by Sue Gray, found that Mr Green had misled the public in statements he made on November 4 and 11, denying that police had ever told him about pornographic material found in a raid on his office in 2008.

In fact, the police had raised it with his solicitor in 2008 and with him directly in 2013.

Mrs May told Mr Green to resign on Wednesday evening, and is not expected to replace him in the immediate future.

The decision is a vindication of former Metropolitan police officers Bob Quick and Neil Lewis, who came forward to make it clear that pornograpic material was found on a computer in Mr Green’s office, no matter what the now-former First Minister had to say about it.

Ms Gray did not present the Prime Minister with any conclusions about whether Mr Green had behaved inappropriately towards the writer Kate Maltby, whose complaint triggered the inquiry, or whether he had ever viewed or downloaded pornography at work.

The investigation concluded that because of “competing and contradictory accounts” of private meetings involving Mr Green and Ms Maltby it was not possible “to reach a definitive conclusion on the appropriateness of Mr Green’s behaviour with Kate Maltby in early 2015”, however, the investigation “found Ms Maltby’s account to be plausible”.

The Cabinet Office report also stated that: “Mr Green’s statements of 4 and 11 November, which suggested that he was not aware that indecent material was found on parliamentary computers in his office, were inaccurate and misleading, as the Metropolitan Police Service had previously informed him of the existence of this material.

“These statements therefore fall short of the honesty requirement of the Seven Principles of Public Life and constitute breaches of the Ministerial Code. Mr Green accepts this.”

But there is a sting in the tale for the former police officers who have ended Mr Green’s Cabinet career; Theresa May has said they breached a “duty of confidentiality” by revealing details of what was found on Mr Green’s computer in 2008 when his parliamentary office was raided.

She wrote, in her letter that, it seems, both demanded and accepted Mr Green’s resignation (if he had been sacked, he wouldn’t have received a generous Cabinet pension – make of that what you will): “I shared the concerns raised from across the political spectrum when your Parliamentary office was raided in 2008 when you were a shadow home office minister holding the then Labour Government to account.

“And I share the concerns, raised once again from across the political spectrum, at the comments made by a former officer involved in that case in recent weeks. I am glad that the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police’s professional standards department are reviewing the comments which have been made.”

So it seems that, having been forced to get rid of Damian Green because of evidence brought forward in the name of justice, Mrs May is determined to discourage anybody else from doing the decent thing by fouling the names of the former officers concerned.

To This Writer, such behaviour does not resemble good government.

Considering the facts, perhaps Mrs May would care to explain how justice has not been served by the officers, who came forward at considerable risk to their own reputations in order to ensure the facts of this case were made public?

Why is the prime minister of the United Kingdom trying to justify attempts to hide important facts?

This Writer will shed no tears of Mr Green’s demise; he is a nasty piece of work.

As Work and Pensions Secretary, he worked hard to justify the Conservative government’s persecution of society’s most vulnerable people, in the fact of hard evidence including the film I, Daniel Blake, in which director Ken Loach described vividly the trials faced by sickness benefit claimants in Tory Britain.

He has worked equally hard, as First Minister, to discredit those who rightly stood up against him when claims were made about his behaviour.

It is good that he has gone.

In fact, his dismissal may go some way towards restoring faith in the UK’s government system, as it was a Cabinet Office inquiry that demanded his removal.

For This Site, that makes three-for-three; three Cabinet-level removals following revelations against the MPs concerned.

But there are plenty more candidates for removal left to go.

Why is Boris Johnson still Foreign Secretary, after he failed to secure the release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe from prison in Iran? His incompetence threatened to double her unjust prison sentence.

And why is David Davis still Brexit Secretary, after he botched negotiations with the EU27 countries so badly and then claimed that the UK could renege on the deal that had been hammered out?

Mr Davis was once said to be considering resigning in protest at the way Mr Green has been treated – but it seems that was just hot air and he will not follow through on the claim.

These vermin need to be aware that we have a 100 per cent record of clearing out pests like them – and we intend to keep it that way.

(Source: Theresa May’s effective deputy Damian Green quits over pornography cover-up)


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Prize for father of infamous Tory ‘nudge’ unit means Nobel committee should be ashamed

Richard Thaler: His theory has allowed the UK’s Conservative-led governments to victimise thousands of vulnerable jobseekers.

It is a travesty that the Nobel Prize for economics has been awarded to a man whose theories were used by the Conservative-led Coalition government of 2010-15 to manipulate unemployed people into inappropriate work.

Richard Thaler’s ‘nudge’ theory acknowledged that people frequently make bad decisions in their lives, thus contradicting one of the central tenets of economics – that people will always act rationally for their own good.

The theory suggests that the way choices are phrased or presented – the ‘choice architecture’ can be framed so that it nudges people towards the most beneficial outcome without restricting their personal freedom.

That is not what has happened. Look at the Coalition’s Behavioural Insights Unit, an organisation originally attached to the Cabinet Office, that used the theory to ‘nudge’ people towards decisions that benefited the Conservative Party and not the individuals concerned.

The best example of this is the fake questionnaire put out by the Department for Work and Pensions to manipulate jobseekers into doing what the Department wanted, rather than what was in their own best interests.

In theory, Thaler may have had a point. In practice, the UK government turned it into attempted mind control.

As the Skwawkbox article in the link above states, the questionnaire was rigged to suggest people had strengths that their answers did not bear out: “Untold numbers of people running around trying to use ‘strengths’ that actually have nothing to do with their actual personality – all under the threat of losing their income if they fail to comply.”

So ‘nudge’ theory was used to lie to vulnerable people, and to threaten them with destitution if they did not do as the Tories demanded.

And for this, the Nobel committee has given Richard Thaler a prize?

A demand for an apology would be better – along with financial restitution for all those whose lives have been blighted – or ended – by the implementation of his theory by genocidal politicians.

Richard Thaler has won the Nobel economics prize for his contributions to behavioural economics.

He championed the concept of “nudging” people, through subtle changes in government policy, to do things that are in their long-term self-interest, such as saving for a pension.

“Richard Thaler’s contributions have built a bridge between the economic and psychological analyses of individual decision-making, said the Nobel committee.

“His empirical findings and theoretical insights have been instrumental in creating the new and rapidly expanding field of behavioural economics, which has had a profound impact on many areas of economic research and policy.”

Source: The economist behind the Nudge theory just won a Nobel prize


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Damning #Brexit memo is a wake-up call for us all – including its authors

Theresa May delivers her Mansion House speech, but nobody's listening: Brexit has already made her the laughing stock of the world.

Theresa May delivers her Mansion House speech, but nobody’s listening: Brexit has already made her the laughing stock of the world.

Members of ‘Big Four’ accountancy firm Deloittes may be waking up to an uncomfortable truth about their friends in the Conservative Government today (November 15) – that a Tory will turn on anyone.

The firm has spent six years helping the Conservatives push their punitive agenda of cuts and privatisation but – after a memo on ‘Brexit’ was leaked to the press – suddenly the Tories don’t recognise Deloittes’ work.

This is despite the apparent fact that the consultant from the firm who wrote the report (titled ‘Brexit update’) was working for the Cabinet Office, according to The Times.

The memo said Whitehall departments were working on more than 500 projects related to leaving the EU and may need to hire an extra 30,000 civil servants to deal with the additional work. That would undo much of the Tories’ work in shrinking the civil service, of course.

It identified a tendency by Theresa May to “draw in decisions and settle matters herself” as a strategy that could not be sustained, and highlighted a split between the three Brexit ministers – Liam Fox, Boris Johnson and David Davis – and the chancellor, Philip Hammond, and his ally Greg Clark, the business secretary as “divisions within the cabinet”. So the Conservative Party is divided again – and we know that divided parties don’t win.

It said major industry players were expected to “point a gun to the government’s head” to get what they wanted after Nissan was given assurances that it would not lose out from investing in Britain after Brexit. We all knew this already.

Perhaps most damningly, it stated that “no common strategy has emerged” on Brexit, despite extended debate among the permanent secretaries who head Whitehall departments.

This is not what the Conservatives want the public to hear, so of course they have disowned the memo, claiming it was “unsolicited”, was not a government memo and the government rejected its contents. They would, wouldn’t they?

The government also tried to smear the memo’s authors by claiming it was a pitch for business – but then, government departments habitually ask firms to submit such work, so this is not proof that the memo was not requested by ministers.

The fact that it fell to Chris ‘Failing’ Grayling – the Transport Secretary – to pass these comments lends them no authenticity whatsoever.

David Davis is the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union – what does he have to say about it? Nothing.

Grayling said he had no idea where the report came from and denied that it had been commissioned by ministers. But then, what would he know about it? He’s the Transport Secretary.

His comments – like “I have a team of people in my department who are working with David Davis on issues like aviation, but I do not see the scale of the challenge that is in today’s newspaper” – are those of a man who is only seeing part of the project, rather than the whole.

Meanwhile, in her Mansion House speech, prime minister Theresa May told an audience of dozing businesspeople that Brexit was an opportunity for the UK to “step up” to a new “global role”.

As what? The world’s clown?

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Alistair Carmichael ‘leaked Sturgeon memo thinking it was true’

We already know that the civil servant who wrote the controversial ‘Memogate’ memo believed that it was accurate. Now the MP who leaked it has said the same.

The only people who have cast any doubt on the document are those who have an interest in doing so.

If the civil servant had not declared his belief that the information he had written was factually accurate – by which, let’s by clear, he meant it was what he had been told by the French consul-general – then This Writer would be more willing to give Nicola Sturgeon the benefit of the doubt.

The civil servant did express concerns that the consul-general had misheard the information he had imparted – but, looking at the actual content of that information, it is hard to find any way this could be true. There is no language barrier between three people who are all perfectly fluent in English, for example.

So this issue still comes down to whether you believe a civil servant with an impeccable record for honesty, absolutely no reason to fabricate any information, and no reason to believe he could get away with any such fabrication at the time he communicated the message he did, or three people who were directly involved in what appears to be a politically incendiary conversation, all of whom would have had very strong reasons for being conservative with the truth, if that conversation really did take place as recorded.

You be the judge.

Alistair Carmichael has told a special court he leaked a confidential memo that claimed Nicola Sturgeon secretly wanted a Tory general election victory because he believed it was true.

The former Scotland secretary told an election court in Edinburgh he believed the so-called Frenchgate memo was “politically explosive”, because it confirmed that the first minister wanted David Cameron to win in the belief it would further her quest for Scottish independence.

Carmichael denied he had intended to smear Sturgeon when he authorised his special adviser Euan Roddin to leak the memo. He said that until she forcefully denied it was accurate within minutes of the Daily Telegraph publishing it, he felt it revealed facts that were of critical public importance.

“A smear is where you say something about somebody else, an opinion which is untrue and which you know to be untrue,” he said. The memo “was saying something about Scottish nationalists that I believed to be true”.

The case centres on Carmichael’s decision in March to allow Roddin to leak a memo that allegedly summarised Sturgeon’s comments to the French ambassador Sylvie Bermann. The first minister allegedly said she did not believe Ed Miliband, then the Labour leader, was prime ministerial material, and that she would prefer to see the Tories win.

Carmichael said he trusted the honesty of the Scotland Office civil servant who had drawn up the memo, and the account Pierre Alain Coffinier, the French diplomat who briefed the civil servant, gave about the ambassador’s meeting with the first minister.

Source: Alistair Carmichael ‘leaked Sturgeon memo thinking it was true’ | Politics | The Guardian

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Trial date for Cameron aide who allegedly made indecent images of children

Yes, this is the only photograph This Blog has of Patrick Rock.

Yes, this is the only photograph This Blog has of Patrick Rock.

Thanks to knowledgeable Vox Political readers, it is now possible to state that the trial of Patrick Rock will begin on May 31, 2016, following a pre-trial hearing on February 27.

Here are the details:

Judge Alistair McCreath, sitting at Southwark crown court, granted Patrick Rock bail until trial date in May.

Rock was originally charged back in June 2014 with three counts of making an indecent photograph of a child in August 2013. He was also charged with possession of 59 indecent images of children.

Mr Rock was one of David Camerons closest aids and was one of the government’s advisers on policy for online pornography filters.

Mr Rock resigned as a policy adviser to Mr Cameron after he was arrested.

The former deputy head of the No 10 Policy Unit has been close to Mr Cameron for two decades. The two men worked for Michael Howard when he was Home Secretary in the 1990s.

In Downing Street, he had the title of deputy director of policy and worked across a wide range of topics, including the government’s policy on child pornography. His seniority was demonstrated by the fact that he was one of only three advisers given his own private office in No 10.

Mr Rock is denying the claims.

Source: Lou Collins » Patrick Rock

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