Tag Archives: Robert Jenrick

Don’t be fooled: Tory government ISN’T imploding over Rwanda deportation policy

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His answer to everything: Rishi Sunak is trying to distract us from the real problems facing the UK – by pointing us at an invented bogeyman: migrants whose Channel crossings are only illegal because his government criminalised them.

It was a nice piece of political theatre. But what actually happened over the Tory government’s controversial Rwanda policy?

Well, we could start with this:

It seems to This Writer that Rishi Sunak got everything he wanted: his Rwanda deal is back on, sure – but more importantly for the Tories, they have used it as a smokescreen under which they have destroyed human rights in the UK.

Oh, you missed that?

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The European Court of Human Rights is being denied jurisdiction here. So, if you are in the UK, your human rights aren’t protected any more. Oh, you thought it just applied to asylum-seekers?

The UK no longer complies with United Nations treaties on refugees.

The Human Rights Act and the Modern Slavery Act have been bypassed. If you are in the UK, that will have an effect on you if the Tories – or any other UK government decide they want it to.

Government ministers will get to decide what happens to people coming to the UK – and, if you are in the UK, whether those decisions will be applied to you as well. You will have no recourse to the courts for a legal judgement.

This is because the changes have been made to UK law – and UK law applies to all UK residents (apart from members of the government and the super-rich who can bypass it, obviously).

In fairness, the changes to the law haven’t happened yet – but they will. Here’s a reason:

I dont agree with Baron Sikka that the Tories are trying to find a platform on which they can win a general election and save their careers (that’s what he means by “save their skins”). They’ll rubber-stamp these erosions of your rights because they want to.

Still, some have optimistically speculated on what might happen if opportunistic Tory MPs break ranks and rebel. We’ll discuss some of the events mentioned here, further down the article:

Some have taken a more pragmatic view, accepting that the changes will happen and what they mean:

That is fascism: powerful nationalism, disdain for human rights, identification of “enemies” as a unifying cause, obsession with national security.

If you don’t recognise those words, I’ve just quoted four of the 14 generally-accepted “warning signs of fascism”.

Rishi Sunak announced this descent into fascism in a press conference at 11am yesterday (December 7). The press asked whether the vote on it would be treated as a confidence issue, and he made it clear that it would not:

So there it is.

Is he really relying on Labour to support him? No. Don’t be fooled. He expects his Parliamentary party to support him; the words about Labour were simply to undermine Keir Starmer’s electoral position – make him look weak on immigration. And, of course, these words are meant to make Sunak’s position seem acceptable.

Consider the words of Mhairi Black, in the video clip below:

“[Fascism] arrives under the guise of respectability and pride, that will then be refused to anyone that is deemed different. It arrives through the ‘othering’ of people – the normalisation of human cruelty… The warning signs are there for everyone to see – whether they admit it or not.”

Here’s the economist Richard Murphy:

If you don’t share his view, consider yourself to have joined the ranks of the fascists.

How did we get here? Well, the most recent events were probably kicked off by Keir Starmer, when he put his own boot into the Rwanda deportation policy at Prime Minister’s Questions:

We were reminded that only 100 people can possibly be sent to Rwanda, and that the deal is reciprocal, meaning Rwandan people will be sent to the UK. That means it will not make any difference to inward migration into this country.

The scheme’s cost was mentioned by Starmer but Sunak coasted over it. In fact it is now at least £240 million, as the government has provided an extra £100 million very recently. If we send anybody there, in the end, we have to pay for their accommodation and upkeep for five years.

Meanwhile, the Tories have lost 17,000 asylum seekers. These people have just disappeared.

Late in the afternoon, this landed on ‘X’:

“We said we would do what was needed to stop the boats.” This wasn’t it. This Writer has heard nothing from the Tories to show that they have actually taken any steps to ensure that Rwanda is safe for asylum-seekers, as the Supreme Court’s judgement implied that it should.

My impression is that this Bill will be nothing more than a declaration that the government says Rwanda is safe. That is no way to reassure anybody.

In any case, it won’t “stop the boats”. That part of the problem is being handled via international agreements to target the “criminal gangs” and reduce the number of people leaving their countries of origin in the first place – as This Site has always claimed was necessary.

That didn’t stop James Cleverly, the new Home Secretary, from spouting that tired old line – and getting hammered by people who see this vote-grubbing publicity stunt for what it is (an attempt to win votes from racists after a campaign to convince them that Johnny Foreigner is secretly invading):

Then Rwanda threw a fly in the ointment: its government issued a statement saying it could not support the deal if it does not adhere to international law.

Clearly, Minister Biruta, Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Co-operation, had read the new Bill and spotted the parts that depart from international law.

Two hours later, Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick resigned, saying the new Bill did not go far enough for him:

These events fuelled debate on the subject, which continued overnight:

Suella Braverman, the former Home Secretary, also stuck her oar in – but was dismissed by the BBC’s Nick Robinson who, on the Today programme, said her attitude was that it was “all about her”. Still, her intervention may be divisive within the Conservative Party.

Then Sunak held his press conference. Here’s an analysis of it:

Again, speculation came back to whether this is a vote of confidence.

And again, we come back to the fact that every Tory MP knows their career is at stake. Their government is failing in the opinion polls and they may lose their seats at the next general election.

So it is in their best interests to put that election off as long as possible, in the hope that their party’s fortunes will improve.

Also, it should not be considered a secondary issue that the destruction of human rights represented by the Rwanda legislation is something many Tory MPs have desired for a long time.

Wait, watch and learn: the Tories are rushing their Rwanda legislation through Parliament so it won’t be long before we find out whether I’m right.

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Tories announce ‘biggest cut in net migration’ and we’re punching holes in their plan

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Rishi Sunak and his priorities: who would have thought that stopping the boats would contradict his plan to reduce inflation?

The following is misleading.

If you’re announcing a plan to cut net migration into the UK, then it hasn’t happened yet. The following tweet is therefore misleading.

There’s no way of telling whether these measures will actually bring inward migration down.

Also, there’s the issue of unforeseen consequences.

First, here’s another misleading message from Rishi Sunak. See my response to understand why it’s wrong:

Again, to remind you: The treaty with Rwanda that James Cleverly was sent to sign has nothing to do with stopping criminal gangs from transporting refugees (or whoever) across the English Channel.

It is merely an attempt to bypass the Supreme Court’s ruling that Rwanda is not a safe place to send them once they have arrived in the UK.

Now, about those unforeseen consequences…

When Sunak says he will “end abuse via the Health and Care Visa, he means he will prevent care workers moving to the UK for employment from bringing their families. This will also apply to overseas students.

This will turn away expertise that the UK needs.

Tory voices like that of Brendan Clarke-Smith are already whispering that foreign workers will still come, because the UK is “a fantastic country”:

Is it?

It seems unlikely that highly-qualified people, who could earn a better living anywhere else in the world, would willingly give up their kith and kin to work in a country that will not appreciate their efforts and that – certainly in the case of health and care – treats its own people so badly.

No worries, though! Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick reckons workers from the UK will fill the gaps:

He said UK businesses would no longer have the option of hiring cheap labour from overseas, meaning they would have to “invest in the domestic workforce”.

Why should they?

Big businesses are more likely to preserve their profits by moving out of the UK altogether and hiring all that cheap foreign labour abroad, where it’s still cheap.

And small or medium-sized enterprises are not likely to be able to afford the kind of investment Jenrick is suggesting.

He went on to appear on Sky News, supporting the remaining point in the five-point plan – ensuring that people sponsoring dependents, who do come with them to the UK, can support them financially:

So the overall implication of this plan is that it is an attempt to nudge businesses into paying higher salaries to people working in the UK.

This appears to be an attempt to steal a policy from Reform UK, whose leader Richard Tice had already spoken in favour of higher wages and investment in people:

Opinion polls have suggested that right-wing voters are, themselves, migrating – from the Tories to Reform UK. This anti-immigration policy may be an attempt to woo them back.

But – perhaps crucially – this is a policy turnaround for the Tories, who have previously argued that increased pay for working people is inflationary:

TL;DR: this supposedly anti-immigration policy seems to be intended more as a way of stemming the flow of voters to Reform UK. Its stated aim of increasing pay contradicts Tory policy on inflation and is more likely to move businesses out of the UK than bring investment in.

Tories ‘normalising fascism’ by threatening life imprisonment for ‘coaching’ migrants

Robert Jenrick: he has strange priorities with regard to punishing wrongdoing. Is that because he has done so much wrong himself?

Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick has been roundly condemned over a plan to send lawyers to prison for life if they are deemed to have been “coaching” migrants on how to “abuse the immigration system”.

In a statement to the House of Commons, he said lawyers charged with “assisting unlawful immigration to the UK” could face sentences on a par with or even longer than those convicted for fraud, causing death by dangerous driving or sexually assaulting a child under 13.

The announcement follows a Daily Mail investigation in August that claimed solicitors had agreed to help an undercover journalist posing as an economic migrant submit a false application in exchange for thousands of pounds.

In August, the Ministry of Justice and Home Office jointly introduced the Professional Enablers Taskforce to crackdown on “crooked” immigration lawyers who “coach illegal migrants to lie”.

His statement has led to harsh criticism for Jenrick. Here’s a video clip of him making it, and a comment by Unite’s Howard Beckett that he is “normalising fascism”:

“Not content enough with banning Mickey Mouse paintings from children’s asylum centres, Jenrick now proposes life in prison for lawyers defending human rights,” posted Rosena Allin-Khan – who now has plenty of time for this sort of thing, after Keir Starmer did away with her shadow mental health portfolio.

“This should terrify all of us,” added Peter Stefanovic of the CWU. “When this rotten to the core bunch of truth twisters are not robbing millions of workers of their democratic right to strike & stripping back our right to protest they are preparing to imprison human rights lawyers for life.”

Jolyon Maugham of the Good Law Project injected the prospect of sanity: “More likely that no lawyer will ever be convicted than that a lawyer will be imprisoned for life. Even so. This splenetic fury, these wild threats, speak of what the Tories have become.”

It’s just another day in the office for Jenrick, of course.

His last appearance of any note in the news was in April, when he was banned from driving for six months and fined more than £1,600 after he was caught breaking the speed limit on the M1, following an appearance on the BBC’s Any Questions.

The Tory MP for Newark was recorded driving his Land Rover at 68mph in a temporary 40mph zone on the M1 southbound in Northamptonshire on August 5 last year, after appearing on the radio show at Wakefield Cathedral in West Yorkshire.

He was fined £1,107 and ordered to pay a £442 victim surcharge and £90 in costs, the Courts and Tribunals Service centre said. You can form your own value judgement about the difference between this and the fine penalty he’s slapping on lawyers.

And he’s habitual: In March last year Jenrick was fined £307 and handed three penalty points for breaking a 40mph speed limit on the A40 in west London in August 2021.

Jenrick is best-known for fiddling an inner-London development in order to deprive the local council of a huge fee.

Not only did he override both the local planning authority and the Independent Planning Inspectorate to grant planning permission for Richard Desmond’s controversial Westferry development, despite it having been found not to meet acceptable planning standards…

… but he did it to allow the developer to avoid paying a £45 million levy to Tower Hamlets Council that he had decided should not apply – and then used that as his reason for granting the application.

Text messages between Desmond and Jenrick show the former Express newspaper owner and pornographer pressured the minister to grant planning permission, saying: “We don’t want to give Marxists loads of doe [sic] for nothing!”

Jenrick also broke Covid-19 lockdown rules to travel between his three homes – and then insisted that young people should adhere to restrictions, even though there was no evidence to suggest they did not.

And he corruptly induced a fellow MP to approve a grant for his constituency totalling £237 per person recently – but negotiated Covid-19 support for the people of Manchester down to £7.95 per person.

So it seems, in a comparison between Jenrick and any lawyer he wants to convict, it is the government minister who would appear to be the most crooked.

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Painting over a child’s mural shows just a part of the Tories’ cruelty to children

Robert Jenrick: thanks to his actions – and those of his colleagues, someone should refer the Tory government to the NSPCC.

This should never have happened:

After saying there’s no money for anything, the Conservatives hired workers and sent them to a refugee detention centre for children – to paint over murals showing a smiling Mickey and Minnie Mouse, and other characters, because they didn’t want the kids there to feel comforted.

The minister responsible was Robert Jenrick, who overspent on his first campaign to be an MP, charged the public £100,000 for a third home he rarely used, and has given tens of millions of pounds worth of help to Tory donors.

The decision has been roundly condemned:

But when she was challenged on it, the Tory Financial Secretary to the Treasury – Victoria Atkins – actually had the front to tell Sophy Ridge her government wants to look after children “well”.

Here’s an example of how well the Tories look after children:

That’s right. Tories look after children in their care so well that they send them alone to hotels from which they know others have been taken. And what is the purpose of taking them? People trafficking? Dare I suggest sex trafficking?

Tories know what happens to these kids when the send them to places like that – but they send them anyway.

Would you call that looking after children well? Or would you call it something else?

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Stamp duty cut is a £1.3bn bung for second home owners and landlords

Robert Jenrick: he has an opportunity to do the right thing for a change. Does anybody honestly think he’ll take it?

This Site said it yesterday and now the Labour Party has confirmed it: Rishi Sunak’s stamp duty cut is a bung for rich second home owners and landlords.

I said the cut might be a good idea if it helps people buy houses and boosts construction – but according to Labour, buyers of buy-to-let properties, holiday homes and other second homes will benefit.

In 2019/20, 34 per cent of homes bought were second properties, meaning this is a bung to second home owners costing taxpayers £1.3 billion.

Labour has called for the government to exclude second properties from this cut – arguing that this could fund a gap in local councils’ finances which the Local Government Association predicts will be £1.2 billion by the end of the year.

It’s just a shame that the government minister responsible is Robert Jenrick, who does not have a reputation for doing the right thing.

Here’s Labour’s Thangam Debonnaire:

“It is unacceptable that the Chancellor tried to sneak out this huge bung to second home owners and landlords while millions of people are desperate for support. He should be targeting support to those who need it, not helping people invest in buy-to-let properties and holiday homes.

“An unnecessary subsidy for second home-owners will only worsen the housing crisis by reducing the supply of homes overall.”

It’s a good point – but will our unaccountable Tory government take it?

Source: Revealed: Sunak’s secret £1bn giveaway to second home owners and landlords – The Labour Party

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Is Robert Jenrick safe from the sack because Boris Johnson is implicated in Westferry corruption scandal?

Jenrick and Johnson: both have personal connections with property developer Richard Desmond, so why have they been interfering in the determination of his planning applications?

Here’s an interesting kink on the Westferry planning scandal:

Let’s assume there’s something in what John Stevens – and Henry Mance – are saying and that Richard Desmond, the man behind the Westferry development plan, had a considerable amount of contact with Boris Johnson. That would create cause for concern, and we would certainly be justified in wanting to know the nature of any communications.

Now consider this:

A key player in the controversial Westferry Printworks development can be revealed as an investment firm owned by a super-rich Tory donor and crony of Boris Johnson.

The “development manager” is a company which has donated £200,000 to the Tories.

[The planning application] was made by a company owned by Mr Desmond but the developer was London and Regional Properties, a firm behind £9billion of building projects owned by [Ian] Livingstone and brother Richard. It is unclear if LRP is still involved, but Westferry Printworks is listed as a development on its website.

The company donated nearly £202,000 to the Tories between 2005 and 2012.

It is run by [Mr] Livingstone, who the Prime Minister appointed to the board of his Mayor’s Fund for London.

Mr Johnson approved the original plans for the East London site during his final days as Mayor of the capital.

So now this “cash for favours” row has a strong connection with Boris Johnson and Downing Street.

Also suspicious is the Tories’ apparent desperation to distance themselves from any interest in Mr Desmond and his firm – for example, by banning the BBC from using photographs of Mr Desmond and Robert Jenrick together at a Conservative Party fundraising event:

The Conservatives have banned the BBC from publishing pictures of Robert Jenrick and Richard Desmond at a party fundraising dinner.

The pictures are owned by Conservative Party, with the BBC saying it was prevented from publishing them. A spokeswoman for the corporation told Yahoo News UK on Thursday: “We didn’t use them for legal reasons.”

The same article states that Johnson is standing by his minister:

Downing Street said on Thursday that the prime minister still has “full confidence” in Jenrick, adding Johnson had spoken to the embattled minister in recent days and “considers the matter closed”.

Isn’t that what a prime minister would say if he was unable to fire his underling – for example, because the flunky was only doing what the PM had told him to do?

I ask merely rhetorically.

Meanwhile, it seems Jenrick is now embroiled in another “cash for favours” row:

Labour has called on… Robert Jenrick, to explain a ministerial meeting with a “family friend” who had a financial interest in the future of a rival mining project that Jenrick was overseeing.

The Guardian revealed this week that Jenrick met the Israeli billionaire Idan Ofer while the then exchequer secretary to the Treasury was considering a request for financial support from Sirius Minerals for a mining project that would have rivalled Ofer’s own firm Cleveland Potash.

A spokesperson for Jenrick said on Friday that Ofer was a “family friend” and that the minister had notified officials, who advised him to step back from the decision on Sirius.

But the spokesperson did not say when Jenrick recused himself and the Guardian understands he retained oversight of Sirius’s request for support for at least six months after the meeting.

Put this together with the amount of money that property giants give to the Conservatives…

The Tories have received more than £11m from property developers since Boris Johnson became prime minister, an investigation has found.

Concerns have been raised about the apparent increased influence property developers have over the Conservative government. Their contributions make up nearly a quarter of the £47.5m in donations received by the party from last July to March, up from 7.9 per cent of the total two years ago.

The latest analysis by the OpenDemocracy website found that the Conservatives’ top 10 property donors have given more than £5.7m to the party since Mr Johnson took the helm in July – up from around £1.5million for the equivalent top 10 in the final 12 months of Theresa May’s premiership, a three-fold increase. In total, around 120 individuals and companies from the sector have donated since July last year.

… and there is certainly enough evidence to ask questions.

Of course, there can be no implication of wrongdoing by Conservative donors whose contributions are made only through support for Tory policies; who have no personal connection with Conservative ministers.

But when there is a connection, as with Idan Ofer and Jenrick, and with Richard Desmond and both Jenrick and Johnson, it is not only right to ask questions – an investigation is positively demanded.

The Westferry matter goes a step beyond even this – because wrongdoing is known to have happened, and because the person who is refusing to take action against the minister responsible for the transgression himself has a connection with the developer – and the development itself.

I mean, who can blame us for questioning Jenrick when it seems he won planning permission for an extension to his Westminster home, against planning officers’ recommentations, from councillors who were his fellow Conservatives?

Conservative councillors on Westminster council gave planning permission for an enlargement of Jenrick’s townhouse despite officers recommending the application be refused because it would harm the appearance of the building and the conservation area.

Planning officers were recommending refusal of this third application but Steve Summers a Tory councillor and a neighbour of Jenrick made an official request that a planning committee take the decision and not officers.

In November 2014 the three Conservative members of the planning committee — Richard Beddoe, Robert Rigby and Paul Church — voted to overturn the officers recommendation and approve the scheme. Ruth Bush, the single Labour member of the committee voted against the application.

In March 2018 Robert Davis who was chair of planning at Westminster council for 17 years resigned after the Guardian revealed he had received hospitality and gifts hundreds of times including from property developers.

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How many scandals can Keir Starmer hide with his sacking of Rebecca Long-Bailey?

 

Choke hold: Israeli armed forces using the same ‘knee on neck’ technique that was used to kill George Floyd. But we’re being asked to believe Israel never taught that technique to US police and it is anti-Semitic to suggest that one country’s armed forces could teach such techniques to another’s police.

Quite a few, it seems.

Let’s start with the biggie: Israel is due to launch a major invasion of Palestinian territory next week, targeting in particular areas containing the aquifers that make life possible in these parched places.

Starmer’s sacking of RLB is a warning to Labour Party members that he will not tolerate the voicing of any dissent against this racist military action.

Any comment that he dares to make will be entirely ineffectual:

Labour has a policy that all people have a right to self-determination. Israel’s right to self-determination has been used as a stick to beat party members accused of anti-Semitism. Palestine’s right to self-determination goes unrecognised under racist Starmer.

But let’s not stop there. Starmer has also taken the heat off Robert Jenrick, whose corrupt manipulation of the planning system to save Richard Desmond £45 million in return for a small bung for Conservative funds was causing trouble for the Tories.

While Starmer moved quickly to sack RLB, he has done nothing about the right-wingers in his party who subjected Diane Abbott to racist abuse:

Finally, let’s bear it in mind that Starmer has no interest in opposing the Tory government’s genocidal policy on handling the Covid-19 pandemic…

… and, come to that, the people to whom he is pandering – the Board of Deputies of British Jews and all those other right-wing supporters of the Likud government in Israel – never criticised successive Tory governments for killing huge swathes of the UK population either:

Underlying all of this, remember: The claim RLB was sacked for – in an interview with her constituent Maxine Peake – is accurate. Israeli forces do indeed train United States police. And Starmer’s claim that it is anti-Semitic to say this loses any force when one realises that Jews know about it and oppose it:

 

Here’s the last word – it should be the last word on Starmer’s catastrophic leadership of the Labour Party (but it won’t, because these creeps cling like limpets):

Jenrick faces more pressure to resign for conspiring to deny the ‘Marxists’ loads of ‘doe’

Robert Jenrick: it seems that, like Richard Desmond, he thinks the people of Tower Hamlets are ‘Marxists’ and wants to make sure they can’t have any money to improve their local area.

Pressure is building for housing minister Robert Jenrick to resign after it was alleged he rush-approved a £1bn planning application to prevent a left-wing council from receiving money.

Documents released amid pressure on the minister show civil servants in the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government believed Jenrick wanted to rush the approval so developer Richard Desmond would not have to pay the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) to Tower Hamlets Council – thereby saving £45 million.

Text messages between Desmond and Jenrick show the former Express newspaper owner and pornographer pressured the minister to grant planning permission, saying: “We don’t want to give Marxists loads of doe [sic] for nothing!”

Charming. Let’s all remember that, next time the Tories say left-wing policies don’t work – it seems clear the reason for any failures is corruption on the part of greedy capitalists.

Some readers may be further scandalised by the fact that the only profit the Tories accrued from diddling Tower Hamlets out of £45 million appears to be a donation of just £12,000. Perhaps crime really doesn’t pay after all.

After the circumstances of his decision were revealed, Jenrick withdrew his decision to overrule the council and the government’s planning inspectorate and approve the 1,500-apartment, 44-storey development at Westferry Printworks, a former printing plant in east London.

It won’t happen now, after all.

The documents were released on Wednesday after a debate and vote in Parliament, when Jenrick was accused of potentially breaking the ministerial code.

The code says all ministers must “declare and resolve any interests and relationships” and “take decisions impartially, fairly and on merit, using the best evidence and without discrimination or bias”.

Readers of Vox Political may consider that he didn’t just break the code – Jenrick shattered it.

After the documents were released, cabinet secretary Mark Sedwill said. “The prime minister considers that the matter is closed.”

This should come as no surprise to those of us who have watched Boris Johnson’s own adventures in corruption. Let’s not forget that we are still waiting for him to publish the report on Russian interference in UK politics, that he stepped in to delay all the way back in October last year – most probably because he thought it would put people off voting for him in December’s general election.

Come to that, what about Johnson’s illegal prorogation of Parliament earlier last year, that illegally stopped all work in the Palace of Westminster for weeks?

Fortunately, the Labour Party is not accepting Johnson’s wibblings as any assurance of fair play – why should anybody do that? – and is demanding an explanation of differences between the account revealed by the newly-released documents and Jenrick’s explanation.

Jenrick himself is now in an untenable position. Nobody will trust any decision he makes in the future – in spite of what Johnson says, and possibly, indeed, because of it.

The Westferry decision clearly was not a mistake – it was a deliberate choice to break planning rules to allow a development, and to break them again to starve a London community of £45 million.

Neither decision is acceptable behaviour for a minister of the Crown.

And what crazy plan will he rubber-stamp next?

Source: Robert Jenrick under pressure to resign after donor-row documents released | Politics | The Guardian

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Planning corruption: it seems Jenrick isn’t the only Tory accused of breaking the rules

Robert Jenrick: while he was presenting press conferences about Covid-19, he has also been mired in an apparent corruption scandal.

The evidence is mounting against planning minister Robert Jenrick in the scandal over the Westferry development – and interest in the controversy has revealed further potential corruption.

It seems Robert Jenrick was induced to overturn the refusal of the Westferry planning application after property developer Richard Desmond showed him a promotional video for the £1bn development. Here’s The Guardian:

“What I did was I showed him the video,” Desmond told the Sunday Times, adding that Jenrick had watched it for “three or four minutes”, and adding: “It’s quite long, so he got the gist.”

Jenrick subsequently overturned a decision by a local council and the government’s planning inspectorate in order to approve a 500-apartment, 44-storey development at Westferry Printworks, a former printing plan in east London.

Viewing the video would appear to constitute lobbying by Desmond, potentially giving rise to a conflict of interest.

Labour will use the opportunity of a three-hour opposition day debate on Wednesday to discuss the controversy.

That’s today – June 24.

Meanwhile, according to The Mirror…

A Tory former planning minister is reportedly under investigation for failing to declare an interest in a hotel development in his constituency.

Sir Bob Neill wrote a letter to his local council in December 2018, urging them to approve the redevelopment of The Royal Bell – a neglected hotel in his Bromley Constituency.

But he failed to mention in his letter that he was on the payroll of the Substantia Group – the firm handling the planning application for the hotel.

Sir Bob has been paid £50,000 by the firm for “strategic consultancy advice” since 2016, according to the register of members’ interests.

But his links to the firm were not explicitly outlined in the letter.

Shadow Housing Minister Mike Amesbury said: “It beggars belief that a former planning minister would not be aware of the obvious conflict of interest in this case.”

And the Telegraph today reported Sir Bob had intervened in another planning application being handled by the same firm – again without mentioning his paid position.

MPs voted in 2018 for investigations by the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner to remain secret. Some might suggest that this was an offence against justice, which must be seen to be done.

But it has been reported the Commissioner has launched an investigation into Sir Bob’s involvement in the project after receiving a complaint.

Source: Jenrick under growing pressure after fresh Desmond revelation | Politics | The Guardian

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Westferry development scandal grows as Jenrick admits he knew he was saving tycoon millions

Robert Jenrick: while he was presenting press conferences about Covid-19, he has also been mired in an apparent corruption scandal.

Calls for Robert Jenrick to be removed from his role as a housing minister are escalated after he admitted he knew he was saving tycoon Richard Desmond between £30m and £50m by approving plans for a £1 billion development at Westferry, London – in defiance of planning rules.

Desmond subsequently gave the Conservative Party a £12,000 donation, raising questions about this being a “cash-for-favours” scandal.

According to the Mail:

He insisted ‘all the rules were followed’ over the 1,500-home development in east London.

But he told MPs he knew that the timing of his decision would save the businessman a fortune.

Steve Reed, Labour’s housing spokesman, urged Mr Jenrick to make a full Commons statement, publish all correspondence and ‘disclose all conversations with all Government ministers and officials’.

In response, the Cabinet minister said information relating to the decision has now been passed to Cabinet Secretary Sir Mark Sedwill.

So he knew he was breaking planning regulations – in fact Jenrick had to quash the planning permission he had granted, as a result of the scandal, and he knew that doing this would benefit the developer, who subsequently rewarded the Tories with a donation. And he isn’t publishing anything.

He still says he’s innocent of wrongdoing, but Jenrick must know how suspicious his behaviour looks.

Indeed, anti-corruption expert Elizabeth David-Barrett, a professor of governance and integrity who is also the director of the Centre for the Study of Corruption at the University of Sussex, has already said he should have resigned:

“In most previous governments, Robert Jenrick would have resigned well before now.

“The questionable conduct that is tolerated and defended in this current government is creating a dangerous new world in which standards in public life are seen as a concept from the past, and personal patronage and loyalty are now prized higher than combatting corruption.

“Although Robert Jenrick eventually reversed the decision on the Westferry scheme, under threat of legal action, this should not be the end of the matter.

“If there is no subsequent investigation into alleged misconduct, then the message that sends is that ministers can do whatever they like and just reverse the decision if their actions are questioned. The system needs to be preventive and act as a deterrent.”

Fat chance of that, under Boris Johnson!

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