Robert Jenrick: his attempt at misdirection has been hopelessly inept. What a shame he doesn’t even have the wit to realise he has been caught out.
The latest chapter in the Westferry development corruption saga demonstrates clearly the lack of talent on the Tory benches.
Z-list human being (let alone politician) Robert Jenrick is now saying his decision to grant permission for Richard Desmond’s development adhered to “natural justice”, as it allowed the developer to avoid paying a levy that he thought should not apply.
There’s just one problem with that:
Both the local authority and the Independent Planning Inspectorate had already said the development should be refused – because it did not meet acceptable planning standards.
It didn’t matter at the time that Desmond wanted to avoid the £45 million levy – although he should certainly have been made to pay it if the application had not been rush-approved by Jenrick to beat its imposition.
The point is that Jenrick’s decision to approve it was corrupt because it did not meet the appropriate criteria.
That’s why he should be removed from office.
After last December’s election it should be possible to replace him with any number of similarly talentless backbench drones.
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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:
Boris Johnson can’t sack Robert Jenrick for taking a decision if – big if – he told him to take it… https://t.co/8hjbzbN5Zn
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.
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:
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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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.
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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.
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!
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
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