Wirral Borough Council

Lord Field of Birkenhead Excerpts

Tuesday 7th February 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to open this debate under your chairmanship, Miss Clark. I want to give an apology for my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern), who has just given birth to a lovely baby girl and obviously cannot be here today. However, she was very much part of a meeting two Saturdays ago, when Members saw the chief executive of Wirral borough council, and is committed to the conversation that we want to have with the Minister today and the strategy we want to lay out. I thank the Minister for finding time for yet another debate, but we want to draw on his considerable experience on how to move forward.

There has recently been a great deal of local coverage about the politics of our authority, but today’s debate examines the more fundamental matter of the administration of the authority. I believe that, although it does not have the razzmatazz that attaches to going on about politicians, it is much more important for the long-term well-being of residents. I shall in essence concentrate on governance in the local authority, which covers the Wirral peninsula, and cite examples of senior officers wilfully excluding councillors from the decisions that they have taken and the lack of good basic governance, which has surprised me. Indeed, if I were the leader of Wirral borough council—heaven forbid that that task should ever be allotted to me—I would assume that certain basic rules and governance would be in place. I have been shocked at their absence.

I shall give two examples of that failure. I have recently been involved in a whistleblowing case over Wirral’s biggest contract—in money terms—for the maintenance of the road system. At the meeting with the whistleblowers and the senior officers in Wirral, I was amazed that the council did not know the date when the whistle was first blown on what was happening. We were in the bizarre situation of the chief officers having to ask whistleblowers when they made their first complaint. It was reminiscent of Pasternak’s wonderful book “Dr Zhivago”, when the Bolsheviks were furious not at the suggestion that they killed Lara, which they willingly admitted, but at the accusation that they were inefficient and did not know where they had killed her. There is an element of that in Wirral’s not knowing the most basic information that it could be expected to know, particularly in the matter of whistleblowing.

We discovered, also at the very first meeting with the whistleblowers and senior officers, that there were no rules in place—although I thought that they were automatic for all local authorities—setting out when officers, particularly senior officers, must declare an interest in any contract that they were recommending to the council. In the case of the Colas contract, the interest was declared retrospectively, but at no point in the later stages of the council proceedings did the chief officer draw the councillors’ attention to the fact that he had made a late submission of interest and that they might want to bear that in mind when reading the papers before them.

I also want to speak about three major initiatives that the council could have taken, for which the Government were putting up taxpayers’ money. By the crass inefficiency of the chief officers, nothing happened. The first initiative related to a contract to do with Rock Ferry, the area where I live in Birkenhead. Of course, there are some parts of Birkenhead that will be grand enough to be on a par with the Minister’s constituency. Indeed, parts of the constituency, as the hon. Member for Wirral West (Esther McVey) will know, would make Hampstead look positively downmarket. However, other areas of the Wirral are really hard pressed. Therefore, Governments’ attempts to redirect resources to us are immensely important, because of the possibility of opening up opportunities to people who are poor and would otherwise be denied them.

First, there was a contract of £5 million for Rock Ferry; English Estates was offering that to us to kick-start development. One of the senior officers just could not be bothered, or was not efficient enough, to get the contract in on time. In that year, English Estates had overspent, so it could not believe its luck that Wirral council was so inefficient and the £5 million grant that would have come to us, which would have kick-started redevelopment in Rock Ferry, would not now be made. That is the first of the appalling errors of administration that I am concerned about.

The second error is to do with the contract to upgrade and undertake a long-term rental agreement for the Cheshire Lines building in Birkenhead. That contract has cost the council £11 million. It did not have the full authority of the council, and it received a pretty horrendous report from the district auditor. The contract related to a building that the council did not own, although it owned—and still does, thank goodness— Birkenhead town hall, and the money could have been spent on the town hall, to bring the accommodation up to standard. The call centre work that the council wanted to do in the Cheshire Lines building could have been transferred to one of its own buildings. What happened was discovered only because a member of staff reported to councillors that major work for which no authority had been given was being undertaken in the Cheshire Lines building. Again, councillors were informed by sources outside the authority, not by the officers.

The third of my examples concerns the attempt to win a new academy building for the lower half of my constituency. Over two successive years, attempts were made by the previous Government to get the children and young people’s officer to make a proper application for a rebuilt academy. Thanks to an inquiry by the previous Government, we were reorganising secondary education in Wirral, and it was recommended that two schools should be combined. The first offer made by the authorities was years before the general election and it was for a new build. We were invited to bid up to £40 million. In the first year, the application was not in on time. In the second year—the year running up to the general election—again, the council failed to deliver the plans to the Department for Education, which would have allowed us to get a totally rebuilt academy. Instead of that, one school is closed and children travel miles to the second school, which has now had to take on the role of the main academy site.

A little adding up brings a figure of almost £60 million of squandered opportunities. I have been the Member of Parliament for a little over 30 years now. If we think about the effect on the rates, we realise that an extra 2p off the rates has been lost by the incompetence of a small group of chief officers.

I shall not go into the details of two other current controversies that are before the council: a major inquiry into how the whistleblower Martin Morton has been treated and the report by the auditor that is due by, I hope, Friday on how the Colas contract has been dealt with.

On the Martin Morton report, the name of a councillor trips on to one page and then falls off almost immediately, but the report is about the quality of and the judgment displayed by the senior officers of Wirral borough council in that case. That is not of course to excuse the politicians, because they are in charge of the political machinery of this country, but it was a damning report on the actions and the quality of a group of chief officers.

We await the publication of the Colas report on Friday. It will again emphasise how chief officers have behaved. I went through the piles of paper that the whistleblowers gave me on the decision about the Colas contract. I like reading and it is obviously part of my job, but I could not have found out what might have been going on without the help of the whistleblowers. The papers were presented to the council in a way in which the most diligent of the councillors would have found it very hard to understand what was behind them.

I turn to the Minister and ask him for help, and I do so with an example fresh in my mind. After the debacle over the non-new build of the academy, I asked if I could chair the governors. That was after the academy had been established, and I was presented with some very real problems, about which I sought legal advice. I phoned the two senior people in the Young People’s Learning Agency and in the Department for Education to tell them what I was doing and to seek their advice. Their advice was that, as I had one of the best lawyers in the business, I should follow the lawyer’s advice. In doing so and starting that procedure, however, I could not talk to anyone, least of all those in the Department.

At the end of the process, when an agreement was struck and signed at 5 pm on a Friday, I phoned the two senior people in the Department and, within an hour and a half, I was given four candidates to interview. They had just retired and had been very successful—outstanding—leaders of their schools or colleges. On the Monday, we were therefore able to have someone in place, if only temporarily, for the following two terms. I was surprised by the quickness of that and the quality of the advice.

The plea that I know all Wirral Members wish to make to the Minister is to ask him to see them to discuss what action he has the power to take to help us make real progress in getting quality leadership in the Wirral, of which we are proud.

[Esther McVey (Wirral West) (Con)]

I have listened carefully to what the right hon. Gentleman said, which is the tip of the iceberg of what has happened in Wirral for the past 10 years. He mentioned the Anna Klonowski report. We have also had two reports made under the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998. We have had the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government step in about the libraries. A lot has gone wrong there, but does the right hon. Gentleman not agree that for politicians to sidestep their responsibilities and hand over the blame to officers is political cowardice at its worst and that the people who were responsible and were leading the council should take the blame that is attributable to them?

[Mr Field]

The Minister will know that I am probably the last person to think that politicians should not stand up, take the blame and defend their quarter. In no way do I wish to counter what the hon. Lady has said but, even if we deal with that issue, we have a real problem about the quality of our chief officers. She knows who I am speaking about in this debate. I have not wished to claim privilege and name them, because I do not want that sort of press campaign; I want us to be able to think carefully about what help we might seek from outside so that, whatever political changes occur, we can be proud of the administration in the Wirral. I have clearly fingered two officers in my speech, because their fingerprints are over the issues that I have raised.

If at all possible, I want to advance this matter by seeking support to bring about decisive change, as we received at the academy from the relevant Department. I hope that this will therefore be the last debate that we will have to hold in Parliament about the running of Wirral authority and the last time that we have to raise the sort of examples about the role of politicians that were cited by the hon. Lady. I shall make way for the Minister, but I end on this note: we need his and the Department’s help, because we will clearly not make the changes to our senior officers without outside help.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Neill]

The thrust of our localism agenda is that accountability should no longer be regarded as being from the council to Whitehall but the council to its local community. The elected members of the local authority are there as representatives. Under our current system of leader in cabinet, an administration is formed. The ultimate political responsibility for the operation of any local authority must rest with the political leaders, of whatever complexion they may be. In the same way, Ministers must ultimately be responsible for the actions of Government, regardless of political directions. My hon. Friend is perfectly right in that regard.

[Mr Frank Field]

It might help the Minister in making these judgments to know about the political composition of Wirral borough council. It is shared among three parties. Going back to the Cheshire Lines building contract, which cost the council £11 million and was authorised without the political say-so of the councillors, the then leader of the council—the Labour leader who currently leads the council—brought in the Audit Commission, which gave the most damning report. The other two political parties—the Tories and the Liberals—voted to take no action. It is very difficult to reprehend or take more serious action against senior officers when the political parties themselves will not put the interests of Wirral first but seek party advantage.

[Robert Neill]

I was going to say that one course that is an appropriate safeguard where necessary is to make a reference to the district auditor. I note that the leader of the Labour administration called in the Audit Commission, which I am sure was the correct thing to do. It is not for me to judge. Equally, I note that it was a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition that commissioned the Klonowski report, which is the subject of debate. I am glad for any member of any political complexion leading a council to stand up and take responsibility for actions. That is the key test. It is not for me to judge what decision Wirral borough council comes to about its future administration.