WITH government ministers like Ian Duncan Smith anxiously insisting the results of their policies should be hidden behind secrecy, two stories illustrate the way police are guarding their right to spy on the public.
We are not talking about dangerous criminals or terrorists here, but about those who have been at the receiving end of violence, and tried to do something about it.
Duwayne Brooks and Stephen Lawrence were teenagers, on their way home one night in 1993 when they were chased by a racist gang, and Stephen was stabbed and bled to death, just yards from the bus stop where they had been waiting, in Eltham, south east London.
Now 40, and a former Lib Dem councillor, Duwayne not only gave evidence but campaigned along with the Lawrence family for those who had attacked them and murdered his friend to be brought to justice. Since then he has called for the Metropolitan Police to reveal the truth about spying that it conducted, not against the murder suspects, but against him and the Lawrence campaigners.
The Yard said it would hand over any material its officers had collated on him. But Duwayne says what he received from the Met were three pages of intelligence reports, all heavily redacted, so that only four sentences were visible. Even the dates were covered up.
“The Commissioner promised they would be open and transparent and said the Met would provide copies of documents held on me. Instead they sent me this stuff which is a waste of time. It clearly shows they are still holding information about me. Are they still covering up? Yes 100%.”
Stephen Lawrence's mother Doreen entered the House of Lords as Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon, a Labour life peer, on September 6, 2013. Duwayne Brooks was awarded an OBE this month. But in 2013 a former police officer, Peter Francis, revealed that he had been employed to gather "dirt" on Duwayne Brooks and the Lawrences. Scotland Yard promised an inquiry.
The documents do show the police were keen to play up differences between Duwayne Brooks and the Lawrences. One sentence in the report suggests he supported the Movement for Justice, and had criticised Stephen's parents for reluctance to speak at rallies. Another sentence quotes Duwayne saying that “the black community should not walk on by when the police are stopping blacks in the street”.
BLACKOUT Heavily redacted document from the Met
He said: “How did they know that? I believe the redacted information would answer that.”
The Met said: “We made an undertaking to disclose material held on Mr Brooks to his solicitor. As explained, it was redacted to protect sensitive information.”
ANOTHER attempt to uncover what the Met's snoops are up to ran into the secrecy barrier this week when they refused to disclose whether undercover copper Mark Jenner was still on active service, citing "health and safety" grounds.
Jenner, who also used the name Mark Cassidy, posed as a joiner in 1996 and became active in the building union Ucatt until 1999. He also went to the Colin Roach Centre, which was particularly concerned about police violence. Jenner/Cassidy established a relationship, lasting five years, with a woman teacher, who bore his child, while he was collecting information on her involvement in environmental campaigns. (CORRECTION: (see comment) I confused this with another case, Jenner did not give this woman a child and she was not involved in environmental campaign. Shows danger of not checking facts when working late at night!)
A diary left behind by Jenner indicates that he was interested in building workers campaigning on safety issues. He even chaired some meetings. Former police officer Peter Francis has confirmed that Jenner, a member of the Yard's Special Demonstrations Squad, was an undercover agent.
But Metropolitan Police chiefs have turned down a freedom of information request asking if the former spy was still on duty, saying they would not “confirm or deny” any details of his activities.
The Met cited the need to protect “personal data” as well as the potential for “health and safety” breaches.
“It is deeply cynical for the police to be using personal data as an excuse to withhold information, when they had no hesitation to distribute workers’ personal details to blacklisters and ruin their lives,” said Ucatt acting general secretary Brian Rye.
A database of blacklisted construction workers, held contrary to the Data Protection Act, was discovered in 2009. It included details about workers' political views, out of work activities and families, and some of the information looked suspiciously as though it had been gathered by undercover police officers. Since then other information has been brought to light about meetings between senior police officers and employers.
“The police’s continued refusal to answer questions about their role in the blacklisting of ordinary construction workers is reprehensible,” said Brian Rye. "Everyone who had their lives blighted by blacklisting deserves the complete truth. That will only be achieved through a full public inquiry into this disgusting practice.”
Promising increased police surveillance to protect national security, Home Secretary Theresa May told MPs that the “snoopers’ charter” proposals blocked by the Lib
Dems during the last parliament were “too wide-ranging” and would be
tightened up. Former government lawyer Victoria Prentis, who was
elected a Tory MP last month, said that Britain was “lucky to have” its
spies. “They have been proved repeatedly to be both efficient and
decent and a great example of the values we hold so dear in this
country,” she said.
UNDERCOVER (and under-the-covers) COP Mark Jenner, aka Cassidy, spied on workers concerned about health and safety, and lived with woman he had befriended under false identity before moving on. "A great example of the values we hold so dear in this
country,”?
Investigate Blacklisting, says Nicola's Mum
ANTI-BLACKLIST campaigners seem to have claimed some success this week having set up stall at the Scottish National Party Trade Union Group meeting in Stirling.
NICOLA Sturgeon is being urged to set up a Hillsborough-style public inquiry into the scandal of blacklisting – by her mum.
Councillor Joan Sturgeon and her North Ayrshire colleagues want an official investigation into the shameful employment practice.
The Record previously told how almost 600 workers in Scotland were blocked from getting jobs by the Consulting Association.
Their blacklist was revealed after a raid by the Information Commissioner’s Office in 2009. It led to the organisation being shut down.
Blacklisting was also mentioned by new Midlothian MP Owen Thompson in his maiden speech in the Commons, in which he also, ironically, praised the speech of fellow newcomer Victoria Prentis. BUT RMT trade unionists have been less impressed with the SNP trade union group's failure to back opposition to privatisation of Caledonian-MacBrayne ferries. http://www.rmt.org.uk/news/rmt-responds-to-snp-trade-union-group-statement-on-calmac/
Charlotte Munro, public service whistleblower reinstated. Nice to win sometimes.
MORE questions have been raised than are being answered in the run-up to this election, but whoever wins, we should not let them go away. We're used to politicians telling us how much (of our)money they have thrown to the National Health Service, swearing how much they appreciate the service, and assuring us it is safe in their hands.
We're not supposed to look whose hands are in the till. That's covered by secrecy, even though it is our business.
At the beginning of this year came the news that an £80 million contract to run cancer scans had been given to a private health firm with a Tory MP on their board, despite a rival
NHS consortium allegedly offering to carry out the work for £7 million less.
The NHS Trust that runs Royal Stoke University Hospital in
Staffordshire put together a consortium with other NHS hospitals to
enter a “competitive bid” for a 10-year contract to run
scans across Cheshire, Staffordshire, Shropshire, Liverpool, and
Lancashire. The scans, known as PET-CT, are mostly used for diagnosing
and measuring cancers.
NHS England, the “head office” of the health service, rejected
the bid and awarded the contract to
Alliance Medical, a private health firm whose board members include
former Tory cabinet minister and Kensington MP Malcolm Rifkind.
Ian Syme, coordinator of North Staffordshire
Healthwatch and long-time critic of privatisation, uncovered the
original NHS bid by, in his words, “digging through 150 pages of board
papers”. His research revealed that the bid from the private provider
had beaten the NHS bid. “There’s little or no openness or
transparency in these tendering processes, no public debate, no
meaningful public scrutiny. Ask for details and you get obstructed by
the ‘commercial confidentiality’ excuse.”
He added: “The evidence
is stacking up that NHS England have a privatisation agenda and NHS
England are at the moment privatising NHS by stealth.”
Malcolm Rifkind is quitting as MP - and chair of the Commons Security and Intelligence Committee - after being caught offering his services in a cash for access sting. The same in which Labour's Jack Straw was seeking to provide for his old age. It must be true what they say about people struggling to keep up with the cost of living, and having to take extra jobs. Rifkind has been topping up his MP's salary, earning around £60,000 a year to sit on Alliance Medical’s board, according to public records.
Alliance Medical has a turnover of around
£120 million a year, so this scanning contract, worth an estimated
£8million a year, is a significant part of its work. Alliance Medical
said Rifkind was not involved in the bid.
Scanners don't come cheap. I remember the public fundraising effort for one at St.George's Hospital in London while I was still working there, the giant crane that had to be used to swing it into the unit; and then the less pleasant news that local GPs could not afford to refer their NHS patients for a scan, while the unit was trying to recoup its cost. The Royal Stoke Hospital's £3 million scanner was bought in November 2013 with donations
from Keele University and members of the public. It would have been used if the Trust had won the
contract. If not, local campaigners believe the scanner might either remain
unused, or be brought into the private Alliance Medical’s scheme
News of Rifkind's public disgrace brought an opportunity for questions in the House.
PM challenged to clarify Malcolm Rifkind's involvement in £80m NHS deal
By D_Blackhurst | Posted: February 25, 2015
DAVID Cameron has been challenged to reveal if disgraced ex-minister Sir Malcolm Rifkind influenced the awarding of an £80 million North Staffordshire NHS contract to a private company.
The Tory MP sits on the board of Alliance Medical, which won the lucrative deal to diagnose illnesses in thousands of patients for 10 years.
The company was chosen by NHS England in favour of a £7 million cheaper bid from a consortium of NHS trusts led by the Royal Stoke University Hospital.
Now the Prime Minister has been asked to clarify Sir Malcolm’s role since he was secretly filmed offering access for cash to a private firm.
Joan Walley (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab): Given that it was not possible for me to raise in Health questions or with the chief executive of NHS England in a personal meeting the continuing concerns about the procurement of a PET scanner across Staffordshire, Cheshire and Lancashire, will the Leader of the House give assurances, amid concerns about openness and transparency, that there has been no undue influence from the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) as a board member of Alliance? There are real concerns about the possibility of a monopoly service, which may mean that the contract will need to be referred to the Competition and Markets Authority. Will the Leader of the House find time for a proper, open debate about these continuing concerns?
Mr Hague: The hon. Lady has raised related concerns before in the House. I am sorry that she was not able to do so in Health questions, because there will be no more Health questions before the election; we are entering a period in which some Departments will not have further questions before Dissolution. However, she is still able to ask written questions and to seek answers in every other way through correspondence with Health Ministers. I will draw their attention to the matter that she has raised. As Leader of the House, I cannot give her any assurances about what she has asked, but I know that my colleagues will want to attend to what she has raised in the House today.
That's from Hansard. And here is an extract from the Daily Telegraph on Rifkind:
During Health
Questions, Labour MP Jamie Reed asked Jeremy Hunt whether the Department
of Health had any contact with Sir Malcolm before the contract was
awarded by the government.
Mr Reed asked: “Can the secretary of
state explain why the more expensive private sector bid was chosen over
the better value NHS which provides these services?
“And will
the Secretary of State today confirm, because this is a matter of
profound public interest, that no contact took place between his
department and the board of Alliance Medical, including at any point
with current board member, the right honourable member for Kensington?”
The Health Secretary responded that he admired the Labour MPs
"chutzpah" but said "it all behoves him to come and talk to us about
privatisation.”
Tu quoque, You too, might not be acceptable as an excuse or answer from accused criminals in court or schoolchildren, but government ministers think they can get away with it, as though by answering, or failing to answer, MPs this way they can ignore questions from the general public.
A broader picture of the threat to the NHS in Staffordshire - and where next? - came last month, in a report from the Guardian health correspondent Denis Campbell:
Cancer care for patients in Staffordshire could be cut after it is taken over
by profit-driven firms in the biggest privatisation of NHS services yet,
campaigners are warning.
Handing the £700m contract to the private sector could see hospices
closed, less money being spent on treatment and patients left at risk of
experiencing poor care, they claim.
The fears follow the publication on Monday of a secret document prepared by the four local NHS clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) in Staffordshire involved in the
outsourcing deal to rouse interest in the contract among private firms.
They plan to appoint one company to act as the “prime provider” of
cancer services, including diagnosis, treatment and aftercare, with that
firm then sub-contracting more services.
Campaigners – including Kate Godfrey, Labour’s parliamentary
candidate for Stafford in the general election – claimed the document
proves that the winning bidder will be “given ‘discretion’ to design
services they would like to deliver, slash spend per patient and propose
the payment structures most beneficial to themselves”.
Godfrey also warned that front-line services could be sold off so
that “core NHS responsibilities such as radiotherapy, surgery and
chemotherapy could be delivered by the private sector, with no mechanism
for patients to seek redress following failures of care”.
In
addition, she claimed, the winning bidder will be “given freedom to
alter or exit any existing contract – for example, funding for
much-loved hospice care – without patients given any chance to
challenge”.
Meanwhile, seven of the 11 private health firms which have jointly
won a £780m NHS privatisation contract – the biggest yet concluded –
have links to the Conservatives, Labour research shows.
The seven include three companies which have been criticised for
providing inadequate care to NHS patients or care home residents they
were looking after. Two of them, Circle and Care UK, have been taken to
task by the Care Quality Commission for that while a third, Vanguard, is
under fire after 31 eye operations it performed under contract to the
NHS last year left patients with continuing sight problems.
For example, Vanguard is majority owned by MML Capital. Rory Brooks,
its founder and chief executive, has donated £300,311 to the Tories and
gets privileged access to David Cameron as part of the ‘Leaders Club’ of
Tory donors.
Care UK’s chairman until 2010 was John Nash, who was made a peer by
Cameron in 2013 and is now an education minister in the House of Lords.
He and his wife Caroline have given £251,000 to the Tories.
Circle, which recently pulled out of running Hinchingbrooke NHS
hospital in what was hailed as a pionerering extension of the private
sector’s role, is part-owned by Lansdowne Partners and Odey Asset
Management. Their founders, Paul Ruddock and Crispin Odey, have given
£843,783 and £241,000 respectively to the Tories, and Odey’s firm
another £20,000.
With privatisation comes more secrecy, to keep the public in the dark, and that's not all.
The health service might seem a long way from the building industry, but with construction companies like Carillion already taking over parts of health and other public services, we see what look like some old customs. Hospital workers at Swindon complained to their union about bullying, favouritism, and pressure to give bribes to supervisors. And now comes this:
A secret letter from Consulting Association boss Ian Kerr to representatives of known blacklisting companies including Carillion, Skanska and Kier was among new documents published by the Commons Scottish affairs committee.
“Every time we turn over a stone, we discover more evidence of the breadth and depth of the conspiracy to blacklist,” said committee chairman Ian Davidson MP.
Dated February 2005, the letter shows that the Consulting Association contacted firms involved in facilities management in the health service, such as catering and cleaning.
Mr Kerr wrote: “Following last year’s meeting to consider a facilities management meeting I am now able to offer the following dates for a further meeting to cover the healthcare sector. Please circle all dates convenient for you to attend a meeting.”
Former Carillion HR manager Liz Keates, who has been accused of blacklisting 139 construction workers, was one of eight addressed by the letter.
The shocking revelation raises the possibility that NHS whistleblowers were being targeted, with a recent inquiry revealing that thousands of health staff have been bullied and intimidated by managers for raising patient care concerns.
Mr Kerr’s letter has led to renewed calls by unions for a full public inquiry into the blacklisting, which has been promised by Labour if the party wins the general election.
“We know that construction workers and environmentalists were blacklisted,” said GMB national officer Justin Bowden.
“It is quite clear that Ian Kerr and the Consulting Association saw a role for their services in the NHS and questions should be asked whether Carillion and Liz Keates did so as well.
“The British public has the right to know the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about the full extent of blacklisting. Only a full public inquiry will do this.”
The government is said to have asked health service employers for protection for whistleblowers. But will that be for those who spy on fellow workers, or report "waste", rather than those who, like the blacklisted building workers, showed concern for health and safety at work, or in the health service, exposed ill-treatment or neglect of patients?
We have seen how government legislation that was supposed to curb big business lobbying has been turned instead to a "gagging law" to inhibit public interest campaigners.
Still, to round off with some encouraging good news, here's one victory, reported on the Left Unity site:
Sacked Whipps Cross hospital shop steward Charlotte Munro has won her industrial tribunal and been reinstated by Barts Health Trust, 15 months after her sacking. Charlotte, who received a warm reception when she spoke at the Left Unity founding conference in November 2013, had worked as an occupational therapist at the Walthamstow east London hospital for 34 years.
When Charlotte raised concerns about hundreds of Barts Trust workers being downgraded and cuts all across East London, she was sacked on trumped up charges of breaching confidentiality. Since she was the best known trade unionist at the hospital, her sacking was a major blow to the confidence of the workforce and their morale at a time of significant attacks on jobs and pay.
The industrial tribunal found in her favour just weeks after the Care Quality Commission found that Barts Health Trust had a culture of bullying, which was part of the reason for it being into ‘special measures’. Charlotte’s victory is also a victory for the local Unison branch and local campaigners who had fought tirelessly for her reinstatement.
Charlotte Munro said:
“I am really happy to be returning to work with my team and the rest of the staff at Whipps Cross Hospital and Barts Health NHS Trust. And I look forward to being able to contribute to the work I understand is now under way, in response to the CQC report, to bring about improvement in our hospital. It’s vital that Whipps Cross becomes again a hospital of choice for health staff to work in, where they can provide the best standards of health care to our local population, and find a good future.
“Health staff must be able to speak out for their patients and services without fear. They must be free to organise themselves in trade unions and stand as representatives knowing that their rights as a union rep will be respected, and that the role of an independent union campaigning for the interests of the staff, their patients and services is also respected. These were issues at the heart of my case. Its resolution will I hope contribute to building a climate of openness and confidence so needed in our health service.
“I want to thank my union UNISON for its backing and support in taking my case to tribunal, and to thank our highly committed legal team. I have been moved and inspired by the support from colleagues, from health campaigners and fellow trade unionists, and so many other people. It has held me up through some pretty difficult times and brought home that the issues I faced have far wider significance for people. Together we are standing up for what we believe in and this has made all the difference. Let’s continue to do so for the future of our NHS.”
UNDERCOVER (and under-the-covers) COP Mark Jenner, aka Cassidy, spied on workers concerned about health and safety, and lived with woman he had befriended under false identity before moving on.
