Time for a reset to let us all rise above politics
IS LOCAL MP Sir Jake Berry really intimidating Rossendale Council and its chief executive Rob Huntington, as both the authority and its top officer claimed last week?
Sure, it must be frustrating to see Sir Jake use his parliamentary privilege – which allows to say what he likes in Parliament without fear of being sued for defamation – to make allegations about alleged fraud at the council and the use of ‘gagging orders’ to stop councillors and officers speaking out about the Empty Homes Scandal. The council and its political leadership have denied both several times.
But is it really intimidating for an MP to publicly ask questions about a project which has cost the council at least £10m (we don’t know the exact amount) when he’s struggled to get the council to tell him what’s going on?
The council’s response to Sir Jake’s comments in Parliament fall into three parts. First is a denial of any gagging orders. The second is to accuse Sir Jake of intimidation. The third is to make some interesting comments worthy of further scrutiny.
Because the problem with the council’s claims of intimidation is that Sir Jake wouldn’t have had to stand up in Parliament and ask questions about the financial problems at Rossendale Leisure Trust, or the ongoing impact of the Empty Homes Scandal on council finances, if the council had been more open about both in the first place.
In just a couple of years, the Leisure Trust has gone from being expansionist – adding Ski Rossendale and The Whitaker
Museum in Rawtenstall to its portfolio – to struggling to make ends meet, so much so it closed Whitworth swimming pool just a few weeks after a financial report was presented to councillors in secret.
What did it say? We don’t know – and neither does Sir Jake, because the council have refused him access to it.
What’s going wrong? The Empty Homes Scandal has been rumbling on since 2015, turning a grant of £5m from Government to improve
houses across East Lancashire into a millstone around Rossendale’s neck after the project collapsed and our council was left liable for the whole project.
A five-year police investigation followed, which led to no charges. Independent investigations were ordered by councillors, which cleared them of wrong doing because they had been kept in the dark – by who, we don’t know. Bluntly, the council’s political leaders appear to have tried very hard to keep us in the dark about it too ever since.
After council grant cuts, which senior council officers and Labour councillors are only too quick to remind voters are crippling local public spending, the Empty Homes Scandal is the biggest financial black hole facing the council. It’s unique to Rossendale.
Despite that, mention of it in council reports to either the cabinet or the full council are fleeting. Labour members have been reluctant to ever have an open debate about what went on, or perhaps more importantly, what happens next and when council will be able to stop paying out.
Local opposition Tories have, in this column’s view, repeatedly failed to hold the ruling Labour Party to account on what happened – until this year, when they tried to pin the fiasco on Cllr Andy MacNae, who happens to be Labour’s candidate for the General Election.
He was in the cabinet at the time of the scheme getting going, but holding a different portfolio. Labour councillors were only too happy to talk about the scheme then – to make sure everyone knew Cllr MacNae wasn’t the cabinet member responsible for what went on. How much that excuses any cabinet member who saw this financial money pit open up on their collective watch is still to be discussed.
That Sir Jake, when he asked for the latest reports on what was going on, was denied access by council officers, should alarm us all. Faced with that, what else was he supposed to do but raise it in Parliament?
The answer would surely be to cool things down by inviting Sir Jake in to help solve a problem – not claim an elected MP is intimidating a council just by trying to hold it to account.
It’s time for a reset. It’s time for someone to rise above politics.