Westmaladministered

A Scandal Unfolds

Squall 8, Autumn 1994, pp. 32-33.

The documents quoted in this chronology are a compilation of passages contained in the 12,000 documents that district auditor John Magill read during the course of his investigation. They were never designed for public perusal and as a consequence, offer a remarkably candid exposure of Westminster City Council’s intentions.

1986 - Dame Shirley Porter, Tesco heiress and once named as the 20th wealthiest woman in Europe, is elected as leader of Westminster City Council. The Conservative majority on the council is just four wards, with many of the wards held by only a handful of votes.

One of Porter’s first acts is to ask Patricia Kirwan, chair of housing, for an investigative paper “covering the possibilities of balancing the social mix in Westminster” and to examine the costs of “homeless/down and outs who are not our natural supporters.”

1986 - John Magill, senior partner in top accountant firm Touche Ross, is appointed as district auditor for Westminster with responsibility for investigating maladministration. This follows the filing of a complaint by 13 ‘objectors', all of whom are residents of the Borough.

24th June 1986 - A Westminster Tory councillor meeting is told by Shirley Porter, David Weeks and Barry Legg (now a Tory MP) that “the majority party intend to win the next election and that that would be the focus of their attention”. The minutes of the meeting also refer to “social engineering-housing”. Six days later another meeting is convened by Porter to discuss the “economic justification for gerrymander on housing” and the “gentrification” of the Borough.

1986 - A seminar for Westminster Tories takes place. A paper is presented explaining: “What is gentrification? In short it is ensuring that the right people live in the right areas. The areas are relatively easy to define: target wards identified on the basis of electoral trends and results.”

September 1986 - Shirley Porter sends a paper to senior Westminster Tories advising that the Council should “test the law to its limits” and move homeless people to “property outside Westminster”. She also adds: “When you’ve read these documents.... it would be helpful if you swallow them in good spy fashion otherwise they might self-destruct!!”

1987 - Shirley Porter promotes Dr Michael Dutt as a housing committee vice-chairman, despite the fact that he has no previous knowledge or experience of housing matters. The following year he is further promoted to joint chairman of the housing committee.

1987 - Westminster City Council launches the “Building Stable Communities” project (BSC). The word “battlezone” is used to describe wards marginally held by Conservatives and documents refer to “increasing our support” and “more electors” in the said “battlezones”.

Another document identifies that “the problem can be simply stated. If it is accepted that owner-occupiers are more inclined to vote Conservative, then we approach the city council elections in 1990 with an enormous handicap. The short term objective must be to target the marginal wards and as a matter of utmost urgency redress the imbalance by encouraging a pattern of [housing] tenure which is more likely to translate into Conservative votes.”

The BSC action plan identifies the fact that 28% of Westminster residents own their own homes, compared to a national average of 62%. A BSC action plan is drawn up to “maximise the number of right-to-buy sales, particularly in key wards” via “a major sales drive”. The action plan also attempts to “ensure that all grants paid to housing associations are for schemes which complement the BSC”.

1987 - Westminster City Council sells three Westminster cemeteries for five pence each, in order to extricate itself from the responsibilities of maintenance. After a public and media outcry and an ombudsman ruling declaring the sale as “maladministration causing injustice”, Porter is forced to make a rare public apology and purchase back the cemeteries for nearly £5 million. Dame Shirley Porter survives a mute Audit Commission investigation into the maladministration surrounding the cemeteries affair.

May 1988 - An extraneous weekend “strategy conference” organised by Shirley Porter, takes place at Camberley in Hampshire. Unbelievably, the title of one of the conference sessions is “Winning the election. Dirty tricks”, with a minute found on one of the documents that reads: “PK to lead dirt squad”. ‘PK’ is thought to refer to Patricia Kirwin, a Tory councillor and housing committee chairwoman who made an unsuccessful bid to challenge Porter for the leadership in 1987, and consequently resigned over the gerrymandering affair.

Evidence of ‘high string pulling’ was also revealed by the minutes taken at the meeting referring to several individuals high up in Thatcher’s Government: “Ask Secretary of State for help”, “Approach Brian Griffith for help” and “Speak to T. Bell about identifying a suitable secondee from marketing industry”. The Secretary of State in question was probably the late Nicholas Ridley at the DoE, a friend of Shirley Porter and resident of Westminster. Brian Griffith was head of Thatcher’s policy group and Tim Bell was Thatcher’s PR man.

1988 - Ambrosden Hostel sheltering 96 homeless people is closed down by Westminster City Council, despite protestations from Cardinal Basil Hume who lives over the road in the Cathedral. The building is subsequently sold to developers who convert them into flats for sale.

1989 - Patricia Kirwin tells BBC Panorama that the Council’s plan was to “increase the number of upwardly mobile Conservative-type voters in specific key areas to ensure the vote went up”.

1990 - Bill Phillips, managing director of the Council, shreds potentially revealing documents. “My enquiries have not been assisted by the contemporaneous shredding of documents,” reports Magill. “I have been unable to ascertain whether any documents relevant to the subject matter of the objection were shredded by Mr Phillips.”

Magill then noted that he had obtained from other sources, documents pertaining to council activities that were absent without explanation from Bill Phillip’s files.

1990 - Margaret Thatcher, friend of Shirley Porter, is removed as prime minister, leaving Porter without her strongest political ally.

1990 - Patricia Kirwin begins spilling the full story about the Council’s plotting to the Audit Commission. Meanwhile Shirley Porter approaches Michael Heseltine, Secretary of State for the Environment at the time, asking that he should consider sacking Howard Davies, head of the Audit Commission. Michael Heseltine refuses to even see Shirley Porter and Department of Environment officials remind her that the audit commission is an independent body and that, even as Audit Commission controller, Howard Davies cannot control the operations of the district auditor, John Magill.

Despite this however, several “top level” leaks are sent to the Evening Standard suggesting that the members of the Audit Commission wanted Howard Davies to resign. The Evening Standard contacts members of the Commission and finds that they all still have full confidence in Howard Davies. Consequently the Standard doesn’t publish the obviously false ‘leaks’.

1991 - One of Shirley Porter’s employees hands over documents to The Observer, revealing the existence of a “slush fund” used to support Porter’s campaign to abolish the GLC. The fund is hidden under the name ‘Foundation for Business Responsibility’ and, as a registered charity, qualified its donators for tax relief.

The charity is also used to raise funds for a company called Marketforce, which campaigned on behalf of the Conservatives in the local elections of 1990. The chairman of the charity, Sir Nigel Mobbs, is also chairman of a company called Slough Estates, which have made extensive contributions to Tory Party funds over the years.

13th January 1994 - John Magill, after a four year investigation, announces his provisional report into the scandal. The present deputy leader of the Westminster Council, Simon Milton, says: “We have to question a system of local government inspection which can allow the production of the most damaging report in the most lurid language that can allow loyal hard working public servants to live with the threat of being professionally and financially ruined.”

The Evening Standard’s front page headlines for the day read: “Verdict on Dame Shirley in ‘Homes for Votes’ Scandal - UNLAWFUL, DISGRACEFUL, IMPROPER”. Dame Shirley Porter is unavailable for comment, having left the country for her holiday home in Palm Springs, California.

26th January 1994 - Dr Michael Dutt, one of ten named officials responsible for the ‘designated sales’ gerrymandering scam, is found dead in his St Albans flat. Dr Dutt, who faced a £2 million surcharge for his part in the scandal, is found with a shotgun, a suicide note and pages from Magill’s report strewn around the room.

Several Westminster Tories attempt to make mileage out of his suicide by suggesting that it was the manner of Magill’s investigation and the outrageous conclusions that he came to, that lead Dutt to take his own life.

18th February 1994 - Squatting activists occupy Artillery Mansions (See Heavy Artillery in Squall 6) a large building containing 411 empty flats just 100 yards from Westminster City Hall. During the course of the occupation it is discovered that the building has been empty for 18 years and that efforts by various agencies to bring the property into use as short term housing for the homeless have been thwarted by Council insistence that only “professional” people should be housed there.

March 1994 - John Magill investigates Westminster City Hall and impounds files relating to the Council’s ‘Building Stable Communities’ project (BSC) A second enquiry based on the BSC population manipulation is to begin in 1995. Magill considers it “prudent” to keep the impounded files under lock and key until the enquiry commences.

Early July 1994 - Dame Shirley Porter fails in her High Court attempt to have John Magill dismissed as district auditor.

Late July 1994 - The ‘objectors’ who filed the original complaint of council misconduct to the district auditor, submit further allegations to John Magill following the discovery of “fresh evidence”, implicating five more council officials in the scandal. These include Miles Young - present leader of Westminster City Council, Alex Segal - chairman of social services, Matthew Ives - City solicitor, Sid Sporle - director of planning and Ken Hackney - a senior housing officer.

Miles Young responds by denying everything: “I intend to treat this further complaint in the same way I have all the other political attacks on this matter -with a lot of cynicism about motives, and complete confidence that they are absolutely baseless.”

October 1994 - A public hearing begins into the ‘designated sales’ schemes, conducted by John Magill.