Paul Flynn - Read My Day

The Yentob & Batmanghelidjh experience

 Public Administration & Constitutional Reform Committee

 Oral evidence: Whitehall’s relationship with Kids Company 

Q52   Paul Flynn: A memo was sent from Kids Company to the Cabinet Office stating that the communities served by Kids Company would, if the charity closed, descend into savagery and warned of potential increases in looting, rioting, arson attacks on government buildings. To what extent do you regard this as a reasonable assessment of the situation?

Alan Yentob: There must be people in this room who know about risk assessment.

 

Q53   Paul Flynn: Did you write this letter?

Alan Yentob: I did not write the letter, no. I wrote the letter about the restructure, I did not write that letter; it was written by the safeguarding team.

Kate Hoey: Sorry, can you just speak up a little bit?

Alan Yentob: Sorry. I did not write that letter, no. It was an appendix which was a risk assessment form, which was required and requested. Most risk assessment forms are what is the most extreme that could happen. Can I also just say something about this? So that was what it was—

 

Q54   Paul Flynn: All right, but can we just look at that? Couldn’t we put the warning in that letter as one that was a wild exaggeration and you accept that?

Alan Yentob: No, it was not. Can I explain why? Okay, I will explain why and I will explain why it was not a wild exaggeration. I do accept that it is a worst-case scenario. That is what risk assessments in any organisation are required to be. What is the worst that could happen? Remember the riots in 2011, which Camila in fact warned Oliver Letwin about—sorry, let me answer your question, I will. Five days after Kids Company closed, a boy was murdered. He was going to the crime prevention centres, which were closed. If you read the account of that and what was said at the time by those people in that area you will hear what they said and you will hear what they said about the risks that happened once Kids Company had gone.

              I also gave, in the evidence, two letters from the Metropolitan Police that were utter and compelling endorsements of the work Kids Company does in Lambeth and the fact that that work would be sorely missed. There were stabbings, there were four suicide attempts. I have not talked about this, but I am now telling you that these things happened.

 

Q58   Paul Flynn: We have had a great deal of psychobabble, we have had a great deal that demonstrates Mr Yentob’s creative abilities, but would you please answer our questions briefly so that we can get on?

If we look at the numbers that you quoted to start, past employees of your company expressed cynicism about the accuracy of the suggestion that the number of clients you had in 2010 was 16,500 and the numbers leapt to 36,000 in the following year. You maintain that is the same number. If that is so, why was it that only 1,699 cases were handed over to the Lambeth authority when you closed down?

Camila Batmanghelidjh: They are all very good questions.

Paul Flynn: Would you answer why the number went down from 36,000? Presumably the majority were from that local council, the immediate neighbourhood. In reality the numbers that were produced were 175 in Bristol and 1,699. Why?

Camila Batmanghelidjh: First of all, the numbers do not pertain just to one local authority.

Paul Flynn: What were the numbers?

Alan Yentob: That was for the whole of London.

Camila Batmanghelidjh: There are two bits to this question. One is the overall numbers. The way the numbers—

 

Q59   Paul Flynn: What was the overall number you handed over?

Camila Batmanghelidjh: To the local authorities? Right, what happened is that—

 

Q60   Paul Flynn: Could you give me the number, please?

Camila Batmanghelidjh: Yes, I am going to.

Paul Flynn: We will be here all day.

Camila Batmanghelidjh: No. I would like to be able to answer your question—

Paul Flynn: Please do.

Camila Batmanghelidjh: —as accurately as possible. What we did is we handed over 1,717 referral sheets, which had on them families. So altogether the safeguarding team and the mental health team who put those referrals together think that they handed over between 3,000 to 4,000 clients, once you put all the referrals in.

 

Q61   Paul Flynn: Could I stop you?

Camila Batmanghelidjh: Yes.

Paul Flynn: An ex-employee of yours told The Times that they were instructed to shred client records after the charity closed. Is this an instruction from you and does it mean that records that would prove that there were 36,000 clients do not now exist?

Camila Batmanghelidjh: First of all, that is completely incorrect. We did not shred any client records. The records were all handed over to the official receiver. What we handed over are 18,000 hard copy files that contain family members in them, so one file may pertain to several people who are in that particular family. In addition, we handed over a database of our most high risk cases, which amounted to 15,933 individuals, and we handed over copies of the 1,717 referral forms we did. Absolutely no records were shredded whatsoever.

 

Q62   Paul Flynn: How did Kids Company identify those potential clients who were genuinely in need?

Camila Batmanghelidjh: Because we do a rigorous assessment and we do home visits.

 

Q63   Paul Flynn: But there are self-referrals you are saying.

Camila Batmanghelidjh: Yes, when they come to the centre.

 

Q64   Paul Flynn: Do you think it was more to do with the wraparound cash that you were giving them? If people were turning up—and it has not been denied—we have been told that some people were getting £160 a week. Is that not more of an inducement for people to identify themselves in need of your services?

Camila Batmanghelidjh: With appreciation, if this is about respect for vulnerable people, that is making the assumption that people who need help in these poor communities are—

Paul Flynn: How did you assess the level of unmet services?

Camila Batmanghelidjh: —accessing help in such a distorted way. The truth is that there are huge number of vulnerable individuals. In fact, it is so bad that this country does not even capture the real numbers.

 

Q65   Paul Flynn: How do you measure the number in the areas where you work? How do you decide? We all represent various parts of the country and all these problems occur there. Why is there suddenly a huge unmet service that you claim to be providing for in the particular area where you were?

Camila Batmanghelidjh: Okay. I am really glad you have asked me this question because what is happening in this country is that the numbers of children who get into social services and child mental health are controlled by a process which is a sort of hidden gatekeeping, because the local authorities cannot cope—

 

Q66   Paul Flynn: What percentage of the children—

Camila Batmanghelidjh: Please let me finish because you are not—

Paul Flynn: Well, I do not think—

Camila Batmanghelidjh: You are not allowing me to finish. Please let me finish.

Chair: Mr Flynn, we’ll let her answer this question.

Camila Batmanghelidjh: It is really important that you understand this problem because that is at the heart of the difficulties that we are all experiencing as a country.

Basically, there is a gatekeeping process in local authorities because they do not have enough money to cope with the scale of the problem, so what happens is that when children and young people are referred into social services or child mental health, they cannot always take that number of kids, so they have to select who they are able to help and who they are not able to help. If you want the real figures, the NSPCC in their report “How safe are our children?” attempted to have a go, because in this country we do not capture the real numbers of vulnerable children and young people who need help. Child mental health data was not updated for 11 years. That means that this country’s economic arrangements around child mental health were organised around the data of 11 years ago.

              What you get is, when children and young people cannot get into social services or child mental health, they are left outside the doors of those agencies without anyone really measuring the level of need. When Kids Company allowed self-referral these people self-referred.

Chair: All right, we’ve got the point. Mr Yentob, very briefly.

Alan Yentob: If I can just try to give you some short, concise answers to this. First of all, in terms of the numbers the fact is that 20,000 of these 36,000 children are in schools and we are not saying that every one of them was given therapeutic care, but in terms of evaluation, the schools have got a detailed record of how much contact there was with each of these children. I assure you it is very difficult for Camila. Please let me explain this. I have given it to you in this document and it is important to me that you understand it.

              That is what the majority of it is. The Government’s money, the £4.25 million or £4.5 million in the later years that came in, went to look after 800 children. That is £4.25 million for only 800 children, so consequently when we talk about this breadth of service, it is a different level of service for each of these children.

 

Q67   Chair: Well, how honest is it to put in your annual accounts that you were helping 36,000 people?

Alan Yentob: Let me answer that question. [Interruption.] Let me answer it. Let me answer this question. In the annual report it is absolutely clear and broken down, even in the numbers that I have given you, how much was done. 19,000 young people per year were supported by our children’s services. It then goes into detail about how many of them were given personalised support and what was going on. It is detailed how many got direct contact—

 

Q68   Chair: Also why was Kids Company so reluctant to hand over the records of these people to Mr David Quirke-Thornton of Southwark Social Services?

Alan Yentob: Very straightforwardly—and I think this is terribly important as well because Camila is not running all this, the 36,000 children—there are 650 workers. Those 650 keyworkers, that is 73% of the costs of Kids Company goes on the staff, not on handing out money to people or sending people to university.

 

Q69   Chair: Okay, but why was there reluctance to hand over the records to —

Alan Yentob: Because data protection of vulnerable clients—there are legal issues.

 

Q70   Paul Flynn: That is not true. They would be entirely protected if you handed them over to Lambeth. That is an excuse. Could you tell me, just briefly, how do you help someone’s mental health by buying them a pair of shoes that cost £150?

Camila Batmanghelidjh: Excuse me, because I think the way—

Paul Flynn: This is—

Camila Batmanghelidjh: Hold on, no, the way you have put that question is really unjust because—

Paul Flynn: Well, can you answer?

Camila Batmanghelidjh: I would like to answer it. Please let me answer it because the structure of that question is immensely disrespectful to vulnerable people.

Paul Flynn: Oh for goodness sake! Look—

Camila Batmanghelidjh: No, I want to be able to answer—

Chair: Mr Flynn, let her answer please.

Camila Batmanghelidjh: I would like to answer it.

Chair: But quickly.

Camila Batmanghelidjh: You can have mental health difficulties and you can still need a pair of shoes. So the two—

Paul Flynn: For £150?

Camila Batmanghelidjh: I do not know where you are getting that from and because I do not have any records and I do not have any name, I do not know what that question—

 

Q71   Paul Flynn: You are running an organisation without records?

Camila Batmanghelidjh: No, the organisation has records, but the records are in the hands of the official receiver to which I have no access, so I do not know what you are referring to. What I am saying to you is that when we had people with mental health difficulties and we had people—one mother jumped off a multi-storey block—

 

Q72   Paul Flynn: You are giving us examples. We do not live on the moon. We represent areas that have great problems, we know about them, but please do not try to treat us as though we are the Prime Minister and you are trying to get £30 million out of us. We want to know what happened with this organisation which has collapsed, damaging many people, possibly the results of it will do a great deal of harm to the clients you had. But you have given a non-stop spiel of mostly psychobabble; you do not answer the questions. I asked you how do you measure unmet need in the boroughs, and we have had this torrent of words since—verbal ectoplasm—but no answer.

Chair: I would just like to press—

Camila Batmanghelidjh: I would argue that I did answer you. You might not like my answers, but I did answer you.

 Camila Batmanghelidjh: Okay. Basically, the reason the charity closed was the sexual abuse allegations that were unfounded. The charity did not close because it was badly run. Numerous independent evaluations have confirmed that the charity is well run. You are holding your evidence on the basis of The Daily Mail and a group of other media providers. You do not have and you have not done the rigorous research that is required in order to be able to determine whether the charity and its structures was failing.

Chair: I have given you the opportunity to say what you wanted. Mr Flynn.

 

Q129   Paul Flynn: I am delighted to be accused of being a friend of The Daily Mail. It is a novel experience. Mr Yentob, you have a very busy life. Between 2002 and 2015 you held four very important roles. You were chair of the trustees of Kids Company, editor and presenter of “Imagine”, BBC Creative Director and chairman of the ICA. How do you ensure that these positions you had had adequate amounts of your time and did not introduce conflicts of interest?

Alan Yentob: Well, first of all, I do not think there were any conflicts of interest and they were all declared. Secondly, I would look at the work that I did, the programmes I made, my role as Creative Director, ask my various director generals whether I had delivered or not delivered on that basis. I think we can put the BBC work to one side. I am sure they would have ended my service if it was not up to scratch in their view.

In terms of Kids Company, there were different times when that responsibility was greater. I believe that people who have the resource and the ability should make a contribution to public life. That is what I have always believed. My only regret, my great regret and sadness, is that we perhaps tried to look after too many children and we tried to do too much. I am not saying that I do not take responsibility for that.

I would say, though, that—and this is important—in terms of what happened in the last year when I did spend a great deal of time, I managed to bring in Hogan Lovells, insolvency lawyers, KPMG, who will all talk to you about how we conducted this. We moved out of our premises into Deutsche Bank. All this was done pro bono. I communicated in a very straightforward manner with the Cabinet Office. They were very rigorous. David Cameron is not in my pocket. It is clear that in the difficulties that were faced they could no longer give us direct funding. I believe, Chairman, as you said, maybe we expected we would get this funding. We did because of the correspondence that went on and that is another of my mistakes, but I did believe that.

Chair: We will come to that.

 

Q130   Paul Flynn: Is it true that you accompanied Ms Batmanghelidjh on her interview for the “Today” programme and that you rang “Newsnight” and “World at One” before items about Kids Company were broadcast?

Alan Yentob: All right. Well, “Newsnight” was the first—

Paul Flynn: Is it true?

Chair: It is a yes or no answer.

Paul Flynn: I would like to go on to the real question. Are those things true?

Alan Yentob: No, but the implication you are making—

Chair: Could you answer yes or no?

Paul Flynn: Just answer yes or no and then I can get on with my question.

Alan Yentob: Did I accompany Camila as chairman of Kids Company when they had asked me to be on the programme myself? Did I accompany her to the “Today” programme? Yes, I did and I said, “I cannot be on it, but Camila Batmanghelidjh will come”. I am the chairman of Kids Company, as you are all making it clear to me now.

 

Q131   Paul Flynn: Okay. You accompanied her on the “Today” programme and you positioned yourself with the producer in the box, which is something you must have realised—

Alan Yentob: I was not. No, I am sorry, I do not know where you heard that. I was not with the producer in the box. She was being interviewed. I was outside.

Chair: I am glad we have put that on the record.

 

Q132   Paul Flynn: Why have the BBC never interviewed you?

Alan Yentob: The BBC have never interviewed me simply because, from the beginning, we thought there might be a conflict of interest. Because the newspapers wanted to make a great number of it, I decided that I would do an interview with Channel 4 News at the time and not compromise anyone in the BBC. As you may know, the BBC anyway loves to have an executive to have a go at, so it is not something that they will not get the opportunity to do.

 

Q133   Paul Flynn: Do you think your presence, as you were there in your capacity with Kids Company but you are also one of the most senior people in the BBC, was your intention to put pressure on the interviewers to go easy on Ms Batmanghelidjh?

Alan Yentob: If you know anything about the BBC—

Paul Flynn: I do, yes.

Alan Yentob: Yes, you do. Well, you know that when I have been interviewed on “Newsnight” and anywhere else I am given a harder time than any of you guys are. The execution of a number of director generals by their own staff is history.

 

Q134   Paul Flynn: Do you think it is right with such a senior position that there was not a conflict in that and your presence and your phone calls were an abuse of your position as a senior member of the BBC?

Alan Yentob: I absolutely think that is completely untrue, no.

 

Q135   Paul Flynn: There are members of BBC staff who disagree and a certain unhappiness has been expressed. You put your hands up, but would you in hindsight think it is right for somebody who is regarded as one of the three or four most powerful people in the BBC to be around, to be ringing people up, to influence the way they are handling the Kids Company interviews?

Alan Yentob: The only thing I did and the only phone call I made—I made two phone calls. I had been phoned, perfectly rightly. This story has been the BBC’s story and that is the right of BBC News to do that, absolutely, and they have run it. That is one of the reasons I did not want to get over-embroiled in it. I made one phone call because, as chairman of an organisation that I believed in and which I had disclosed very much that I was running, not for no one and none of the trustees to have known this was going on, that there was going to be a programme, it was 9 o’clock at night and I rang. I was asked, “Are you going to be on it?” and I said, “Well, why can’t you do it tomorrow? I don’t even know what the allegations are.” That is the conversation I had.

Since then other journalists have spoken to me and have rung me up continuously and I have tried to speak to people but I wanted to wait. You will notice that I have done two interviews, one with Channel 4 News and one, a short one, with the Evening Standard. I have done no others until yesterday. The reason I have is because I wanted to come and speak to you first and take the responsibility that I have and talk to a public body who also have a responsibility. I did not want to get involved with lots of people talking about it.

 

Q136   Paul Flynn: Have you considered your position at the BBC as a result of your behaviour and your attempt to influence the coverage of it?

Alan Yentob: You say. In no way did I intend to influence or put pressure. I know perfectly well that BBC News, over which I have no control, is not going to listen to me and you only have to look at the number of BBC journalists out there interrogating this case and this organisation to know that that is the case, I am certain.

 

Q139   Paul Flynn: I have a final question. You prayed in aid a long list of Ministers who supported Kids Company. There is a feeling that they did this, including the Prime Minister, to advance the stunt they were running at the time called the Big Society, which appears to be dead and buried now. These voices appear to be silent now, the ones who supported you then. Do you think they used Kids Company to advance their political agenda and have run away from you now?

Alan Yentob: I absolutely do not, no, and I do not think they are running away particularly. The Prime Minister, Oliver Letwin, Nick Hurd, people like this, these are difficult times and the issue of the care system I think everyone would know—Kate Hoey knows more than anyone—how difficult, how challenging it is. I think they are genuine in their views that they want to do something about it. At the same time, the speed of change is very slow. We have found in Kids Company that the children that we look after are still not necessarily cared for by the statutory system. I did not send it to you but I have to say that every time we have challenged a local authority about care for children and we have gone to judicial review, we have never lost. It is not good and bad on both sides. Everyone is trying to do the best they can in the most difficult circumstances.

 

Q142   Chair: I want to move on to the relationship with Government because obviously that was a very strong determining factor in how you made decisions about the charity, but just before we do so, I just want to make sure that we have this right. You have denied that you were in the cubicle of one of the programmes that you visited with Camila. You did not stand in the cubicle?

Alan Yentob: Camila was behind the glass in another room. I was on the other side of the glass, yes, but I was not in the cubicle where she was being interviewed.

Chair: No, this is the point. The allegation is that you were not in the studio with her—

Alan Yentob: No.

Chair: —but you were the other side of the glass with the producer.

Alan Yentob: Yes, I was, yes.

Chair: Yes.

 

Q143   Paul Flynn: Well, of course, that inhibited the producer. That was the whole point about what—

Alan Yentob: The producer was not doing the interview.

Paul Flynn: I think you gave me a very misleading answer.

Chair: Order.

Alan Yentob: No, sorry, I misunderstood.

 

Q144   Chair: It has been remarked to me that for such a senior and interested figure from the BBC to stand beside the producer, so the producer is thinking, “What I say to whoever is interviewing the interviewee is going to be heard by a very senior figure who has a conflict of interest in this matter”, don’t you think that that was—

Camila Batmanghelidjh: They invited him in.

Alan Yentob: Can I put it in perspective? They invited me to be on the programme and I said, “I will bring Camila.”

 

Q145   Chair: But then you should behave more like a guest rather than as a member of the BBC.

Alan Yentob: I think in all of this you do have to understand that for all these years I have been there supporting these children I have disclosed my position.

Chair: No, I understand that.

Alan Yentob: No, I do not think it was a—I am not a particularly—

 

Q146   Chair: What I am asking you is, in retrospect, was it really appropriate for you to go and stand behind the producer so you could hear what he was telling the interviewer?

Alan Yentob: I did not stand behind the producer. You see, you see it differently. I just thought I was there to listen to what Camila said and this is an organisation that I am familiar with, so perhaps—

 

Q147   Chair: In retrospect, was it sensible?

Alan Yentob: If it was intimidating, I regret it  put it that way, yes.

Chair: I think that is a good thing to have put on the record.

 

Q148   Paul Flynn: Can I just say that I thought your answer was probably inadvertently misleading?

Alan Yentob: I didn’t mean—

Paul Flynn: The whole point I was making is don’t you think that you are standing there as one of the most senior people in the BBC, you have a producer that is junior to you there, you have somebody interviewing within sight of what you are doing; of course, they would be inhibited in what they say with you peering over them?

Alan Yentob: I did ask—

Paul Flynn: That is a pressure and it is quite inappropriate.

 

 

Q239   Paul Flynn: I have a very brief question that could be answered with a single word: Mrs Joan Woolard, who is a 77 year-old widow, sold her home, so The Spectator reported, and gave the proceeds of £100,000 to the charity. After volunteering at the charity, she became disillusioned and asked for her money back. Has it been returned?

Alan Yentob: No. Can I answer that question? Very glad you asked that question. I could show you e-mails and abusive limericks sent by that lady; I could also show you the Charity Commission’s review of the costings and the challenge that she made, which unequivocally say that it is untrue. The Sunday Timeswere brought in, the deputy editor and the chief financial officer, to come and look at the books and the receipts and see what was done. They have sent a letter, which I can send you, which says, “We unequivocally do not see any evidence that this is true and as a consequence of that—”

 

Q240   Paul Flynn: It is not true that she made a contribution?

Alan Yentob: It is true she made a contribution. She is quite fragile and we understand and are rather sympathetic, but the abusive limericks that followed; the fact that she was saying she was not thanked when we have seen all the thank yous; the fact that this money was spent on the children and that has been authenticated, that is the kind of thing we have to put up with.

Chair: Hold on a minute—

Camila Batmanghelidjh: The Joan Woolard story was not true.

 

Q241   Paul Flynn: Again, it is a yes or no.

Camila Batmanghelidjh: It was not true.

Paul Flynn: She gave a sum of money, then she asked for it to be returned. Have you returned it?

Alan Yentob: No.

Camila Batmanghelidjh: I need to answer that question. Joan Woolard gave a donation. We behaved entirely appropriately in relation to that donation. The Charity Commission confirmed that. The Charity Commission advised us not to return her money and we followed all the instructions that the Charity Commission gave us all along, because the story that was written in The Spectator was entirely untrue. We went to The Spectator to present the evidence that Joan Woolard had been thanked numerously, that she had had a whole page in our newsletter thanking her, that every receipt and expenditure was accounted for, ands she had a full report submitted to her. We did everything absolutely correctly in relation to Joan Woolard, and when we presented the evidence to The Spectator, they did not want to print the correction.

 

Q242   Chair: Does the Charity Commission know all that?

Camila Batmanghelidjh: Yes, absolutely. There are e-mails I can share with you where the Charity Commission confirm that there are no issues in relation to this case.

              Chair: Just “yes” would have done.

 

Q243   Paul Flynn: This is a fragile 77 year-old lady who has come up against all the might of your organisation. Don’t you think you had a moral obligation to return it if she became disillusioned with your work?

Camila Batmanghelidjh: I am so sorry, but if we were to rely on donations that are given to us and then someone changes their mind, it would make for a very precarious contract between a charity and—

Paul Flynn: I think it is a good warning for future donors.

Camila Batmanghelidjh: That is very unfair. We behaved entirely appropriately in relation to Joan Woolard and I think you need to come and see the evidence.

 

Q244   Chair: I think we will draw the line there and we will ask the Charity Commission about the treatment of Joan Woolard and find out for ourselves.

Camila Batmanghelidjh: That would be great.

              Chair: I want to thank you both for coming in front of the Committee today. I appreciate you have both been under a great deal of stress and public scrutiny. I hope that we will draw some positive lessons from this episode.

                                        21

How did 3 PMs become infatuated by 'delusional fraudsters?'

 

Thursday 29 October 2015

 

Transport Questions

House of Commons Chamber

 

Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab):

The port of Newport is the second largest steel handling port in the United Kingdom and it is likely to suffer grievously from the current steel closures. What has the Minister done to assess the consequential job losses in transport and elsewhere as a result of the Government’s neglect of the steel industry? Will he persuade his right hon. Friend the Prime Minister to end his policy of gifting British jobs to Chinese workers?

 

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Robert Goodwill):

As the Minister with responsibility for ports, I am all too aware of their importance in getting exports out of our country and getting imports in. Yesterday I was at the port of Bristol, which is going to benefit from developments in the nuclear industry, which will be partly financed by the Chinese, and I am going to Felixstowe later today to see the developments there.

 

 

Business of the House

 

Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab):

When can we debate the convention that serving Prime Ministers are not invited to give evidence to Select Committees? There is compelling evidence now that three Prime Ministers were unwittingly but directly involved in an enterprise that cost the taxpayers many millions of pounds. Is it not important, too, that we understand why three Prime Ministers were infatuated by the delusional fraudsters of Kids Company?

 

Chris Grayling:

There are two points to make here. First, I think everyone on both sides of the House is deeply distressed to see what has become of Kids Company. That is not good news for any of us. The second point is to remember that, notwithstanding what has gone wrong in that charity, some people who volunteered for it did some very important work and believed in what they were doing, and I do not think we should decry that work. I also say to the hon. Gentleman that we have a Liaison Committee made up of some of the most senior people in this House and that Committee meets the Prime Minister and questions him each month. It is in my view precisely the vehicle the hon. Gentleman is looking for.

(NOTE: Liaison Committee is no substitute to appearing before Committee that is probing the issue. The Liaison Committee has a large Tory majority of establishment people who will not want to rock the boat.)

 

Points of Order

Chilcot Report Delays

 

Alex Salmond (Gordon) (SNP):

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. During business questions, it was announced by Sir John Chilcot by means of a letter to the Prime Minister that it will be a further seven months before the Iraq inquiry is published. That means that it will be seven years since it was established and a full 13 years since the war started. At this time of year in particular, would it have been not only in order but a mark of respect to the families of the 179 dead British servicemen if the Government had come to the House to inform us of this decision, so that we could have explored the reasons for the delay in the inquiry’s publication and the possible legal consequences for certain individuals if the inquiry were to allocate responsibility for that illegal conflict?

Mr Speaker:

Perhaps I can call the Leader of the House first. I should say that I am not aware of exactly when the letter was sent or received, but I have long been aware that this is a matter of great interest and concern to Members across the House. The whole situation is extremely unsatisfactory, and if the Leader of the House would like to come to the Dispatch Box, we would be pleased to hear from him.

 

Paul Flynn:

Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. The Committee that set up the Chilcot inquiry was the old Public Administration Committee under Tony Wright. At that time, there were misgivings about the form of the inquiry, and the suggestion was made that the inquiry should be run by Parliament directly, which would have been an entirely new form of inquiry. Would it not have been better if parliamentarians had had control of it? Furthermore, as we have had no explanation for the terrible loss of 179 lives in Iraq and for the Helmand incursion that resulted in 454 lives being lost when we believed that we would be going there without a shot being fired, can we have an assurance from Government that we will have no more talk about military interventions in the four-sided war in Syria before all those matters are reported on?

Mr Speaker:

May I say to the hon. Gentleman who has taken advantage of this opportunity to make his point, which he has done with his usual alacrity, that a statement by Government to the House on this matter would afford a real opportunity for him to make his point not by point of order to me but by question to the Leader of the House? It would perhaps be an uncontroversial observation that, had there been a parliamentary Committee looking at this matter, it would not have been possible for it to do its work more slowly even if it had made a Herculean effort to do so. I say on behalf of the House, whether or not it concerns or perturbs Sir John, that he should be aware that there is a very real sense of anger and frustration across the whole House at what seems to be a substantial disservice that has been done. Perhaps we can leave it there for now, but I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Gordon (Alex Salmond) for first raising that matter and to other hon. and right hon. Members for underlining the strength of feeling across the House.

 

Intern's view

 

Tito Morgai-Williams has been a welcome intern in my office for the past week. These are his views on the future.  

 Economic coherence has long been a weakness and criticism of the left. Why? It's mainly because we are unwilling to present and sustain our economic arguments for the case against austerity, inequality and neoliberal capitalism. And that there is more than simply criticising the status quo, we can also put forward our own powerful economic arguments in favour of 'immigration' investment, tax justice and banker-bashing (not literally of course). The left can fight for progressive, radical and sustainable economics that deliver growth equitably. For too long, we have made the same abstract, intellectual arguments trying to appeal to the hearts of the people, but instead we may find more favour appealing to their pockets. 

The narrative that 'fiscal responsibility', 'deficit reduction' and 'economic pragmatism' is the sole territory of the Right, has been proven by 5 years of failed fiscal austerity to be lunacy. It's under the Tories that Britain has financially stagnated, the evidence is all around us manifested in the housing crisis, the doubling of the national debt to £1.5 trillion under Osborne and an unsustainable regional, environmental and socio-economic policy on inequality. The Rotten Right are far more of a threat to the economy than any Loony Lefties.

The refugee crisis is no longer making headlines but remains just as tragic as ever. Thankfully, a surge of donations, community organisation and support for refugees across Europe has come to the fore but even this welcome has worn thin. The refugee crisis has tested our humanity; when children are washing up on Turkish beaches, we have a profound moral dilemma. Though Europe itself had a crucial role in causing regional instability through aggressive, militaristic involvement and the emergence of fundamentalist groups like I.S, Shiite militias and the various belligerents of the Syrian/Iraqi war zone; the actual practical response beyond sympathetic statements is disunited and disappointing. Britain is still only committed to taking 20,000 over the next 5 years. Various European governments have expressed a xenophobic resistance to very idea of taking victims of oppression, decrying the infiltration of Muslims into 'Christian Europe'. It's a disgusting thing that the 'free world', home to economic opportunity, democracy and tolerance, is refusing to offer a hand.

However, even through the discord of Europe, it is testament to Merkel's political sagacity that Germany has committed to accepting up to 1.5 million refugees in the next year. Few northern European nations could escape the political ramifications of such an action and indeed 66% of Germans now oppose more refugees, she has taken a temporary blow of suspending the Schengen zone to impose border controls but has benefited so much more from the influx of young, mass labour to boost German productivity. Cameron should take tips in economic competence and needs to realise the stupidity of hostility to both the economic migrants and refugees who contribute so much to the economy through entrepreneurship, taxation and staffing our great institutions. One must question the logic of desperately encouraging foreign students in British world-class universities, then denying these skilled young people visas to settle. 

The false narrative of 'public bad, private good' has been suspended by Cameron himself fostering heightened economic relations with China in our nuclear industry. Bearing aside the hypocrisy of the Conservative party working with the Chinese Communist Party (it is undeniable that Corbyn would have been crucified for similar actions) and the obvious national security implications; it is inept for Cameron to invest £24bn in the most expensive plant in the world. And it is grotesque for the tax-payer to pay for it with gigantic subsidies lasting until 2060. Endless subsidies to unaffordable nuclear energy contrast with the 87% cut in subsidies to wind and solar businesses. Ridiculously, the Right is using Chinese investment as a 'magic money tree' when it is widely acknowledged that genuine economic growth and energy needs could be satisfied with strategic deficit spending at this most opportune of times with low interest rates.

Any chance of economic sanity emerging from the Conservative party is unlikely at best, having crippled their claim to fiscal responsibility with a 'fiscal charter' disparaged by economists across the board. A perpetual budget surplus is not only committing to over-taxation, it is also committing to financial suicide for the state investment in the productive sector, infrastructure projects and any hope of Britain being a vanguard in research and technology. It is this reason that our prime minister has allowed our remaining steel manufacturing base to collapse with Redcar as the prime example. The talk of a Northern Powerhouse is rhetorical fantasy while the government stifles domestic industrial development with a carbon tax; simply encourages the importation of raw materials with the obvious consequence of further pollution. In addition to ridiculous energy and housing prices, government action, or rather, inaction is driving business over the edge. It seems incomprehensible that any government would reject the pragmatism of borrowing to invest strategically to stimulate economic growth in the long-term and it is very important that the left maintains credibility on this matter.

The left must not oppose austerity for austerity's sake, it must not be anti capitalist/business/markets/civilisation/humanity'. A left platform can be so much more. We must campaign for a co-operative, sharing economy with investment in high-skilled, renewable, technological advancement. This means a rejection of the same-old socialist dogma of tax and spend, continual borrowing and centrally controlled economics. We must dream bigger, and take inspiration for the modern economic thinkers of Paul Mason, Marianna Mazzucato and Paul Krugman; utilising a 'strategic state' to invest and deliver high-wage jobs in the industries of tomorrow, through a decentralised socialisation of the economy to trusts, co-operatives and local authorities and through a universal basic income, freeing individuals to be creative, inventive and entrepreneurial.

The future is post-capitalist, that is undeniable. The seeds of collaborative, digital, productive economics are in the left, and definitely not within the arbitrary and financially destructive limits of fiscal austerity. To truly engage with the 21st century, we need a political economic narrative, one that rejects traditional socialist and right-wing arguments and embraces futurism for sustainable and powerful economic growth.

 Tito Morgai-Williams

EDM - Duty of Head of State

 

This House recalls that the prime duty of the Head of State is to intervene when Prime Ministers act in their own interest contrary to the interests of the country; believes that appointing an excessive number of peers to gain a political advantage would be an abuse that should be blocked by the monarch.

 

 

Prophetic words of late David Taylor MP on PFI

    PFI denounced as a rip-off in today's Independent. The  late David Taylor MP made this speech in 2001. I quote it at full length because David said it was the speech that he would like to be judged by in the year 2020. It is the essence of all his talents: witty, prophetic, authoritative and delivered with engaging, relaxed, persuasive aplomb. Many parliamentary speeches rely on briefing from outside specialists. Every word in this speech is original David Taylor.

In the world of politics that now demands sound bites and pithy questions, David excelled. But he also had the depth of serious purpose that enabled him to make a speech that had all the characteristics which have been admired for centuries in Parliament. No media will now report more than a sentence or two on a speech of this length. But this one had a profound effect on those who heard it in the Chamber or on television. Time has been kind to his views. In 2001 they were unfashion- able in the shallow hollow world of New Labour and cowardly Conservatism. This speech brilliantly demon- strated that the emperors Blair and Brown had no clothes. Their canards have been found wanting by all independent commentators.

As a public-sector accountant I must confess dismay and astonishment at the readiness of my government to prod and coerce public agencies down the PFI and public-private partnership route using a rationale that is frequently dubious, shot through with subjectiv- ity and based on figures of doubtful authenticity to demonstrate the desirability of projects that, in the medium term, are costly, inflexible and will depress the quality of public services, accelerate privatisation and divert taxpayers’ hard-earned cash into the pockets of multinational companies that view the ethos of public service and the existence of the public sector only as a barrier to trade and an obstacle to profit.

CloCkwinder who wouldn’t Say no

'One of the most persistent myths is that PFI somehow squares the circle of bringing in new money while reducing the need for scarce public finance that otherwise could not be afforded. That is financial illit- eracy raised to an art form. Every penny raised for PFI schools, hospitals and the prisons to which tomorrow’s electorates will no doubt commit today’s responsible ministers is paid for by the public purse, plus interest, plus profits. Stretching over half a century, in some cases, PFI does not lever in private finance; it merely allows private shareholders to dip their large ladles into an increasing stream of tax revenue.

Independent research shows quite unambiguously that the government could have paid for the whole programme of PFI projects without breaching the sustainable and golden fiscal rules articulated by the Chancellor. The Major government lost control of public borrowing. In a frenzy of creative accounting, they conceived public-private partnerships and invol- untarily bequeathed that poisoned chalice to Labour on 1 May 1997.

It is sadness that the government has been so seduced by the flawed and feeble justification for this abandon- ment of prudence that they have conveyed the firm impression that PFI is the only show in town. Local government and health authorities have trudged down this rocky path with increasingly heavy hearts and increasingly lighter purses.

On value for money, PFI projects cost much more than conventionally funded projects, not least becausethe private sector borrows at higher rates than the public sector, which is underpinned by the lowest-risk borrower of all: the government. The extra costs are boosted by lengthy negotiations with expensive City lawyers, consultants and fine wines employed by both sides. The escalation of costs is accelerated, notwith- standing the low risks, by the large returns demanded and the ballooning of scale.

The Birmingham schools PFI is a good example. It started in 1996 at £20 million for eight schools and presently stands at £80 million for thirteen schools. The higher levels of finance unsurprisingly lead to an afford- ability problem for the client authority, which often responds by reducing service and capacity, drives down labour rates and drains subsidies from other budget heads to bridge the PFI gap. PFI hospitals are another example. They have worse staffing levels and, typically, 30 per cent fewer beds.

At the heart of the judgement as to whether PFI provides better value for money than its public-sector comparator is the allocation of risks between the public client and the private deliverer. At this point we enter the seedy world of accountancy massage parlours, where figures are pummelled and distorted into unre- alistic shapes. Research shows that calculations of risk are arbitrary and unreliable; what a surprise. A specific example is that the average cost overrun for National Health Service capital projects in the 1990s of 7 per cent can be almost doubled in typical transferred risk calculations to upwards of 12.5 per cent. No wonder that the first PFI hospital at Dartford failed to make projected savings.

Despite frequent assertions by front-benchers of both main parties, there is little or no evidence that private-sector management, with its hallowed status as a third-way icon, is more efficient at delivering quality services than workers in the public sector.

There is insufficient time to examine the litany of failures. Three will suffice: the fiasco at the Passport Agency, when Siemens paid only £2 million of the £13 million bill; Andersen Consulting’s national-insurance recording system, which needed to provide £35 million compensation to pensioners; and PFI’s own big daddy – the channel-tunnel rail link, bailed out by a govern- ment-bond guarantee that, at a stroke, took back the project’s risks.

The belief in the natural superiority of the more creative, innovative and risk-taking private firm over the poor old public authority is seriously flawed. In practice, the private sector relies on the expertise of public-sector professionals to run their newly acquired services. It shies away from too-intensive competition, through takeovers and mergers that have led to a hand- ful of mega-multinationals dominating the sector. Such touching faith in private management flies at the speed of sound into the face of the evidence experienced on a daily basis by those who must endure some contracted- out services in the public sector. Most notoriously, Britain’s filthiest hospitals are cleaned, if that is the right word, by private contractors.

My party and my leader seem to take it as read that innovation and the efficiencies of the private sector can be straightforwardly harnessed to deliver public health priorities and goals. However, the fragmentation caused by the PFI approach will divert resources and miss more goals than a Chris Waddle penalty. A key component shoring up the whole PFI edifice is the lowered pay and conditions of staff engaged. High-quality public services need high-quality employment and although transferred staff receives some protection, new ones tend to have poorer pay, weaker conditions and little in the way of occupational pensions. Women, the crucial and under-valued resource in the public services, take the biggest hit. As PFI contracts last for decades, the original tier of staff is steadily replaced by an entire class of women working under weakened conditions and terms. PFI depends on the exploitation of staff. There is a strong link between poor employment practices and poor quality services.

The government state that value for money is the sole issue when PFI projects are assessed against the cost of traditional procurement. That appraisal is heavily shaped by the discounting of future cash flows at 6 per cent. Payments from taxpayers for the capital elements of PFI schemes are typically made later than is the case under conventional procurement. The higher the discount rate used, the better value the PFI project will look in comparison with the public-sector option. Such discounting to a net present cost is flawed in two key ways. First, it does not acknowledge that public-sector purchasing now tends to spread costs over time through borrowing, and the formulaic approach tends to assume a clumping of expenditure in the early years of public sector projects.

Secondly, the real costs of public borrowing have reduced and the arbitrary 6 per cent discount rate used by the Treasury can no longer be justified. Reducing the rate to 5 per cent would make a typical PFI project in this cost area 5 per cent more expensive over its life- time than its public-sector comparator. That difference is enough to level the spreadsheet in favour of public purchasing for a raft of projects that have been forced down the PFI route. This is not some arcane discussion between sad accountants who should get out more; it really does matter.

In the brave new PFI world, it is not clear that the government have sufficiently strong and flexible mecha- nisms to guarantee the probity of public expenditure. Politically, PFI and the wider use of public-private partnerships (PPP) restrict the operational terrain for politicians and inhibit our ability to make a difference. Services are supplied increasingly by private bodies that are not accountable in any way that people can recog- nise. That may lead to a lack of responsiveness by service providers to users, a blame culture between different public bodies and widespread electoral disenchantment.

In responding to today’s debate the minister and the government may be tempted to pray in aid the recent publication from the Institute for Public Policy Research entitled ‘Building Better Partnerships’. Even that stacked commission felt moved to say that the link between private provision of public services and cost-cutting would have to end, and that partnership should not be seen as privatisation by stealth. It, too, asked that PFI proposals be subjected to a sensitivity analysis to examine whether different assumptions on risk allocation would lead to different value for money conclusions. Even that commission comprehensively demolished the fatuous theory, so frequently articulated in this place by people who should know better, that PFI allows governments to undertake more projects than would otherwise be the case. It does not, cannot and never will.

Sponsors of the commission can in no way be described as politically neutral; they have a direct inter- est in the expansion of the PFI market and in tapping into public funds for education and health. They have been quick to recognise the possibility of positioning themselves to benefit from the dismantling of the barri- ers that previously protected the public sector from the warm embrace of private firms.

As the Catalyst Trust said, the IPPR makes the case for extending PFI by setting aside or downplaying the fact that almost all analysis of the potential of PPP acknowl- edges the inability to improve efficiency, concentrating instead on the benefits of alleged risk transfer.

The methodology used does not take into account the additional risk presented by outsourcing services when the most vulnerable people in our society are the ones who will suffer most if essential services falter or fail and, to quote the intellectual mother of PFI, ‘there is no alternative’. Even when risk has been transferred, it has frequently proved impossible to enforce that contract in a practical way. PFI apologists will say that these are just teething problems. My view is that the private sector seems to talk up the risks in contract negotiations but talk them down when raising capital finance from the market.

‘Does it matter whether public services are delivered by the private sector?’ say the commission, the official position and some of those at the heart of government. Of course it matters. The public sector’s motivation is social responsibility, while commercial firms have a responsibility to their owners and shareholders, with obligations to clients and customers some way behind. In countries such as Australia and the United States of America in which health privatisation – by PFI and other means – is further advanced, evidence strongly points towards poorer services with a lower quality of care, more bureaucracy and more inappropriate and less effective treatment. In short, services are down to a price, not up to a standard.

Our party should be the last to stand aside when the necessary modernisation of public services on which millions of our people depend is accompanied by the unnecessary collateral damage inflicted by the PFI: the inflexibility and rigidity of service provision, reduced access, decreased diversity and, ultimately, the failure to meet public need.

We should resist the PFI-inspired erosion of the foundations of our public services that usher in the expansion of user charges and show the door to the principle of the public funding of services that are free at the point of delivery.

The British Medical Association is concerned that the planning of PFI hospitals presumes increased output because of reduced bed numbers, with attendant impli- cations for clinical services in the hospital as well as for primary care and social services in the community that do not have provision in the contracts. The BMA also points out that an implicit assumption of long-term contracts is that there will be a continued demand for the services of a particular hospital. That pre-empts revenue decisions to be made by local health authorities and primary care trusts for the foreseeable future.

Naturally, the BMA points out that PFI funding is effectively hypothecated and forces resource constraints to focus on staffing. That may lead to unplanned changes in work force configuration. The non-NHS owners of PFI hospitals will employ former NHS staff, but there has not been guidance to back up the welcome assurance from the top of our party that clinical staff will remain in the NHS. I am unconvinced that that is possible in a PFI context.

In the recent election campaign we were told by the electorate to invest or lose. In yesterday’s speech, the Prime Minister told us to reform or bust. Today, we should robustly say that public provision, not privatisa- tion, is the way ahead.

It may be clear that I am opposed to the PFI on accounting, economic, social and political grounds. I remain convinced that public finance and provision remain the most effective, efficient and equitable way in which to modernise our hospitals, schools and other public services. The route that we are pursuing will take us more steeply into a private-sector swamp that is populated by those who set the price of everything but who rate the value of public services as low.

A former Prime Minister criticised a later admin- istration for selling off the family silver. We run the risk of a house clearance of that on which our national family depends. When my children ask me in 2020 – if I am still alive – what I did in Parliament to prevent the disaster of the PFI that will, no doubt, beset them at that time, I shall point to the text of this debate and, I hope, future debates. The PFI is prohibitive in cost, flawed in concept and intolerable in consequences for the taxpayers, citizens and workers who put us in this place and look to us to defend their interests. '

 

 

Not one paragraph of Paul Boateng’s ‘answer’ to the debate mentioned David’s powerful arguments. 

Cynical sprat to catch lucrative mackeral

Business Questions 

22nd October 2015

 

Today I questioned the Leader of the House and had a rare moment of bipartisan consensus with Conservative MP Bernard Jenkin.

 

Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab):

When can we debate early-day motion 599?

[That this House judges the Chinese investment in Hinkley Point C to be an act of desperation to rescue the failed EPR design after all prudent investors, including Centrica, have fled; is appalled by catastrophic delays and financial losses at all other EPR reactors; notes that Flamanville is six years late and costs had tripled to 10.5 billion euros and the Finnish EPR is seven years late and four billion euros over budget; and believes gifting China with unparalleled rights over UK nuclear development will seriously debilitate the UK’s future economy.]

It deals with the disastrous record of EPR nuclear reactors, none of which works. One is six years late, the other seven years late; one €4 billion over budget and the other €10 billion over budget. As all the sensible investors have fled from the Hinkley Point future disaster, should not Chinese investment be judged for what it is—a cynical sprat to catch the mackerel of control in perpetuity of the British nuclear industry, which will greatly debilitate the future economy and rob us of future jobs?

Chris Grayling:

No, I do not believe that to be the case. The first thing to say, of course, is that this project is being led by the French. Let me remind the hon. Gentleman that one reason why we do not have a nuclear power station building capability in this country is that, under last Labour Government, Gordon Brown sold it.

 

 

Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con):

When are the Government likely to provide time for a debate about the consequences of the agreements made with the Chinese Government this week concerning nuclear power, which are clearly very significant? Not only is the possibility of a new power station at Bradwell, overlooking my constituency, likely to have very detrimental effects on the marine ecology of the Blackwater estuary, but the ownership, construction and control of our critical national infrastructure appears not to have been fully considered by the National Security Council, and no proper assessment has been made of the consequences of these very significant decisions for our national security.

Chris Grayling:

I will make sure that my hon. Friend’s concerns are raised with Ministers. There will be a number of opportunities for these matters to be raised at oral questions and, should he so choose, in debates on upcoming Bills. Clearly, the issue could be looked at in some of the discussions on Treasury matters coming up in the next few days. I will make sure that his concerns are raised and give careful consideration to what he has said.

 

 

Following the vote on the Psychoactive Substances Bill this week, I put down the following EDM:

 

Legal Highs 

This House believes the Legal Highs Bill is an evidence-free and prejudice-rich example of legislative futility that will increase the deaths and use of drugs it seeks to reduce; notes that the bill’s sponsors ignore the outcomes of similar laws in Ireland and Poland that have increased drugs use and encouraged migration to cocaine and heroin use; believes that legal highs are uniquely lethal compounds that have never been ingested in the past by humankind and emphasizes that when no obvious legislative remedies are available legislators should resist knee-jerk laws that are gratifying to politicians but damaging to the health and well-being of the nation.

 

 

'Single weirdest event in parliamentary history'

Pressure is mounting on Alan Yentob. Yesterday a senior BBC figure questioned his impartiality and a grieving mother accused him of using her dead son as a 'political pawn'.

I have received a letter of outrage from the 77 year old lady who regretted handing over the proceeds of her house sale to KidsCo and now, dis-illusioned, wants it returned. She had volunteered in the charity's main centre to check on how her generous gift was being spent. She has eloquently denounced the claims of KidsCo in providing services to vast numbers of children as baseless. She was struck by the lack of children being helped. Alan Yentob angrily criticised the lady who had sent him ' abusive limericks!'. Tough on poetry and the causes of poetry. Having read the lady's five page account of her motives in generously contributing her life's savings to a charity and then been wretchedly dis-illusioned, my sympathies are with her. There is a moral obligation on the charity to return her money from the wreckage of their finances.

In answer to a question of mine on Thursday on his possible conflict of interest he said, 'if you know how the BBC works' (paraphrase) you would not have accused me of that. I do know how the BBC works. For five years I served on the Governing body of the BBC in Wales. That included sitting on boards that selected senior people for jobs. I thoroughly understand the pressure on junior staff to impress senior executives.  

When Alan Yentob rang the BBC asking for an interview to be delayed and when he stood in the Producers Box peering at an interview with Camila, his influence on inhibiting staff was palpable. Of course interviewers and producers would be intimidated by the looming presence and baleful stares of their top boss. He should not have mixed his two roles. He has damaged the reputation of the BBC.

He should resign.

 

 

 

 

 

 

He looked like a pudding waiter sitting next to a bowl of fruit salad: QUENTIN LETTS sees Kids Company charity boss and her cheerleader Alan Yentob face MPs

Everything about Camila Batmanghelidjh is such a mad muddle – her name, dress-sense, logic, grasp of detail – that you wonder how a supposed intellectual such as Alan Yentob fell for her.

Perhaps he mistook her for something from one of those Commonwealth novels on the Booker Prize shortlist. Perhaps his patronising egalitarianism just found her too yummily multi-cultural to resist.

She arrived at Parliament yesterday wrapped in textiles of 100 colours: yellows, pinks, scarlets, greens, indigos, and more tartan that they use in the carpets at Balmoral. She’s as tall and wide as a heavyweight wrestler, with Ronnie Barker spectacles and a Robbie Coltrane chin. Her accent is what a chef might call fusion: West Country by way of Tehran, Brick Lane and the Caribbean.

Plain-suited Mr Yentob, shrivelling beside this vivid creature, could have been a junior pudding waiter next to an urn of fruit salad.

Scarlet-painted talons protruded from plaid-patterned, tipless gloves. Her multi-coloured turban rose towards the ceiling, high as a Victorian’s stovepipe hat. On her vast frontage she wore a rosette that would have put Cruft’s to shame. Her outfit was completed by cherry-coloured training shoes and earrings as long as lavatory chains.

 ‘I think you can see she is an unconventional chief executive,’ whimpered Mr Yentob.

As she swept into the room where she and little Yentob were to be questioned by the Public Administration Select Committee, she was very much The Presence. A crowd had gathered and the parliamentary authorities were twitchy. Miss Batmanghelidjh beamed. Mr Yentob should have been her senior partner but he more closely resembled her punkhawallah.

 The committee, chaired by polite Bernard Jenkin (Con, Harwich and N Essex), wanted to know about the demise of Kids Company, a partly state-funded charity run by Miss B under Mr Yentob’s supposed supervision. MPs wanted to know: Were unruly teenagers given thousands of pounds in cash? Was some of that money spent on drugs? Did Mr Yentob lean on junior BBC staff to report the charity’s problems in a favourable manner?

Miss Batmanghelidjh, with a fixed smile, pitied MPs for their ignorance. She attacked the media. She burbled about what terrible suffering she, the great mother duck, had tried to heal. She barged past MPs’ questions, steamrollering them with her insistence. Mr Yentob sighed. He thought about trying to restrain her but often gave up.

Thanks to Mr Jenkin we learned that she had no medical or professional qualifications. It may seem bizarre that such a self-appointed figure became the must-have item in the salons of political London but that is to underestimate the currency of fashion, over which a figure such as Mr Yentob – the great cultural commissar luvvie of our state broadcaster! – held such sway.

Did she play them for fools? How easily they capitulated.

Mr Yentob said he was ‘immensely proud’ of Kids Company but the lack of clarity in his and Miss B’s replies left the MPs openly derisive. It was not at all clear how many teenagers they helped. Rigorous regulatory checks seem to have been absent.

Paul Flynn (Lab, Newport W) accused Miss Batmanghelidjh of spouting ‘psychobabble, this torrent of words, verbal ectoplasm’. It reached the point that when she offered to speak, MPs cried, ‘Nooooo!’ Mr Jenkin demanded, ‘Order!!’ Miss Batmanghelidjh told him off for shouting.

As for the hapless Yentob, what a mediocre, credulous figure he cut. Mr Jenkin pointed out that charity trustees were under a duty to resist ‘dominant personalities’. Miss Batmanghelidjh, listening to this, grinned. Mr Yentob looked down at his papers and trembled.

Here, supposedly, is one of our leading art critics, his whole reputation built on discernment. How can he have been so naive?

He plainly behaved disgracefully when trying to push BBC staff around. The only thing that can be said for his continued employment by the Corporation is that it is not the most extraordinary part of this most modern of cautionary fables.

Quentin Letts Daily Mail

 

Alan Yentob’s day of embarrassment over Kids Company... from £150 shoes to ‘abusive limericks’

 

Camila Batmanghelidjh – the former CEO of Kids Company – stiffened. This time, Bernard Jenkin had gone too far.

“On what basis,” she inquired haughtily, “have you decided that this was a ‘failing’ charity?”

The Conservative MP for Harwich & N Essex met her glare equably.

“It’s gone bust,” he said.

 

Today’s meeting of the public administration select committee has a reasonable claim to being the single weirdest event in recent parliamentary history. This was three solid hours of bewildering excuses, recriminations and non sequiturs.

At one point, Alan Yentob – chairman of Kids Company’s trustees, as well as a senior BBC executive – accused a 75-year-old widow of plaguing him with “abusive limericks”. Sadly he didn’t recite them. Perhaps he’s saving that for an episode of Imagine.

In August, the children’s charity Kids Company was dissolved following a loss of funding, claims of financial mismanagement, and allegations of sexual abuse. This morning, MPs interrogated Ms Batmanghelidjh and Mr Yentob.

It was chaos from the start. The kaleidoscopically flamboyant Ms Batmanghelidjh – looking more than ever like a pile of Aladdin’s laundry – seemed incapable of giving a straight answer. Paul Flynn (Lab, Newport West) snapped that her replies were “verbal ectoplasm”. Mr Jenkin asked whether it was true that Kids Company routinely handed teenagers cash in brown envelopes. In the space of six seconds, Ms Batmanghelidjh said this was “a myth” and “not a myth”.

She claimed Kids Company had been “intensely inspected”, but proved unable to recall when its last inspection took place. Kate Hoey (Lab, Vauxhall) asked about a £580,000 tax bill. Ms Batmanghelidjh replied that the money had been “conceptualised”.

 

Mr Flynn asked how spending £150 of the charity’s funds on a pair of shoes was supposed to help ease a client’s mental health problems. Ms Batmanghelidjh said the “structure of that question” was “immensely disrespectful”, and anyway, the mentally ill needed shoes too. Yes, said Mr Flynn, but why did they need to cost £150? Ms Batmanghelidjh said she didn’t know where he was “getting that from” because “I don’t have any records”.

For some reason Mr Yentob kept putting his head in his hands. Perhaps he was just thinking deeply. Several times Ms Batmanghelidjh tried to place a reassuring hand on his arm. He would either ignore it, or move. Repeatedly she attempted to answer questions on his behalf; he, as calmly as he could, declined her assistance. MPs told her to be quiet. “I could be helpful!” trilled Ms Batmanghelidjh.

Disbelievingly Mr Flynn read out a Kids Company document claiming that if it was shut down, swathes of South London would “descend into savagery”. Mr Yentob insisted that this was “not a wild exaggeration”, because there had since been stabbings and a murder. Mr Jenkin said he’d heard this was because local youths could no longer use Kids Company’s money to “pay their drug pushers”.

In August, when Ms Batmanghelidjh was interviewed on the Today programme about Kids Company’s collapse, Mr Yentob was inside the studio, looming over the producer. Had he been trying to cow his BBC underlings into going easy on her? Not at all, protested Mr Yentob: “I was just there to listen to what Camila said.”

If that was all Mr Yentob wanted, perhaps he might have considered switching on a radio.

How on earth did he get into this mess? And how on earth will he get out of it?

 

Telegraph

 

 

How it happened

New Statesman.

“There are more journalists here than in the audience,” one woman observed, entering the select committee room, where the now-bust charity Kids Company is being subjected to an inquiry.

And no wonder. Because seconds later, in walked a duo of such epically proportioned egos for which even the most masterful headline-writer would struggle to make room.

Camila Batmanghelidjh, the technicolour tartan, paisley and scarf-clad former founder and chief executive of Kids Company, and the ex-chair of trustees and divisive BBC creative director Alan Yentob, who shuffled in first, his scuffed Nike trainers withering ahead of her hot pink Crocs.

But even the promise of two such personalities was nothing on what they delivered.

They persisted in making as little sense – and as many accusations – as possible in their three hours before the Public Administration select committee’s increasingly frustrated panel of MPs.

As revelations about the charity’s beleaguered funds and other scandals continue to be uncovered, the point of this inquiry is to get to the bottom of Kids Company’s relationship with successive governments. In particular, why the Cabinet Office gave the charity an emergency £3m loan shortly before it closed, in spite of concerns raised about how it was being run.

Not that our antiheroes Batmanghelidjh and Yentrobin were going to help much with this. So fed up was committee member Paul Flynn MP with the former dancing around his questions that he accused her of “a spiel of psychobabble, a torrent of words, verbal ectoplasm”.

Where he got this from – following her simple explanations of children “secreting fright hormones”, how “all scientific research has two sides to the coin”, and that employees’ taxes that weren’t collected or refunded were “conceptualised” – is anyone’s guess.

Committee chair Bernard Jenkin found Batmanghelidjh’s decision to speak just as frustrating as the words she chose. She constantly interrupted Yentob’s answers, “can I please contribute to this question . . . I can be helpful . . . Please!”

“ORDER!” bellowed Jenkin. “I don’t know that shouting is going to get me to behave any better,” Batmanghelidjh replied, never breaking her permanent placid smile.

She insisted that the image of Kids Company giving out sums of money in envelopes to its clients was unfair. “It has turned into the notion that it was handed out willy-nilly,” she said. “It wasn’t. It was accounted for.”

But she was soon contradicted when decrying, “how this myth developed”.

“It’s not a myth though, is it?” interjected Jenkin.

“No, it’s not a myth,” she confirmed. The first of many moments of incredulous laughter from the committee room audience.

She also struggled to answer how and when the safeguarding of children was inspected. “No one wanted those,” she spluttered. “They weren't due for an inspection. Who by? Who do you want?”

Yentob didn’t fare much better. Ever a figure of luvvie-orientated mockery, he looked distinctly like he’d prefer to be back at the Beeb where nothing could hurt him.

Replying to a furious Kate Hoey – MP for Vauxhall and therefore local to Kids Company’s work in Lambeth – on whether charity staff had signed non-disclosure agreements, Yentob admitted two of them had, “just as we do in the BBC when people leave”.

“This isn’t the BBC!” cried the panel. “Are you comparing Kids Company to the BBC?” asked Hoey. “No,” Yentob conceded, dejectedly.

His biggest giveaway was that he was “behind the glass” in the producer’s box during Batmanghelidjh’s recent interview on the BBC’s Today programme. Flynn called this an “abuse” of Yentob’s position as a senior BBC executive, and suggested he was trying to “influence the coverage”.

Yentob denied this, saying he’d only been there to “listen” to her. That's right. He had to be present to listen to a radiointerview. He added, “if it was intimidating, I regret it”, and also accepted that he “probably should have stepped down earlier” as the charity’s chair of trustees – a position he’d held since 2003. He had no time, however, for the intriguing “abusive limericks” sent to him by a disillusioned former Kids Company donor.

Batmanghelidjh made no such concessions, accusing everyone – the media, civil servants, lack of government funding – but herself and her right-hand man for Kids Company’s downfall. “I don’t like to make accusations without evidence,” she informed the committee, right after making an accusation without evidence about civil servants briefing against the charity.

The most stunning revelation, however, was wheedled out of the witnesses by the good cop MP Cheryl Gillan, who was trying to establish the relationship between the two. “So you never went out to dinner with Mr Yentob?” “No,” replied Batmanghelidjh. Not in 20 years. “Sorry,” quipped Yentob. But he didn’t look very sorry at all.

 

 

 

 

This week in Westminster

Westminster Hall

Wednesday 14 October 2015

 

 Welfare Benefit Changes

 

Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab): I will be uncharacteristically brief because of the large number of people here from whom we will hear valuable contributions. The shame of the Government Back Benchers is eloquently displayed by their total absence. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) on a splendid speech and on raising this subject.

I want to make one point, on the question of equality in society. In the orgy of self-congratulation at the Tory party conference last week, we heard a remarkable speech by the Prime Minister. Rhetoric has rarely been so far removed from reality. He talked about getting rid of inequality. We know the overwhelming importance of equality to achieving wellbeing in society. A splendid book, “The Spirit Level”, examined 23 countries to discover which are the happiest and have the highest sense of wellbeing. It was not the richest countries but those with the smallest gap between the rich and the poor—that led to satisfaction in society. The happiest countries on that basis are the Nordic countries and Japan; the two saddest countries in the world are the USA and the United Kingdom.

 

Part of that is a result of what has been happening. Of all my time in politics I would regard the golden age as the time in the late 1970s when, at the end of a period of Labour government, the measure of pay difference was striking. In 1980, the salaries of the chief executives of the main companies in the land were 25 times that of their average worker; now, they are 135 times that of the average worker. Then, if someone was unemployed their benefit was 21% of the average wage; now, it is 11%.

 

We have seen various cuts. The Thatcher Government downgraded pensions by downgrading the state earnings-related pension scheme and then encouraging the sale of 6 million personal pensions that were a fraud and a cheat, to get people out of the solidity, assurance and certainty of national schemes. We have gone backwards in our social security legislation and are seeing all these attempts to downgrade the standing of the welfare state. After the health service, the welfare state is the one great achievement of politics in the last century, yet now we are attacking that edifice with a wrecking ball. As my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East said, every change is assisting the richest in society and disadvantaging the poor.

 

There was another remarkable report last week about a fringe meeting at the Tory conference run by a group called the TaxPayers Alliance, more accurately known as the tax dodgers alliance. A man called Alex Wild urged the Government, “For goodness’ sake, cut pensioners’ benefits soon. Do it straightaway—you must do it early enough, because lots of them will be dead by the next election, and a lot of them will be gaga, so they will have forgotten whether it was Labour or the Tories who cut their benefits.” That degree of cynicism was shocking even from the Tory party. It is shocking that such things are thought, let alone said, and I hope we will get assurances from the Minister that there will be no more cynical attempts to cut benefits.

 

The Prime Minister’s entire speech last week was a wonderful illustration of the fantasy of politics; that it is not about the reality but the way it is painted and presented—that it is the spin that matters. The country is beginning to see through that with our new politics, with what has happened today and what happened as a result of that speech last week. The public want reality. They want the truth—they do not want to hear hugely elaborate and exaggerated accounts about benefits that are just not happening.

 

Our society is growing more and more unequal by the year, and that means more and more unhappiness. We should ask the Government to make sure that they bridge that gap. As T.S. Eliot said:

 

“Between the idea

And the reality…

Falls the shadow.”

An immense shadow obscures the truth of what is happening in society. We are growing into a more unequal and unhappier nation.

 

 

Capel Celyn Reservoir (50th Anniversary)

 

I made a contribution to a debate held in Parliament to mark the 50^th anniversary of the flooding of Capel Celyn.

 

Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab): I warmly congratulate the hon. Lady on reminding us of these events that took place 50 years ago. I think I am one of the few people in this debate today who has memories of it, because I was a mature politician at that time. The most remarkable figure that she has cited is that only one of Wales’s MPs supported the flooding of Capel Celyn. We had this extraordinary unanimity. Welsh MPs at that time agreed on nothing, but they came together on this issue, because it was an act that was insulting to the Welsh nation and because a language that echoed down the centuries—a 2,000-year-old language and culture—was given no power to defend itself. I hope that we have learned the lessons of Tryweryn, and its reverberations are carrying on now in our perception of ourselves as a nation and in the need to have our own independent voices.

 

House Business Committee

 

A debate was held to consider the unimplemented House Business Committee, as recommended by the Wright Reforms. The establishment of the Committee would give Parliament more control over the weekly business that Parliamentary time is used for in Westminster.

 

Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab): I congratulate my hon. Friend on raising this important subject, as he has for many years. The lesson is that all Governments and Governments-in-waiting are power retentive, with an addiction to hanging on to every scrap of power. They think that, in setting up a House Business Committee through which the House decided its own business, they would lose a minute part of their power.

Because of the Petitions Committee, earlier this week this room was filled with members of the public, who were all allowed to use their iPads to send messages, intent on a subject of their choice through petition. That is one step forward but, unfortunately, it tends to end in disappointment because no decisions are taken at the end of those petition debates.

 

Black Route need is urgent priority

 

Paul Flynn

MP Newport West / AS Gorllewin Casnewydd

House of Commons / Ty’r Cyffredin

SW1A 0AA

 

Delaying the M4 Relief Road would condemn local people to decades of traffic misery and increased pollution.

A former Chairman of Gwent County Council Transport Committee Paul Flynn MP (Newport West) said.

“The time for quibbling is over. Only the black route will provide three routes through Newport. The Blue Route means two routes only that would cram motorway traffic on to Newport’s distributor road, greatly increasing traffic jams and pollution in every part of the city.

The Metro solution is desirable and might help to a marginal extent in cutting local traffic. But it will not reduce through traffic at all and is no alternative. Now traffic jams are a daily occurrence on the motorway and small accidents create traffic chaos throughout the city. The Newport bottleneck is already deterring the developments in city and the rest of South Wales. The black route is the only answer that promises reductions in congestion and pollution for the people of Newport.

It is urgently needed”

01633 262348/ [email protected] / www. paulflynnmp.co.uk

 

Tony Lynes inaugural Lecture

Exciting day tomorrow.
I have the daunting task of giving the inaugural Memorial Lecture for the late Tony Lynes who died a year ago. He died running to retrieve a birthday card from his car to take to a friend's birthday party. He was in a collision with a car. Previously that day he took part in a five mile charity walk. Tony was 85. I have just been looking up some of the e-mails I had from him. He sent me the one below after I was expelled from the House of Commons after telling the Secretary of State for Defence that he was sending UK soldiers to die in Helmand acting as human shields for ministers' reputations.

Tony was one of the great architects of the Welfare State which peaked in the 70s and is now being pummelled by the Tory wreaking ball.

Dear Paul,

Congratulations on your expulsion. I didn't know about it until today - I don't think it was reported in the Guardian, and I'm afraid I missed it in Hansard. The Afghan mess is appalling and obscene. There's an underlying assumption that young people who join the army must expect to be killed or injured - it's part of their employment contract which they accept voluntarily and, anyway, if they die, they are promoted to the status of "heroes" - they can't ask for more than that. And, needless to say, those who fight on the wrong side deserve to be killed and don't qualify for hero status. As for civilian "casualties", they are a regrettable but inevitable consequence. After many years of doubt, I think I am now prepared to say that I'm a pacifist - I don't think war is ever the right way to solve problems or right wrongs. But even if there were cases where war is justifiable, Afghanistan would not be one of them.

I don't know anything about expulsion. How long does it last? What do you have to do to be readmitted to the sacred precincts? Are you expelled from the building or only from the chamber? What, if anything, can your friends and disciples do to help?

Best wishes,

Tony

PS It's a bit odd, isn't it, that Ministers can tell as many lies as they like without incurring any penalty, while a Member who draws attention to their use of this freedom is promptly expelled?

Tony.

 

The lecture is at 2.30 at the William Booth College SE5 8BQ