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Out of touch Lead Member for Children & Young People blames officers over nursery closure

Wednesday, 1 May 2013

The Liberal Democrat Administration in Kingston decided to close the Moor Lane Day Nursery. Following protests by parents and stinging comments from the local MP, the Liberal Democrats reviewed and reversed the decision. Surely councillors are there to listen to the local community not respond to their protests over their own short-sighted and ill-thought out decisions?

Chessington Moor Lane Day Nursery is to remain open so the Liberal Democrat administration in Kingston has decided, only a short time after they themselves had decided to close it.

Parents of young children at the Day Nursery contacted the Kingston Labour Party about the sudden decision to close the day nursery. They despaired of the Liberal Democrats in Kingston who once again proved they do not listen, look or learn, but sit in splendid isolation in the Guildhall apparently counting their allowances rather than serving their communities.

At least Edward Davey MP had the good grace to castigate the stupidity of his Liberal Democrat peers who “run” the Council. What else could he say? He is a Cabinet Minister in a government which is telling parents they should be out working and which is carefully reducing the benefits for non-working mothers in low paid or non-working families to encourage what it calls “shirkers”. It does not take a genius to work out that if you have young children and want to work, you need good pre-school care.

One of the many Labour legacies was the huge expansion in pre-school care and the child care credits for poorer families. Now we have a Tory – Liberal Democrat government and a Liberal Democrat council trying to dismantle this legacy.

And what do the Liberal Democrat councillors say? Once again they say that it’s the fault of the officers and that they are blameless.Once again they refuse to take responsibility for their decisions.

Again the Lead Member for Children and Young People shows she has no grip on what is happening. Apparently on such an important service she does not bother to look, listen and learn for herself. She has an allowance to enable her to do this. What is the point if she does not use it to keep in touch with the community she supposedly serves? In an earlier blog we saw how her own colleagues cannot support her, so how long are Kingston residents going to have to put up with this ineptitude? For goodness sake – GO.

What a totally out of touch shambles of an administration the Liberal Democrats in Kingston are proving to be!

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Jim Mortimer 1921 – 2013: a socialist gentleman

Saturday, 27 April 2013

Jim Mortimer died on 23rd April. Here an appreciation and brief  biography of Jim which shows why his contribution to the Labour movement has been so important.

Many will know Jim as that wonderful polite gentleman – in all senses of the word – who listened intently to any debate, discussion or speaker at the monthly constituency meetings and evaluated the proceedings against the ingrained socialist values that formed the core of his intellect and passion. Whenever he intervened, uttering those words “Mr Chairman” in a voice that had the sweetness, clarity and strength of sugared almonds – the red ones -, everyone just listened: there was no other conceivable option to the magic of that voice. In the precision of his words, and he had a mastery of language, there was just the faintest Yorkshire burr which betokened his upbringing. But the gentleness, reason and passion of his arguments, based on some harsh experiences, always provided the most compelling backdrop to collective thinking.

Jim’s early years were in Bradford during the depression where his mother was a cotton-mill worker and his father a corner-street paper salesman. The family moved to Portsmouth and Jim became an apprentice in the dockyards. He was awarded a scholarship by the TUC at the end of the war to study at Ruskin College, that inimitable mould which gave the opportunity for so many working-class minds to become intellectual movers and shakers. He worked at the TUC before becoming a noted officer at the Draughtsmen’s and Allied Technicians’ Association.

Jim was, in fact, suspended from the Labour Party because of his membership of a communist friendship organisation. However he was back in the Party by the 60s and influential in the trade union movement in the days of union giants like George Woodcock, general secretary of a then powerful TUC. Barbara Castle recruited Jim to the Prices and Incomes Board through which she was trying to implement trade union reform. During the Heath government Jim was a board member of the London Transport Executive until the ‘74 Labour government, when Michael Foot invited him to become the first chairman of ACAS. In 1982 when Michael Foot became leader of the Party, Jim became its general secretary. It is difficult to describe some of the vitriol and contempt that emanated from the media towards Michael Foot at that time. For Jim, as general-secretary, the strain must have been immense. Jim retired in 1985 because, it is strongly rumoured, he disagreed with the ideas that Neil Kinnock, the new leader, was seeking to introduce.

Jim was anything but quiet after formal retirement. He taught at several universities and wrote a wide range of books and articles. Not least he was a constituency member in Kingston and Surbiton.

Our sympathies go out to Jim’s children and particularly to his wife Pat, herself an active and valued member of Kingston and Surbiton Labour Party.

Jim, we will miss the inspiration of your socialism and your trade unionism.

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The Debate Calling for the Resignation of the Lead Member and the Leader at the Council Meeting on 16th April 2013

Wednesday, 17 April 2013

You can wait for the full minutes to be published but here is our take of what happened at the Tory initiated debate calling for the resignation of the Lead Member and Leader on 16th April 2013

At the full Council on 16th April 2013 the Tories put up the following motion:

Whilst supporting the programme in place to improve children’s safeguarding led by the independently chaired Improvement Board, the Council takes into account the contents of the Serious Case Review, published February 2013, and concludes that the Lead Member for Children and Young People does not possess the ability to oversee or the understanding to challenge and should resign her position.

The Leader of the Council has not fulfilled his responsibility to ensure that overall partnership working is effective and should also resign.

A deputation from Kingston Labour Party spoke before the discussion of the motion, and the statement has already been published on this website. After the Labour Party statement there were no questions on the statement or the 35 questions from the Liberal Democrats in the ten minutes allotted for councillors to raise questions with the deputation. They just sat in silence.

A number of Tory members spoke and some of the speeches were stark and direct in their criticism of the Lead Member for Children and Young People’s Services, Councillor Bamford. There was less criticism directed at the Leader, Councillor Osbourne. It would have made more sense if the motion had simply called for the resignation of Councillor Bamford.

From the Liberal Democrat side there was only one speech, and that came from the Leader, Councillor Osbourne. Most of his speech was directed at the statement made by the deputation from Kingston Labour Party. At least he complimented Alex on his tweeting (da da da da da da da da Tweetman! see @KBLabour). We note the Liberal Democrat tweet machine carefully ignored the main item on the Council agenda, this debate.

Councillor Osbourne, however, failed to answer any of the 35 Labour Party questions that had been submitted in advance, and accused Kingston Labour Party of “dwelling on the past”. He admitted that there had been failings “in the past” but he was going to take responsibility by staying as leader. He went on to accuse the teachers who had spoken at the Scrutiny Panel of lying.

At no time did he express any confidence in the Lead Member for Children and Young People’s Services. In fact his speech totally ignored her. Not one Liberal Democrat spoke so all the accusations from the Tories that Councillor Bamford was not up to the job were accepted by the Liberal Democrats in silence. Councillor Bamford did not even try to defend herself At the end of the Council none of the Liberal Democrats appeared to give any support to Councillor Bamford.

Now call us old-fashioned, but the Liberal Democrats are clearly showing all the team spirit and support for each other that you might expect from a bag of Brussel sprouts left on the counter of a super-market check-out. Councillor Bamford must be feeling very isolated and very sore at her “colleagues”.

After the meeting Councillor Osbourne did come and speak to the Labour Party deputation and re-iterated the plea that we “move on” – i.e. please stop asking awkward questions. He did say that he would provide answers to the 35 questions, though why he did not say that in Council we cannot tell. He certainly did not say there would be a full report that would be open to public scrutiny.

It seems to us that even the Liberal Democrats have, like the Labour Party, little faith that the necessary changes in policy and procedure can be implemented under the current Lead Member. How many days or hours must pass before failings become “dwelling in the past” can only be the subject of philosophical discourse. At the moment the failings are very current because no one has confidence that the full story has been told or that effective change is taking place in children’s safeguarding policies and procedures. Local democracy is ill-served served by trying to consign the present to the past.

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Statement made by deputation from the Kingston Labour Party to the full Council on 16th April 2013 in respect to Children’s Safeguarding in Kingston

Wednesday, 17 April 2013

On 16th April 2013 the Tory councillors on Kingston Council moved the motion “Conservatives request resignation of Council Leader and Lead Member for Children and Young People’s Services.” This motion is connected to the on-going issue of Children’s Safeguarding in Kingston.  Kingston Labour Party requested that the Council receive a deputation from the Labour Party and the deputation be allowed to make a statement to the Council before the debate. A letter with 35 questions where there were issues or discrepancies was sent to the Council. The Council agreed to receive the deputation of Laurie South, Chris Priest, Katie Hill, Max Freedman and Alex Griffiths. It is quite unusual for full Council meetings to receive a deputation and reflects the fact that Kingston Labour has been pursuing the issue of Children’s Safeguarding.

Here is the statement that Kingston Labour Party made to the Council. Since the statement was given orally and not read, there may be slight discrepancies between this and the version of the statement recorded at the Council meeting. However it is essentially an accurate version.

The whole issue of Children’s Safeguarding has been embarrassing the Liberal Democrat administration for the last 9 months since the 2012 Ofsted Report. This alerted everyone to the fact that there was something seriously wrong in Children’s Services. The majority party kept assuring us that there was no problem, everything was being dealt with and it was all in hand. Clearly they thought it would just go away.

In those 9 months more and more revelations have come to light and the seriousness of the situation has become evident week by week as more facts were revealed. As the full picture started to become evident, numerous discrepancies started to become apparent in the stories spun by the Liberal Democrat machine in Kingston.

This has moved quite outside the sphere of political knock-about. This is about the lives and life opportunities of young people – often the most disadvantaged, impoverished and vulnerable – who rely on Kingston Council for protection. They have been let down. So this statement and this debate is not about party political manoeuvring. It is about safeguarding Kingston’s children.

In our letter to the Council we listed 35 questions where there were real issues and discrepancies. Obviously we cannot go through them here but they include:

• statements that the issues raised in the 2010 Serious Case Review (carefully kept out of the public domain) were being rectified: except the same issues were raised by Ofsted two years later:

• statements that members were obstructed in their investigations by an officer and yet the same officer was paid off handsomely and found a senior position elsewhere:

• statements that councillors were not involved in negotiating an officer pay-off that amounted to a huge sum of public money.

Madame Mayor the list goes on and on. They are there in our letter and we can document every one. They need answering either now or in a report.

We have to question the role of councillors and in particular lead members. A lead member is paid a significant allowance. It is expected that they will set the culture, aims and priorities in a department, and that they will undertake regular scrutiny to ensure their department is functioning effectively.

Just a cursory look at this sorry story shows that this was not happening. In this case there was clearly a total lack of communication, direction, prioritising, scrutiny and oversight. Unacceptable.

There has been no proper report of all the issues to our knowledge, unless there is yet another secret report to which the public has no access.

The whole woeful tale needs to be properly laid out in a report and subject to full public scrutiny.

Throughout this tragic fiasco, attempts have been made to blame the officers. I am sorry but in a local democracy we elect members – councillors – to take responsibility and to be accountable to the electorate.

If things go wrong, we expect elected members to accept responsibility. That is what democracy is for. If we blame officers what are councillors for?

In the light of these discrepancies and failures we have to say we have no confidence that things will change for the better under the present lead member.

We believe the Lead Member for Children and Young People is an honest, hard-working and conscientious person. Sad to say she has been left by her party colleagues and her party leaders, every-one of them, without a leg to stand on, to take the opprobrium, the brick-bats and the castigation.

I am sad to say she has to go – and if she leaves now, she at least retains some honour. She has to go so that local democracy can function effectively and so that new policies and processes can be implemented and scrutinised with the confidence and backing of the public of Kingston. We owe it to our children and young people.

 

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KINGSTON COUNCIL REPORTED TO INFORMATION COMMISSIONER OVER CHILDREN’S SAFEGUARDING

Sunday, 7 April 2013

This is the Press Release sent out tonight by Kingston Labour Party. Kingston Labour Party has repeatedly attempted to get information from Kingston Council under the Freedom of Information Act because the facts about Children’s Safeguarding in Kingston have never been properly revealed: the electors of Kingston deserve to know what has been happening. All they hear is evidence of more and more serious failings and a complacent comment from the Liberal Democrat administration that everything is now fine. So why is information being withheld? In exasperation the Labour Party has been forced to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner.

Immediate release

For further comment: Laurie South, Chair of Kingston and Surbiton Constituency Labour Party

Summary

Kingston Council has been reported to the Information Commissioner’s Office after key requests for information relating to Children’s Safeguarding continue to be delayed without clear cause.

Commenting, Chair of Kingston Labour Laurie South observed “Obstructing efforts to draw out information on this important matter into the public domain is yet one more example of obfuscation in the administration’s appalling record on Children’s Safeguarding.”

Kingston Council has failed to provide information relating to:

• What parameters were agreed with executive members over the removal of former head of Children’s Services in which he signed a confidentiality agreement and received a GBP 128,625 (£) payment.

• Whether training has been given to the lead member for Children’s Services Councillor Patricia Bamford, as is explicitly required by an Improvement Notice.

Full release

After the public revelations in July of last year that Kingston Council had fallen catastrophically short of the expected standard of care in Children’s Safeguarding, we have been seeking to shed light on the situation.

Kingston Labour’s sad belief is that Liberal Democrat Councillors and Conservative opposition Councillors have comprehensively failed in their duty to draw information out into the public domain and scrutinise the facts.

We have sought to rectify this failure ourselves.

This has necessitated the use of the Freedom of Information Act on a number of occasions covering a wide variety of issues from Social Worker retention rates, to management reductions.

However, key requests submitted in the first months of 2013 have now been delayed for over twice the permitted time and, despite assurances from Council staff, there is no clear sign the information will be released into the public domain.

The requests relate to the conduct of executive members in dealing with the fallout and improvements after the very poor performance of Kingston Council in the May 2012 OFSTED inspection.

Commenting, chair of the local Labour Party Laurie South said: “I hope that the lodging of complaints is enough to un-jam these unacceptable delays.

Obstructing efforts to draw information on this important matter out into the public domain is yet one more example of obfuscation in the administration’s appalling record on Children’s Safeguarding. Kingston Council seems bent on preventing the borough from moving on with improvements.

It is deeply troubling that Kingston Council would drag its feet in releasing information to how involved senior councillors were in approving the GBP 128,625 (£) settlement for the former head of Children’s Services.

But what is worst of all is the fact that Kingston Council is not releasing information relating to what training lead member for Children’s Services Patricia Bamford has undertaken. Further training is a key requirement of the Improvement Notice.

The public need to know how seriously she is taking her job to lead improvements.”

Release ends.

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