corruption | ukwatch.net

BAE case in the Lords

tim — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 19:33:54 +0000

Buried

The five senior Judges are technically a committee of the Lords so the hearing took place in a Lords’ Committee room, dominated by a huge painting of the burial of King Harold. Only the tops of the heads of the Judges (without wigs) were visible from most of the public seats as the banks of case documents formed a wall across the room. Between the Judges and the rest of us sat eleven bewigged barristers – CAAT and The Corner House had four (David Pannick QC, Philippe Sands QC, Dinah Rose QC and Ben Jaffey) and the Government five, whilst ‘interested party’ BAE, and ‘intervener’ Justice, a human rights and law reform organisation, had one apiece. All these barristers were backed by teams of solicitors. Even though the Lords’ authorities had added an extra bench, this retinue left little space in the room.

We all crammed in – CAAT and Corner House people; the Guardian‘s Rob Evans, who had done so much to expose the BAE corruption allegations, was there along with journalists from other papers, the BBC and specialist legal magazines; representatives from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, concerned that its 1997 Anti-Bribery Convention will be rendered meaningless if the Government is allowed to stop corruption inquiries as in this case, took copious notes; Peter Gardiner, the former BAE travel agent who gave evidence to the SFO looked on; and many others were present.

The arguments

The Government’s lead barrister, Jonathan Sumption QC, went first. He argued that the Director of the SFO, as an independent prosecutor, had a wide discretion as to which cases he investigated or prosecuted, he just had to act ‘reasonably’ in making his decisions. He also produced a witness statement from the Foreign Office in an attempt to show that, in contrast to what Lord Justice Moses had said in the High Court, the attention of Saudi Arabian officials had been drawn to the separation of powers between the Government and the legal authorities in the UK.

David Pannick challenged this. He said the rule of law had to prevail and that this demanded that the SFO did not give into threats by Saudi Arabia to withdraw cooperation on anti-terrorism until all other options had been exhausted and, even then, only if it was strictly necessary. The Government, he said, did not meet this test, as all bar one of the approaches to Saudi Arabia listed in the Foreign Office statement had been made before the threats were issued and all were fairly casual mentions in the course of other meetings. Additionally, the UK did not seem to have reminded Saudi Arabia of its anti-terrorism commitments.

With regards to the OECD Convention, Dinah Rose argued that this was a relevant consideration because the SFO Director said his decision was made in accordance with it – the question was whether ‘national security’ was an implied exemption or not and she said not – whilst the Government said it was up to the OECD to decide on this issue.

No decision as yet

There was very little intervention by the Judges as the barristers made their submissions. This, we were told, is unusual. Each of five Judges now considers the submissions, looks up the precedents and writes his or her own speech – the verdict is the majority view. The result will be announced, most likely in October, when the Judges’ committee reports to the full House of Lords. Justice?

Campaign update

The House of Lords has overturned the High Court’s ruling that the Government broke the law by stopping the corruption investigation into BAE Systems’ Saudi arms deals. The case had been brought by CAAT and The Corner House with widespread support.

The Serious Fraud Office’s appeal was heard by the House of Lords on the 7th and 8th of July and judgment was given on 30th July.

One of the judges, Baroness Hale, said that she would have liked to have been able to say that it was wrong to stop the investigation as it was “extremely distasteful that an independent public official should feel himself obliged to give way to threats of any sort.” However, she had to agree with her colleagues that the decision taken by the SFO Director was lawful.

The judgment means that those with powerful friends prepared to make threats can effectively evade justice, particularly if the threats are couched in terms of national security. The ruling also confirms that the UK government has driven a coach and horses through a key international anti-bribery convention to protect its friends in BAE.

CAAT and The Corner House are not dejected by the result as it has brought the whole issue into the public realm and clarified the law.

Saudis had ‘advance information’ on BAE case

Ellie Keen — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 00:11:15 +0000

THE Saudi governments seemed to have advance knowledge of the probability of Britain halting a bribery investigation before the official decision was taken, the former British ambassador to Riyadh revealed this week.

The disclosure appeared in evidence submitted to court by the Serious Fraud Office, as the House of Lords heard its appeal against a High Court ruling that it acted unlawfully in ending the inquiry against BAE Systems, who allegedly bribed Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia with £1 billion.

Lawyers for the SFO told the court that fraud office director Robert Wardle stopped the investigation in December 2006 because he believed that Saudi Arabia would cut off counter-terrorism co-operation with Britain, putting national security at risk.

Jonathan Sumption QC, for the SFO, said Mr Wardle only became aware of the full scale of the “threat” after receiving a minute in December 2006 from then Prime Minister Tony Blair, together with information from Government departments, warning of an “immediate risk of collapse in UK/Saudi security, intelligence and diplomatic co-operation”. Six days later he announced the investigation had been stopped.

But according to evidence presented by the Foreign Office, then British ambassador to Saudi Arabia Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles wrote three months earlier that he had discussed the SFO case with an unnamed senior Saudi government representative, who was “more optimistic about the SFO enquiry than seemed justified on the facts available to me”, and “always gave the impression that he had his own information”. The representative suggested the inquiry could be stopped on public interest grounds.

Lawyers for Campaign Against Arms Trade and Corner House Research, who are opposing the appeal, attacked the SFO and the Government for claiming that they had not broken international law in dropping the inquiry. Government documents disclosed last year revealed that the Saudi threats were considered so grave that the inquiry would have been stopped even if that breached Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s anti-bribery convention.

Article 5 of the convention bars states from allowing economic interests or foreign relations to influence bribery investigations.

Dinah Rose QC, for the campaigners, said it was illogical for the Government to “maintain the position ‘We acted in accordance with Article 5’ while saying, ‘You can’t consider that [in court] because we would’ve acted the same way if it was a breach’.”

The Attorney-General, who advised the SFO and Mr Blair, had misinterpreted the convention, Ms Rose said, adding: “If the decision maker has misunderstood the legal effect of the instrument he’s purporting to take into account, then his decision is flawed.” The SFO’s lawyers deny all wrongdoing and insist that Mr Wardle’s decision was rational and informed. The judgment is expected this autumn.

Signing on in Brussels

Ellie Keen — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Members of the European Parliament were brought into discredit in a programme broadcast recently on German TV. The short documentary film dealing with the behaviour of Euro-MPs when it comes to their expenses is now circulating via the Internet. Euro-MP Erik Meijer of the United European Left-Nordic Green Left (GUE-NGL), the political group made up of all of the genuinely left parties in the European Parliament, was asked to comment. Meijer represents the Socialist Party of the Netherlands (SP), a true socialist party which in 2006 trebled its representation at national, regional and local level, hammering the centre-left Labour and Green Left parties. The SP’s success came on the back of theparty’s leadership of the triumphant ‘No’ campaign against the European Constitution.

The video in question shows MEPs signing the Strasbourg attendance register early in the morning and then later – but not much later – leaving the building, suitcase in hand, on their way homeward or, in any case, elsewhere. In this way, they are able to access the daily expenses intended for those who stay in Strasbourg and continue to work. (a British Tory MEP long ago dubbed this the ‘SOSO’ system – ‘Sign On and Sod Off’.) When they were asked by the broadcaster why they left, they dodged the question. One even put a hand to the camera’s lens. It must be impossible for a broadcaster to imagine better TV than that, a journalist’s revelations blacked out! Permission to film inside the European Parliament building was withdrawn there and then and the camera crew forcibly escorted from the premises. But what was not mentioned was that the whole thing happened several years ago.

Old news

SP Euro-MP Erik Meijer’s first reaction was to dismiss the whole things as old news. “These were pictures which had been recorded in 2003 or 2004. However, the abuse which they made public is still going on. The SP has for many years demanded that an end be put to the laughable payments made to Euro-MPs. Those elected as SP candidates distance themselves from this, by for example returning any unspent surplus of our travel expenses.

“From 1999 to 2004 I returned more than €50,000 to the Parliament. The SP’s Euro-MPs receive a monthly salary of roughly €2,300, a sum on which you can live well enough. The rest of our actual salary we hand over to the party, which helps, for example, to finance the SP’s activism, and such operations as the broadcast of our recent short film on home helps.”

The ins and outs

Members of the European Parliament receive various forms of income:

1..A fixed monthly salary from their own national Foreign Ministry, equivalent to that of a Member of their own national parliament, which therefore means that the biggest differences between MEPs result from differences in the salaries paid to their national MPs. These are very wide indeed, the lowest paid receiving €500 p.m. and the highest €11,000. Hungarians are amongst the lowest paid, Italians the highest.
2..In addition, all MEPs receive three kinds of repayment of expenses:
1. General costs ( a fixed sum, equal for all MEPs)
2. Travel expenses (depending on the number of kilometres travelled. Finns, for example, must generally travel a lot further than Dutch members.)
3. A daily allowance (which depends on the number of days a member signs the attendance book).

The daily allowance

Officially this money is designed to cover living expenses, such as the renting of a second home in Brussels, hotel rooms in Strasbourg and hotel costs for meetings in other places. In practice, the ‘reimbursement’ amounts to more than the actual costs. Most MEPs pocket the difference, but this does not happen in the SP.

It is this daily allowance which is discussed in the RTL documentary. Every working day that a MEP is present in Brussels or Strasbourg, or when the Member participates in a Parliamentary Committee meeting or foreign delegation in another country, he or she can also sign this attendance register. For each day that you are signed in you receive €287.

The attendance register for daily allowances is available to be signed each day in a certain room in the European Parliament building in Brussels or Strasbourg. As a result of earlier ‘camera incidents’, no-one is allowed to look at this book. It has, however, been agree that a daily allowance will only be paid for a Friday if the Member in question has also signed in for the Thursday before it, and that if the Parliament is closed for a public holiday, and during the week between Christmas and New Year, as well as in the first three weeks of August, the attendance list cannot be signed.

The current situation

In addition to this list, there is also a list of presence covering the plenary sessions, when in principle all Members should be in attendance. This list of those present is included in the minutes so that everyone can see which MEPs turn up and which don’t.

Until 2002 the Parliament’s Strasbourg plenaries stretched into Friday. During the 1997-1998 parliamentary session it was discovered that many MEPs were in the habit of arriving at around 9 o’clock on the Friday morning, signing the register and then immediately leaving the building, most likely to shoot off home. This led at the time to a scandal, all the more because the Parliament’s Praesidium had decided to move the register from the entrance hall into the meeting room itself, where neither journalists nor other visitors could see who had signed the list.

In 2002, on a proposal from the SP and others, it was decided that the poorly-attended Friday session, at which for the most part only 10% of the Members were present, would be done away with. Since then the only attendance list which can be signed on Friday is the general list described above, as on any other working day.

Abuse

In 2003 Hans Peter Martin, who in 1999 had been Number 1 on the list of the Austrian social democrats, declared that signing in for the daily allowance in Strasbourg on Fridays was an abuse. In support of his re-election campaign as an independent, he had placed a camera crew in the room where the register was and, as a consequence, plunged into scandal all of those who arrived with their luggage at around 9 o’clock, signed, and then immediately set off home. The pictures which are now being distributed via the Internet come from this period. Martin was thrown out of the social democratic group, the so-called Party of European Socialists.

Hated

Since his actions in 2003, Hans Peter Martin has been hated by almost all Euro-MPs, because he had accused everyone of being a cheat. One of the few still speaking to him is Erik Meijer, even though Meijer does not completely agree with him about what constitutes cheating and what does not. Where precisely do they disagree? Martin’s view is that now there is no plenary session on Friday, attendance allowances should no longer be paid for this day. But as Meijer points out, “I sign the list on Friday, but only if I intend to stay in Strasbourg to work, and I never do this any earlier than around noon. Until recently you could check this for yourself. I was one of the last, and you could see that from the number which appeared before my signature. But this too has now changed. About a year ago it was decided that the list of names would be arranged in alphabetical order. In any case, these lists were never made available to the public. Even Members could see only the last ten signatures. The rest were removed.”

Whit Monday

“An exceptional case was Whit Monday , I think it was in 2001,” Meijer recalls. “Following protests from Dutch Members the plenary session was delayed, because this is an important holiday in the Netherlands. Despite this, it turned out that the daily allowance list could be signed. I tried at the time to check which Dutch Members had signed, without signing it myself, but I was not allowed to peruse the register and was sent away. As long as the system is maintained under which there is an attendance list for every working say, I will sign the list when, and only when, I am present and working.”

New in 2009

After the next elections, from July 2009, every MEP from whatever country will receive an equal salary, higher than that for national MPs in the case of the Netherlands, but lower than that of the Members from the big member states. From then on, a MEP will be liable, just as is the case now for officials of the EU, to pay a special EU income tax which is much lower than that of the Netherlands. The SP has persistently – and in this it has stood alone amongst Dutch political parties – argued that Dutch MEPs should pay the difference between the EU tax and our own national tax to the Dutch state. “At the end of June, 2008, during a meeting with Guusje Ter Horst, Minister of Internal Affairs, I heard that she is prepared to put forward a legislative proposal under which Dutch Euro-MPs should pay Dutch taxes, and that they should continue doing so after 2009,” says Meijer. “In addition to the SP, the PvdA (Labour Party) has promised to support this proposal. Other political groups are arguing in favour of the EU tax.”

Paying Up

“My salary goes into the SP’s funds. I then receive €2,300 per month,” says Meijer. “As for my expenses, anything left over from my housing and hotel costs is also paid to the SP. I pay a monthly surplus of € 1,500 euro to the SP. When it comes to travel expenses, the reimbursement rate is a bit higher than the actual cost of my train tickets. Until 1999, when I was first elected, all Dutch MEPs could pocket the difference. In 1999 and again in 2004 it was agreed that all of us would pay it back to the EP. Starting in July 2009, only the actual costs will be reimbursed. The SP’s MEPs here in Brussels are well-known as people who pay a great deal back, but there are others who pay little or nothing back, for example because they like to travel in luxury.”

Erik Meijer was talking to a Socialist Party journalist.

Outrageous Demands for More Money

Ellie Keen — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 21:58:46 +0000

Last week (17th June) the Tories’ launched a major attack on Labour over the supposedly “inadequate” funding of military equipment. Frederick Forsyth, the chairman of a Tory propaganda vehicle, accused Gordon Brown of personal responsibility for “50 or 60” deaths caused by “crap equipment”. However, the truth is that, apart from the USA, Britain spends more on military equipment than any other country in the world. The armed forces in most other countries do not report inadequacies in their equipment. So, any equipment problems our forces are experiencing are not due to a shortage of money, but due to the way that money is being spent.

Vast sums of money are wasted due to incompetence, Lets take helicopters as an example. Dan Byles is another member of Forsyth’s propaganda organisation. In an article posted on the “Conservative Home” website on 3rd September 2007 ( http://conservativehome.blogs.com/platform/2007/09/dan-byles-the-g.html) he wrote: “Defence spending as a percentage of GDP has fallen, even as the number of soldiers dying in the sand has been rising… in Afghanistan… Brown’s budget squeeze has left us with insufficient battlefield helicopters to do the job properly.” Actually one reason for the shortage of helicopters is “a gold-standard procurement cock-up”. That’s according to Edward Leigh, the Tory chairman of the Commons Public Accounts Committee. Leigh was speaking earlier this month about the findings of a National Audit Office report.

Eight Chinook helicopters were ordered in 1995. They were delivered in 2001 but have since been confined to special air-conditioned hangars. This is due to a mistake in the original order and problems trying to fix it, The Tories were in power when the helicopters were ordered.

The helicopters have so far cost in excess of £422m, and this looks lightly to increase even further. Byles says he was“a staff officer in the MOD during the Iraq invasion”, so perhaps he should’ve known that. Its also worth mentioning that under Labour military spending has risen in absolute terms, it just hasn’t risen as fast as GDP. The Tories have repeatedly said they want public spending to rise slower than GDP.

Even worse than the incompetence is the fraud and corruption on UK military contracts. Transparency International’s index rates the arms industry as the second most corrupt industry in the world. The relationship between the arms industry and the Ministry of Defence is so close that, according to a report from the Campaign Against The Arms Industry, “the existence of any real distinction has been questioned”. Key staff frequently move back and forth, in what is called “revolving door corruption”. The MOD has even taken an active part in channelling secret payments to foreigners in return for arms export contracts.

Politicians too seems to have an unhealthy relationship with the arms industry. Mark Thatcher was famously paid a secret £12 million “commission” by British Aerospace after his mother helped the company secure the Al-Yamamah deal. Who knows how many other British politicians have family members who’ve benefited from such secret largess? Then there is the fact that former Defence ministers inevitably end up with lucrative sinecures in the arms industry.

There is also scope for corruption through bribes to political parties. The Tories have used front organisations like the Scottish Industry Forum and the Midlands Industrial Council to hide the true source of donations. There’s no reason why Labour shouldn’t do the same thing. It is undeniable that government ministers from both parties have protected arms companies accused of fraud.

In March 1988 Dale Campbell-Savours, a Labour member of the Public Accounts Committee, accused Marconi of using “misleading Engineering Change Requests” to change the specification of the 1985 Firm Price BATES contract and overcharge for these changes. Labour minister Lord Gilbert, Tory minister Sir Tim Sainsbury, and Tory minister James Arbuthnot all lied to cover up the fact that there had been an enormous increase in the price due to changes (see http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/10/382700.html). Arbuthnot is the current Chairman of the Commons Defence Committee.

BATES gained added significance in January 2004 when the former head of British Aerospace admitted that the company had regularly used changes to the specification to increase the price of contracts. When pressed for assurances this was not still happening, Kevin Tebbit, the top MOD civil servant, tried to blame it all on Cost Plus contracts. This was despite Chief of Defence Procurement Peter Levene admitting in 1988 that BATES was NOT a Cost Plus contract and that Campbell-Savours’ charges might be true. BATES was a Firm Price contract, which is the toughest form of contract the MOD can award. If it could have happened on BATES, it could happen on any MOD Equipment contract (see http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/05/399295.html).

It is impossible to get an impartial criminal investigation into fraud and corruption on MOD equipment contracts. This is because the MOD has its own police force and other forces refuse to get involved. It would also be difficult to obtain an impartial prosecution. Blair lent on the supposedly independent Attorney General to block the prosecution of BAE Systems over the alleged Saudi Bribery scandal. In 1988 Labour MP Dale Campbell-Savours said that the Director of Public Prosecutions was refusing to prosecute any company for fraud on MOD contracts if it had overseas contracts too. Even if a company was prosecuted, the MOD would be in charge of the case and could sabotage it.

Until it is possible to get impartial criminal investigations and prosecutions there should be no increase in the money spent on military equipment.

Billions of Dollars Unaccounted For in Iraq, Pentagon IG Reports

tim — Thu, 22 May 2008 23:25:27 +0000

Want to see a signature worth $320 million? Click here. It belongs to Jack Gardner, an official with the now-defunct Coalition Provisional Authority, who in July 2003 authorized that amount to be transferred to the Iraqi Ministry of Finance for the payment of Iraqi salaries. There are no other records of the transfer, just Mr. Gardner’s John Hancock. Now that’s power.

The payment is but one example of the process by which U.S. dollars have disappeared without a trace into the confusion (and, yes, corruption) of Iraq reconstruction, confounding Pentagon auditors who are now trying to find out where all that money went… and what exactly, if anything, the U.S. got in return.

One such auditor is Mary L. Ugone, the Pentagon’s deputy inspector general for audit. Her testimony this morning before Rep. Henry Waxman’s (D-Calif.) Committee on Oversight and Government Reform coincided with the release of a new report from Pentagon’s Office of Inspector General, which reviewed over 180,000 payments made by the Pentagon to contractors in Iraq, Kuwait, and Egypt, totaling approximately $8.2 billion. Of that, the Pentagon admits that it cannot properly account for how $7.8 billion—“a stunning 95% failure rate in following basic accounting standards,” Waxman said in his opening statement.

The IG report details how $135 million was paid to the governments of the United Kingdom, South Korea, Poland, and others contributing troops to Iraq without any mechanism for determining how it was used. Another $1.8 billion in seized Iraqi assets were also simply given away, without any accountability. IG investigators examined 53 payment invoices. Not one made note of the money’s ultimate destination.

Together with a separate Pentagon IG report released last November, which showed the Defense Department could not account for at least $5 billion issued to Iraqi security forces (causing it to lose track of nearly all of the 13,508 rifles, machine guns, and RPGs it provided to Iraqi troops), today’s report sets the new total of Pentagon Iraq funds lost or stolen at almost $15 billion.

To date, Pentagon auditors have referred 28 cases to criminal investigators.

Unfair Trade

tim — Wed, 07 May 2008 13:02:29 +0000

As the AGM of BAE Systems takes place in London today, the company’s supporters will again pop up in the media to trot out the usual phrases about “living in the real world”. In reality, it is these very supporters of the arms trade who display staggering levels of naivety.

This became very clear last month, at the time of a landmark High Court ruling in favour of the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) and The Corner House. The judges ruled that the government had behaved unlawfully in cutting short a corruption investigation into BAE’s Saudi arms deals. Among the congratulatory messages which flooded into the CAAT office were a few abusive ones and the odd death threat. But one message left on my phone began: “I’m a member of the British public and I live in the real world.” The anonymous caller claimed that were “thousands of British jobs” dependent on Saudi arms deals.

His comment was typical of people who believe that it is naive to oppose the arms trade but who simply accept assertions about employment figures without scrutiny. Such scrutiny is vital to those of us who believe that everybody’s livelihood is extremely important. As a child in the early 1980s, while my unemployed father quite literally got on his bike to find work, I experienced the realities of unemployment far more closely than most of those who are willing to make questionable claims about jobs to claw back public support for BAE – such as Norman Tebbit in the Daily Mail recently.

This sight was common in 2006, when BAE was lobbying for the Saudi corruption investigation to be dropped. BAE’s supporters rushed onto radio and television, pausing only to pluck random figures from the air. A report by arms companies had previously suggested that BAE’s latest Saudi arms deal might create 11,000 jobs across the whole of Europe. By November, BAE was citing the figure of 16,000 British jobs, while the figure of 50,000 regularly appeared in the media.

After the investigation was dropped, and the deal signed, BAE admitted that most of the jobs would not even be based in the UK. Saudi Arabia was to receive 72 Eurofighter aircraft, the first 24 of which had been intended for the RAF, who now have to take second place; so much for British jobs and national security.

BAE is keen to present itself as good for Britain, having reacted to the recent bad publicity with an advertising campaign covered in union flags. This is rather rich, given that BAE is developing away from the UK. George Bush’s aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan has created countless business opportunities for those who profit from war and BAE now has more staff and shareholders in the USA than in the UK.

Far from enhancing our country, BAE has weakened it. In the High Court last month, judges found that the BAE investigation had been dropped following a Saudi threat. They described this as a “successful attempt by a foreign government to pervert the course of justice in the United Kingdom”. Giving the impression that Britain will give into threats sends an appalling message to terrorists.

Most of all, BAE’s supporters are naive about the arms trade itself. I have lost count of the times that I have been accused of opposing arms deals “even when countries need arms for self-defence”. This displays an utterly unrealistic perception of what the arms trade is about.

The main players in the arms trade are often those using weapons for aggression and repression. Indonesia has been a good customer of BAE, not the people of West Papua who have they so easily bombed. Morocco and China both appeared at the DSEi arms fair in London last year, but no representatives from the Western Sahara or Tibet. People suffering aggression are victims of arms companies, not their customers.

Sometimes the attitude of arms trade supporters goes beyond naivety. Some suggest that corruption is a western concern and “they play by different rules to the ones we stand by here”. This ignores the reality that when bribery leads to ministers wasting public money on arms they will not use it to provide health care or tackling poverty. The victims of bribery are the poorest people in the poorest countries.

Yet people here in Britain are also victims of the arms trade. The unhealthy influence of arms companies over government distorts democracy and leads to about £850m of taxpayers’ money being spent every year on subsidies for the arms trade, although only 0.2% of UK jobs depend on it. In these circumstances, it is no surprise that BAE can boast about how many engineers it employs. I am often told by engineering students that their career prospects will be severely damaged if they are not willing to work in the arms trade.

Is this where British taxes and British skills should be going? Future generations may not understand why we chose not to subsidise the engineering needed to tackle the unprecedented horrors of climate change but to assist the sale of weapons to dictators. They will think that anyone who thought this would help Britain must have been shockingly naive.

The world in which supporters of the arms trade live is not based on reality, but on fantasy. It is a world straight out of 1950s boys’ adventure stories. It is a place in which honest British arms companies work hard to provide jobs and to sell arms to grateful democracies in need of self-defence. It is a world in which any British company engaging in bribery would do so reluctantly and only because you can’t expect foreigners to live up to our standards. It is based in a fictitious Britain in which millions of people work in the arms trade and climate change isn’t real.

This is a world as real as Narnia and most British people know it. They would rather see their taxes used for health and education, just as many engineering graduates would rather use their skills to fight climate change. They know that corruption kills, that the arms trade fuels aggression and that arms trade bosses are moved to emotion not by the union flag but by profit graphs.

A dwindling minority of people – among them a disproportionately high number of politicians and columnists – still remain oblivious to this. After a year which has seen an unprecedented rise in public opposition to the arms trade, it’s time for such people (as they would put it) to move into the real world.

Open Stormont? Lobbying Transparency for Northern Ireland

Ellie Keen — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 08:56:42 +0000

Lobbying in Northern Ireland has not developed as rapidly as in Scotland in part because of the suspension of the assembly between 2002 and 2007. But the lobbyists are certainly picking up the scent of lucrative contracts now the Assembly is back in action. Journalists too are beginning to see that lobbying is a potential news story as the Belfast Telegraph – not renowned for its anti establishment reportage – helped to claim the first ministerial scalp in the history of the Assembly when Ian Paisley Jr was forced to resign over a lobbying scandal.

As a result, the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency (ALT) found a receptive audience at a busy debate in Belfast on the 3^rd of April. Organised as a fringe meeting at the Annual Delegate Meeting of the National Union of Journalists, the event was co-sponsored by the Northern Ireland Government Affairs Group (NIGAG) is the lobbyists lobby group formed in 1999 following the Good Friday Agreement.

David Gordon of the Belfast Telegraph addressed the meeting by telling the story of the role of investigative journalism in the downfall of Ian Paisley Jr. In effect operating as a lobbyist for key business interests Paisley was forced out from his ministerial post in February 2008. This welcome reminder of the power of the press to unearth corruption and make it pay was followed by the Telegraph launching its 'Open Stormont' campaign – another welcome sign of democratic politics in the North. The five proposals of the campaign are:

A review of the Assembly's current approach to publishing MLA pay and expenses, focusing on the much more detailed disclosures issued by the Scottish Parliament.
That MLAs should publicly declare in the register of interests details of family members on their payrolls. This reform has been favoured by the Assembly's Standards and Privileges Committee, but there are concerns that it will not take effect until 2009.

The Belfast Telegraph sees no reason why it should not be introduced immediately on a voluntary basis by the parties, pending a formal rule change.

A review of constituency office rental arrangements, with independent rental valuations for offices that have been rented from family members and political parties.

This review should also focus on phasing out the practice of allowing MLAs to claim rental expenses for premises owned by relatives – bringing Stormont into line with the House of Commons.

A pledge from all the Stormont parties that the secrecy surrounding their donations will finally end in 2010, with no further slippage on the target date.
A commitment by all the Assembly parties that there will be no dilution of the Freedom of Information Act.[1]

All of these would help to open up Stormont, and the Telegraph and its investigation editor Gordon are to be applauded for helping to bring a little light and transparency to the Northern Ireland. Given the role of lobbying in the Paisley affair, it might also be wise to add a lobbying register to the list of demands.

Back at the fringe meeting, lobbyist Will Chambre was representing the Northern Ireland Government Affairs Group, the lobbyists lobby group. Chambre was there to argue against transparency and in defence of the lobbying industry. He seemed a little nervous and somewhat hesitant making his case – subverting the traditional image of the lobbyist as smooth talking fixer. Chambre undermined his case further by his nerve wracked delivery of the view that it was the ‘quality of the message’ and not the ‘size of the back hander’ which was important in lobbying.

In the debate that followed, the ALT suggestion that lobbyists should be regulated was challenged from the floor by one of the prime movers behind NIGAG Glyn Roberts (Vice chair of NIGAG, formerly of the Federation of Small Business and now lobbyist for the NI Independent Retail Trade Association). Roberts revealed that NIGAG had investigated such an idea when it set up and it was informed by counsel that a body like NIGAG would meet too many legal challenges to have a legally binding system of penalties. Roberts in effect made the point for campaigners for transparency since, as I pointed out in my response, this is exactly why binding regulation needs to be introduced by a law making body such as the Northern Ireland Assembly. The Open Stormont campaign is a sign that Northern Ireland is currently leading the charge on transparency in these islands. The experience in Dublin. London, Cardiff and Edinburgh is that there is little appetite for transparency amongst the political class and it takes a scandal of the kind that has engulfed Ian Paisley Jr. (and latterly his father the outgoing First Minister of Northern Ireland) to move opinion in favour of effective action.[2]

Chambre learned his lobbying at the knee of one of the key fixers of the Westminster lobby scene – Doug Smith the conservative party member who runs All Party Parliamentary Groups and a string of lobby firms. Smith once famously defended lobbyist payments to MPs by saying ‘MPs can't be expected to give us the detail as a labour of love, can they?’ Chambre runs Chambre Public Affairs a lobby company that does disclose its clients in the register of the Association of Professional Political Consultants (APPC). But they don’t disclose how much they are paid by GlaxoSmithkline for example. Nor do they tell us the techniques they use. Do they for example use the third party technique in which respectable sounding organisations – such as patient groups for example – are used as a ventriloquist’s dummy to mouth the policy positions preferred by the corporation that funds them?

Or do they get involved in setting up fake front groups with names suggesting a disinterested approach such as institute of this or foundation for that? We simply don’t know the answer to either question, but it is noticeable that along with the big pharma clients Chambre also works for a number of patient groups. Chambre do not disclose which pharma companies fund their patient group clients. However, according to company disclosures, we can tell that Chambre works for

Sanofi Pasteur MSD who fund the British Heart Foundation and Jo’s Trust, both clients of Chambre PA[3]
Lilly (part of Eli Lilly) which fund Rethink also a client of Chambre.[4]
GlaxoSmithkline who fund the British Heart Foundation and Jo’s Trust both also clients.[5]
Boehringer Ingelheim who fund the British Heart Foundation also a client.[6]

We have no means of knowing what the relationship is here or whether there is a conflict of interest – another reason why transparency is necessary. There is a further point which is that Chambre also work for Northern Health & Social Services Board which is responsible for both health and social care in the north of Northern Ireland. This leads to potential conflict of interest as both the patient groups and the pharma companies which pay Chambre have a vested interest in influencing the behaviour of the Board in relation to say Autism or mental health, both areas where Chambre clients have interests.

Notes

[1] David Gordon ‘Belfast Telegraph to push for transparency in the Assembly Belfast Telegraph, Wednesday, March 19, 2008 http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/article3532658.ece

[2] See David Gordon ‘Paisley Jnr must reveal full extent of lobbying for developer: SDLP’, Belfast Telegraph , September 20, 2007; David Gordon Civil service concerns at Paisley jnr lobbying Belfast Telegraph, Friday, January 18, 2008 http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/article3348975.ece ; David Gordon Few tears as Paisley Jnr finally falls on his sword But resignation is not end of the matter, vow enemies of the fallen Junior Minister Belfast Telegraph, Tuesday, February 19, 2008 http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/politics/article3445125.ece; ‘Role of FOI legislation in Minister’s downfall’ Investigations correspondent David Gordon argues that the Freedom of Information Act played a key role in bringing down the junior minister Belfast Telegraph, Tuesday, February 19, 2008 http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/politics/article3445136.ece; David Gordon ‘Paisley is facing Commons inquiry: First Minister's payments to son to be investigated’ Belfast Telegraph Thursday, February 21, 2008 http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/politics/article3452962.ece; David Gordon ‘Paisley linked to son's lobbying’ Belfast Telegraph, 17/4/2008

[3] http://www.spmsd.co.uk/doc.asp?catid=380&docid=705

[4] http://www.lilly.co.uk/Nitro/newTemplates/general/Content_IT_LBCT.jsp?page=1471

[5] http://www.gsk.com/responsibility/cr_issues/patient-groups/uk-patient-organisations.htm

[6] http://www.boehringer-ingelheim.co.uk/medicines/patient_group_support.html

The Tragedy of Afghan Aid

Ellie Keen — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 22:45:38 +0000

It was a photo opportunity that was meant to signal a new dawn for Afghanistan. In January 2006, then British Prime Minister Tony Blair hosted a conference for some 60 international delegates in London on the future of the country.

Standing side by side with Tony Blair for the conference photo was US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, then UN head, Kofi Annan and Afghan President, Hamid Karzai. According to the US State Department, the conference “represented an historic milestone for the Afghan people and the international community” in which “Afghanistan sets its reconstruction and development priorities.”

The centerpiece of the conference was the endorsement of the “Afghanistan Compact”, which set out an ambitious programme for Afghan development, committing to specific and achievable goals in security, governance, economic and social development. The document also included an entire annex on “improving the effectiveness of aid”. At the conference, the international community pledged some $10 billion dollars in aid. For the photo, Karzai held a copy of the Compact proudly in his arms.

Now two years on a new report has shown that the Compact has been a complete failure and billions of aid money to the county has either been wasted or not even delivered. The report is published by the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief (ACBAR), which is a leading alliance of 94 national and international non-governmental organizations working in Afghanistan.

Its author Matt Waldman argues: “The reconstruction of Afghanistan requires a sustained and substantial commitment of aid – but donors have failed to meet their aid pledges to Afghanistan. Too much aid from rich countries is wasted, ineffective or uncoordinated.”

It seems the last two years of effort has been wasted. Even before the London conference in 2006, the politicians knew they had a problem with aid money. Despite the billions pouring into Afghanistan, there were already reports of wasted money, corruption and incompetence. Just two months before the London meeting, the Washington Post had run a high profile piece entitled: “A Rebuilding Plan Full of Cracks”.

The paper noted that in September 2002, the United States launched what would become an aggressive effort to build or refurbish as many as 1,000 schools and clinics by the end of 2004. However, Congressional figures showed that they managed to finish and hand back to the Afghan government only 40 schools by late 2005.

This story of failure was not unique. At the time, the World Bank director in Afghanistan Jean Mazurell estimated that between 35 to 40 percent of the aid was “badly spent”. “In Afghanistan the wastage of aid is sky-high: there is real looting going on, mainly by private enterprises. It is a scandal,” said Mazurell. “In 30 years of my career, I have never seen anything like it.”

Other stories of wasted money began to emerge. A 45 million contract with the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation to supply badly needed food for the country, included the proviso that four million dollars went to financing its headquarters in Rome.

The tragedy is that aid has often been ineffectual and wasted. Often it does not even leave the country it is being offered from, as it goes to the country’s own consultants. The fraud of aid never actually leaving rich countries has been known about for decades.

In the late eighties the British All-Party Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee had noted bluntly: “In practice, the purpose of bilateral aid programmes in the UK, as in most countries, has rarely been viewed as the purely selfless promotion of other peoples’ welfare. It has always been understood that such programmes should be carried out with British commercial and industrial interests and political interests in mind.”

As Ben Jackson wrote in his book “Poverty and the Planet” published in 1990, “Aid is commonly thought of as handing over money to Third World governments for development. In fact, aid largely consists of funding from Western governments for services, machines, technical experts and consultants to be supplied by companies in rich countries, frequently their own.” The bottom line was that “most aid money is actually spent in the rich world.” Of the $20 billion the World Bank handed out in 1988, $15 billion went to its own contractors or consultants.

There are many more cases like this. Another book written around that time, called “Lords of Poverty”, examined the “freewheeling lifestyles, power, prestige and corruption of the multibillion dollar aid business.” It found, for example, that in the African country of Tanzania, “over 80 per cent of all Canadian development assistance was tied to the procurement of Canadian goods and services.”

Another problem that has been known about for years is that rich countries often promise aid, but never actually deliver it, or if they do, what they eventually give is woefully short of what they promised.

The record of failed promises is long. After Hurricane Mitch hit Central America in 1998 only a third of pledged aid was delivered; after the floods in Mozambique in 2000 and the earthquake in Bam in Iran just over half was delivered. After the Tsunami hit Asia in December 2004, Max Lawson, from the development charity Oxfam noted that: “History has shown us pledge-making is consistently undervalued by governments delivering about half of what they actually promised.”

Nearly two years after the Tsunami, Oxfam’s worries remain true. According to the UN, America promised Indonesia over $400m, but delivered $70m. For Sri Lanka, Spain promised $60m, but delivered less than $1m. France pledged $79m and came up with just over $1m. The Chinese promised $301m and delivered just $1m. In the Maldives, Kuwait promised $10m but actually delivered nothing.

So has Afghanistan been any different? The tragic answer is no. ACBAR’s report is truly shocking. The international community has simply repeated well known mistakes. Firstly, despite the pledge made in the “Compact” the reasons for giving the money have been dictated by the big donors rather than responding to Afghan needs.

According to ACBAR, the donation of aid has “been heavily influenced by the political and military objectives of donors, especially the imperative to win so called ‘hearts and minds’.” Given to reflect expectations in donor countries, it is not what Afghan communities want and need. A significant proportion of aid to Afghanistan is being used to achieve military or political objectives, rather than help Afghans on the ground.

For example, over 70% of the Afghan population rely either directly or indirectly on agriculture for their livelihoods. However agriculture has received only $400-500 million since 2001, a tiny fraction of the multi-billion international aid budget to Afghanistan.
Secondly, there is a huge disparity between what America spends on war and what the international community spends on aid. The US military currently spends nearly $36 billion a year in the country, some $100 million a day; yet the average volume of aid spending by all donors since 2001 is just $7 million per day. Whilst the military budget is vast, 2.5 million Afghans face severe food insecurity, and one in five children still dies before five. Life expectancy is woefully low at 45 years.

Thirdly, over half of all aid to Afghanistan is tied, by which donors often require procurement of services or resources from their own countries. Rather than go to help Afghanistan, the money just lines the pockets of Western contractors and companies. So of the aid actually spent, a staggering 40% has returned to donor countries in corporate profits and consultant salaries.

The report notes: “Vast sums of aid are lost in corporate profits of contractors and sub-contractors, which can be as high as 50% on a single contract … A vast amount of aid is absorbed by high salaries, with generous allowances, and other costs of expatriates working for consulting firms and contractors – each of whom costs $250,000–$500,000 a year.” In contrast, an Afghan civil servant is paid less than $1000 per year.

Often the contractors spend vast amounts of money on something that could be done much cheaper: For example, a road between the centre of Kabul and the international airport cost the US over $2.3 million per kilometer, at least four times the average cost of building a road in Afghanistan.

Finally, there is the inevitable short-fall of some $10 billion – equivalent to thirty times the annual national education budget. Just $15 billion in aid promised since 2001 has so far been spent. The list of culprits is long. The European Union has distributed less than two-thirds of its commitments for 2002-2008. The US and World Bank has distributed only half of their’s and the Asian Development Bank and India have disbursed only a third of what they promised.

Why do we just make the same mistakes time and again. As history repeats itself, the US and Britain wonder why they are losing the war…

Secrecy and Corporate Dominance -

Ellie Keen — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 19:30:30 +0000

A study on the composition and transparency of European Commission Expert Groups

Executive Summary (the rest of the report can be found here)

The European Commission’s Expert Groups play an influential role in shaping policies at EU level in the crucial early stages. They are involved in drafting and commenting on EU legislation covering awide range of policy issues, including, for example, energy and climate change, and the import/export of dangerous chemical substances. The composition of the Expert Groups, and the interests that are represented,will to a large degree, determine the outcome of the consultation. The input provided by such Expert Groups often forms the backbone of the Commission’s proposals and through a process
that often involves very little change, eventually become adopted as European legislation.(1)

For example, currently, Expert Groups controlled by lobbyists representing commercial interests are playing a key role influencing critical policy-decisions such as the EU definition of ‘clean coal’ (a possible ‘alternative’ in order to reduce CO2 emissions) and whether/how the EU should promote biotechnology or agrofuels.

So far, in spite of this crucial role, very little has been written about Expert Groups; their place in the decision-making process, their influence, composition and methods of operation.

It is clear from theCommission’s own Register of ExpertGroups that there are more than1,200 Expert Groups advising the EuropeanCommission, but the exact number is likely tobe far higher. The lack of transparency concerning their number, composition and meetings means that these powerful consultative bodies are able to operate away from the glare ofpublic scrutiny.

The Commission’s online register of Expert Groups has existed since 2005, but it fails to provide the names of the individual members and the organisations they represent, making it impossible to assess the balance in representation. The register moreover is neither up-to-date nor complete.

Therefore, concerned about improving the democratic quality of EU policy-making, ALTER-EU has conducted an analysis of a sample of 44 Expert Groups. The 44 Expert Groups were chosen based on a range of key policy areas identified by the ALTER-EU member groups carrying out the analysis as being of particular importance due both to the EU’s legislative role and the need for the wider public interest to be reflected in policy-making.(2) These areas can be categorised as environment, energy, agriculture, consumers, health, water and biotechnology. In testing the legitimacy of Expert Groups according to theirmake-up, the analysis only focused on Expert Groups in which industry was represented and excluded those composed of only government representatives.(3)

The aim of this research is to provide an initial indication of the extent to which the composition of Expert Groups in key public interest policy areas provides a balanced representation of concerned stakeholders, or whether lack of transparency has allowed for certain interest groups to dominate and thereby benefit from privileged access to decision-making processes within European institutions.

As most of the information needed for analysing these questions is not in the Commission’s register, nor anywhere else in the public domain, formal requests to the European Commission were made using the EU “access-to-documents” directive (1049/2001).

The aim was to obtain the membership lists, reports and meeting minutes for these 44 Experts Groups, data which according to the “access-to-documents”directive should be available to EU citizens upon request. So additionally, this allowed an assessment of the effectiveness of this directive as a means of providing the publicwith policy-related information.

Unfortunately, this experience was not positive. In total, information was provided on 29 of the 44 expert groups investigated, with full details provided for just 14 of the groups (see also table 1). In many cases, no explanation was offered as to why the missing data had not been provided.

While in 60% of the cases the European Commission released the names of the Expert Groups’ member organisations (25 of 42)(4), only in 43% (18 out of 42) of the cases were the names of the individual members released in addition to the organisation names. The Commission used a range of flawed arguments for withholding the names of Expert Groups’ members, including “commercial interests” and “personal data protection.” Both the European Ombudsman and the European Court of First Instance have last year rejected the Commission’s arguments for withholding lobbyist names and in unmistakable terms called upon the Commission to disclose names of lobbyist.

The Commission’s failure to provide us with the requested information obviously also constituted amajor hurdle for our research project, reducing the sample of expert groups whose composition we could include in our analysis.

Basing conclusions on these sample findings, two major shortcomings with the EU decision-making process emerge. First is a serious lack of transparency surrounding key bodies involved in decisions-making and a very worrying degree of secrecy with the Commission seemingly reluctant to provide full and accurate information on the nature, composition and workings of Expert Groups. The problems encountered in obtaining relevant information amount to a systematic failure by the Commission to be open and transparent.

Another transparency failure confirmed by ALTER-EU’s research is that the Commission’s online register of Expert Groups is seriously incomplete and outdated. To add insult to injury, some of the Expert Groups that are listed in the register do not actually exist. They are included because one of the Commission’s Directorates-General (DGs) asked for and got permission for establishing the group and a budget for its functioning, but the group was never actually established.

As table 1 shows, the composition of a significant number of Expert Groups in our sample proved to be seriously unbalanced. In a range of key public interest policy areas, Expert Groups appear to be dominated by representatives fromthe business sector. These findings raise serious concerns over the democratic quality of decision-making within the European Commission. On a number of pressing policy issues, such as biotechnology, textiles and climate change for instance, the European Commission is formulating European policies based almost exclusively on the advice of those stakeholders who have a direct commercial interest and whose judgment might not be themost objective ormost suited to serving the common good.

Despite covering only a small sample of the Commission’s expert groups, these cases of industry dominance are not only very serious in their own right: the findings are likely to be indicative of a broader problemwhich the Commissionmust take determined action to address. This could start by undertaking a broad review to identify which Expert Groups are controlled by industry (or by any other special interests), and result in dissolving Expert Groups with a seriously problematic unbalanced composition. Strong safeguardmechanisms against privileged access and unbalanced composition of Expert Groups must be developed. To help avoiding corporate capture of Expert Groups the Commission must provide full transparency around the creation of new Expert Groups and establishing an open and fair process for selecting Expert Group members.

In summer 2007, the European Commission on several occasions made clear its intention to improve transparency around the Expert Groups. For example, in June 2007, during the “third joint Parliamentary meeting on the future of Europe” EU Commission President Barroso said that a list of the organisations represented on the Expert Groups, as well as the names of the individuals that participate, would become publicly available in 2008.(5) This statement was repeated by EU Commission Vice president Kallas during a hearing in the European Parliament.(6) Such statements are certainly encouraging and need to be followed by swift action, not only to provide this basic level of transparency but also to prevent commercial lobbyists fromdominating the membership of Expert Groups.

It is clearly necessary, given the strong influence of Expert Groups, for the European Commission to make changes in response to the situation uncovered by this research. In order to adhere to the EU’s own declarations on ‘good governance’ and ‘participatory democracy’,(7)

ALTER-EU recommends that the European Commission acts immediately to:

1. Disclose on internet themembership and key documents of all Expert Groups;
2. Ensure full transparency around the creation of new Expert Groups;
3. Ensure an open and fair process for selecting the Expert Groups’membership;
4. Devise strong safeguard mechanisms against privileged access and unbalanced composition of Expert Groups;
5. Dissolve all Expert Groups that are controlled by industry or by any other special interests;
6. Conduct a broad review on the composition of all Expert Groups.

Table 1

Overview of the findings:

On the effectiveness of the Access to Documents Directive

• In 34% of all cases, the European Commission failed to provide any information about the Expert Groups;
• In 34% of all cases the European Commission only provided partial information.
• The Commission only provided a complete and satisfactory response in 32% of the cases.
• In only 36% of the cases the European Commission provided information within the prescribed 15 working days.
• In only 43% of the cases the European Commission provided names of organisations and individuals that were represented in Expert Groups.

On the composition of the expert groups (based on the scant information provided by the Commission).

• Over 25% of Expert Groups appear to be controlled by corporate interests:more than half of all theirmembers (including governments) are industry representatives.
• In 64% of the Expert Groups being studied, business interests appear to be over-represented: industry representativesmake up more than 50% of the non-Commission and non-government members.
• Only 32% of the Expert Groups sampled appear to have amore balanced allocation of stakeholders.
• One Expert Group (4%) was unbalanced in favour of NGOs.

Table 2:

The Corporate-Controlled Expert Groups revealed by the survey:

1. Competitiveness in Biotechnology Advisory Groupwith Industry and Academia (CBAG)
2. High Level Group on Textiles and Clothing
3. Supervisory Group of the voluntary commitments of carmanufacturers
to reduce CO2 emissions
4. Informing Consumer BehaviourWorking Group
5. Coal Combustion Clean Coal and efficient coal technologies, CO2 capture
6. Alternative fuels
7. Changement Climatique et Industrie

Notes

1 Between 1986 and 1995, 80%of the Commission proposals got adopted – Simon Hix, ‘The Political System of the European Union’, Palgrave 1999, p. 60
2 Corporate Europe Observatory, Friends of the Earth Europe, Food & Water Watch and Spinwatch
3 For more information about the methodology for our research project, see page 10-12.
4 Two out of the 44 groups investigated have never been convoked and never had any members. Consequently, we do not count them here.
5 See MEP Jens-Peter Bonde’s reaction to this announcement. http://www.bonde.com/index.php/bonde_uk/article/bonde24241
6 Discussion on the European Transparency Initiative in the European Parliament’s AFCO committee, 16 July 2007. See also: http://www.bonde.com/index.phtml?sid=487&aid=24241
7 The White Paper on European Governance (latest version: 25.07.2001) proposes opening up the policymaking process to get more people and organisations involved in shaping and delivering EU policy. TheWhite Paper promotes greater openness, accountability and responsibility for all those involved. The Commission underlines its intention to “reduce the risk of the policymakers just listening to one side of the argument or of particular groups getting privileged access […].”The importance of involving civil society organisations in consultation processes is explicitly stressed.

My Petition to Gordon Brown

Ellie Keen — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 19:00:00 +0000

The British Prime Minister and the Tate’s Tin of Shit

I have fallen foul of the British Prime Minister, or, to be more accurate, the Prime Minister’s web site, specifically that part of it which allows anyone to post an online petition to Gordon Brown (he, in case you hadn’t noticed, is now the British PM and Tony Blair departed a while ago).

What I want to petition about is the Director of the Tate gallery, Sir Nicholas Serota. I have nothing against him personally—indeed, the contrary. He has been most affable on the whole, when he has encountered the Stuckists art group (which I co-founded) on the steps of Tate Britain, protesting against the Turner Prize each year and displaying a reproduction of my painting, which shows him behind a large pair of red panties, wondering if they are a genuine Tracey Emin artwork worth $20,000 or just a worthless fake.

When a campaign I initiated into the Tate’s purchase of its own trustees’ works resulted in the Charity Commission’s ruling that the gallery had been acting illegally for the last 50 years, Serota said on BBC Radio 4 that the Stuckists had “acted in the public interest in this instance, and they don’t irritate me. I think that as a public servant I should be here at the service of the public, including the Stuckists.” Quite so.

I thought the least I could do was to continue to act in the public interest and communicate to the Prime Minister the widespread public dissatisfaction with Sir Nicholas’s artistic policies at the Tate. The public do after all pay for it, but have never been able to say whether they think they are getting their money’s worth. This, I considered, would be a chance for them to do so.

I carefully read the rules on submission at http://petitions.pm.gov.uk and studied a selection of both rejected petitions and those currently online. So far 29,000 have been submitted, 14,601 rejected, 6,000 finished and 8,500 still live, with a total of 5.8 million signatures from over 3.9 million different email addresses (it’s obviously a hobby for some people).

At the time of writing, the most popular one with 528, 379 signatories is a request for “a new public holiday, the National Remembrance Holiday to commemorate The Fallen and our Nation, with the holiday falling on the second Monday in November each year, the day after Remembrance Sunday.” I noted also that accepted petitions could include opinions. After all, that is what a petition is to start with, so I felt I should express mine. I submitted my petition, which read as follows:

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to reassure the public that he will veto any reappointment of Sir Nicholas Serota as Director of the Tate gallery.

Sir Nicholas Serota, Director of the Tate gallery since 1988, has pursued a narrow agenda of new media, namely gimmickry and junk, at the expense of the traditional art of painting. Work he has acquired or promoted includes a radio and coat hangers, a cow cut in half in formaldehyde, a tin of excrement, a light going on and off in an empty room, fun fair slides and a crack in the floor. His belief that his policy on contemporary art and boring videos meets a public demand is a delusion.

The Charity Commission found in 2006 that the Tate had acted illegally in the purchase of its own trustee Chris Ofili’s work, The Upper Room, for £705,000. Trustees are bound by the Nolan Principles, including “selflessness”. This has clearly not been enforced, and is in marked contrast to David Hockney’s donation of his largest ever work, “Bigger Trees Near Warter”.

The Tate trustees will decide by 31 August this year whether to renew Sir Nicholas’s contract, which is with the Prime Minister’s approval.

Just in case there was any doubt as to the validity of the contents, I also appended references to press articles etc. to substantiate my facts. I considered that I had been quite restrained, as the “tin of excrement” is actually called titled, “Artist’s Shit” on the Tate web site.

I sat back happily awaiting its uploading within the time frame specified of 5 days, only to receive within a couple of hours an email telling me it had been rejected as “potentially libellous, false, or defamatory” and inviting me to submit a revised version. I immediately sent an email asking them to inform me exactly which statements were the offending ones. After a day, I didn’t get a reply, so I sent in an ultra-sanitised version to be on the safe side:

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to state that he will veto any reappointment of Sir Nicholas Serota as Director of the Tate gallery.

Sir Nicholas Serota was appointed as Director of the Tate gallery in 1988 on a seven year contract, renewed in 1995 and again in 2002. It expires on 31 August 2009, and the appointment of a Director for the next seven years must be decided by 31 August this year. The appointment is made by the Tate Trustees with the Prime Minister’s approval.

In the meantime, the public response had already gratifyingly started. The Times ran a short piece on the rejection, and I immediately received an email from a David Shipley, informing me that he had sent in a petition to have my original petition reinstated. He said, “Being retired and having too much time on my hands, I just read the Times article and wondered what you could have said that would have been defamatory about Sir Nicholas. When I found out from your website that your petition was, as far as I could see, entirely factual (unlike the statements routinely made by politicians) I thought it was an abuse of process for the PM’s office to reject it so it seemed that a meta-petition might be an interesting approach.” I asked him who he was, and he replied, “I’m just a random member of the public who believes that the moral of ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ was not that someone should have shut the brat up, and everything would have been fine.”

The next day, I received a further email from David. His petition to allow my petition had been rejected on the basis that his request was “Outside the remit or powers of the Prime Minister and Government.” It seems this is a government that can despatch battalions and jet fighters to far-flung lands at will, but does not have the capability to reinstate a petition on its own web site. Still, I thought, at least my squeaky clean petition was safe – or at least I did for a few seconds, until I noticed with shock another email in the inbox, just below David’s and with the same header, “Your petition has been rejected”. What grounds have they found this time, I wondered. Apparently my request was also “Outside the remit or powers of the Prime Minister and Government.”

It is very strange that it is outside the remit and powers of the Prime Minister and Government, as the Museums and Galleries Act 1992 (c. 44) 1992 CHAPTER 44, Schedule 2: The Board of Trustees of the Tate Gallery, states: “3 (1) There shall be a Director of the Tate Gallery who shall be appointed by the Board with the approval of the Prime Minister”. It is somewhat worrying that those acting on the Prime Minister’s behalf do not know what his remit and powers are. I have submitted a new petition quoting the Act. However, I don’t hold out much hope.

Updates will be posted on http://www.stuckism.com

Charles Thomson is co-founder of The Stuckists art group. He can be reached at: stuckism@yahoo.co.uk

Cast off the Cloak

Ellie Keen — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 01:05:56 +0000

When Tony Blair intervened to get the Serious Fraud Office investigation into BAE’s alleged corruption in Saudi Arabia stopped on grounds of national security, few people believed a legal challenge could succeed. When it comes to protecting the lives and security of the nation, the courts allow the executive “an especially wide margin of discretion”, noted the judges in this case. Yesterday’s judgment that the SFO director acted unlawfully in dropping the inquiry is therefore a major blow to the government – and its ability to sweep controversial issues under the carpet.

The ruling has seriously constrained the government’s ability to invoke national security without scrutiny. The courts have increasingly been standing up to the government in relation to terrorism cases and slowly staking out the limits to its powers. But a challenge to a decision to quash a prosecution on national security grounds through a judicial review is unprecedented.

The high court has made clear that national security arguments cannot be used to override the rule of law. “It is obvious,” it says, “that the decision to halt the investigation suited the objectives of the executive. Stopping the investigation avoided uncomfortable consequences, both commercial and diplomatic.” The judges in effect accused the government of abusing national security arguments as a cloak for other more cynical motives.

Just two weeks before the judgment was delivered, the government mounted an attempt to preserve its powers. In a breathtakingly cynical move, it introduced draft legislation creating a power for the attorney general to halt prosecutions on national security. The bill concentrates power for making such decisions in the hands of the executive and makes a judicial review of a decision virtually impossible.

Under the proposed law, the attorney general will not have to provide information to parliament that impacts on national security or international relations. If anyone questions that decision, the attorney general will merely have to get a minister to provide a certificate stating it is to be considered “conclusive evidence of act”.

One of Gordon Brown’s first acts on taking over from Blair was to launch a major series of consultations on constitutional renewal. It was seen as an attempt to distance himself from what were regarded as the worst excesses of Blair’s rule. By letting these new powers for the attorney slip into the draft bill, Gordon Brown has shown himself to be no different to his predecessor.

Giving in to Saudi demands to drop the SFO inquiry looks grubby and self-serving, and has damaged Britain’s reputation irreparably. The decision can only have given succour to those corrupt regimes whom Britain repeatedly lectures on cleaning up their act.

Last week the OECD visited the UK, in a form of visit reserved for those countries deemed not to be complying with its anti-bribery convention. That is a damning reflection on the government. But yesterday’s judgment also offers an opportunity: it could decide it is serious about standing up for the integrity of the justice system and the independence of its prosecutors. It could decide to accept proper scrutiny of its national security decisions. It could decide that it means business on enforcing its corruption laws regardless of threats, regardless of who is accused, and regardless of who it upsets. Let us hope so.

Lord Avebury, a Liberal Democrat spokesman on foreign affairs, is vice-chair of the parliamentary human rights group; Susan Hawley is an analyst for The Corner House, an anti-corruption campaign group

BAE Investigation Ruled Unlawful

Ellie Keen — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 22:32:17 +0000

The High Court this morning ruled that the Director of the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) acted unlawfully when he stopped a corruption investigation into BAE Systems’ arms deals with Saudi Arabia.

The judgment was handed down by Lord Justice Moses and Mr Justice Sullivan in response to a judicial review brought by Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) and The Corner House.

In the light of this judgment, the Serious Fraud Office must reopen the BAE-Saudi corruption investigation immediately. Both groups are calling upon the SFO to work jointly with US and Swiss investigators in doing so.

The judges detailed how BAE lobbied the Government by suggesting that the company would lose a large Saudi arms sale if the investigation was not dropped.

When the SFO was about to obtain access to Swiss bank accounts, Saudi Arabia threatened not only to cancel the arms deal but also to withdraw diplomatic and intelligence co-operation. This threat was made by Prince Bandar, who was allegedly complicit in the corruption under investigation.

The judges described the SFO Director’s subsequent termination of the investigation on 14th December 2006 as a “successful attempt by a foreign government to pervert the course of justice in the United Kingdom”.

They ruled that:

“No-one, whether within this country or outside, is entitled to interfere with the course of our justice. It is the failure of Government and the defendant [the Director of the Serious Fraud Office] to bear that essential principle in mind that justifies the intervention of this court.”

In explaining their reasons for ruling in favour of The Corner House and CAAT, the judges found that:

i. The Director of the Serious Fraud Office had failed to exercise his independent judgment in halting the investigation.

ii. The Director had failed to convince the court that he had done all in his power to resist the threat in order to uphold the rule of law.

They stated:

“The Director failed to appreciate that protection of the rule of law demanded that he should not yield to the threat . . . We are driven to the conclusion that the Director’s submission to the threat was unlawful.”

The judges were scathing about the Government’s arguments for ending the investigation

“It is obvious . . . that the decision to halt the investigation suited the objectives of the executive. Stopping the investigation avoided uncomfortable consequences, both commercial and diplomatic.”

As to whether the SFO Director’s action had broken the OECD’s Anti-Bribery Convention, the judges concluded that the SFO Director should answer to the OECD’s Working Group on Bribery.

Susan Hawley of The Corner House, said:

“This is a great day for British justice. The judges have stood up for the right of independent prosecutors not to be subjected to political pressure. And they have made sure that the Government cannot use national security arguments just because a prosecution is not in their interests

Symon Hill, spokesperson for Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT), said:

“We are delighted. This judgment brings Britain a step closer to the day when BAE is no longer calling the shots. It has been clear from the start that the dropping of the investigation was about neither national security nor jobs. It was due to the influence of BAE and Saudi princes over the UK Government. As we have pursued this case, we have been overwhelmed by the support we have received from people in all walks of life, who do not want BAE to be above the law that the rest of us have to follow.”

The judgment comes just weeks after Gordon Brown’s Government announced that it is planning to give the Attorney General the power to stop criminal investigations and prosecutions by citing “national security” without the decision being subjected to judicial consideration or meaningful Parliamentary oversight. In the light of today’s judgment, The Corner House and CAAT insist that this proposed legislation, contained in the Constitutional Renewal Bill, must be abandoned.

Notes

1. Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) works for the reduction and ultimate abolition of the international arms trade. The Corner House is an environmental and social justice NGO. They have been represented throughout the proceedings by Leigh Day & Co, along with counsel from Blackstone Chambers.

2. Lord Justice Moses and Mr Justice Sullivan heard the judicial review brought by Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) and The Corner House on 14-15 February 2008. The full judgement and summary of the judgement are available as pdfs.

A time line of the judicial review and the arguments and evidence presented are also available.

3. The Corner House and CAAT challenged the SFO Director’s decision to terminate the BAE-Saudi investigation on six grounds, on which the judges ruled as follows:

i) It was unlawful and against the constitutional principle of the rule of law for the Director to give into the threat made by Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia;

ii) The Director failed to take into account the threat posed to the UK’s national security, the integrity of its criminal justice system, and the rule of law by giving into the threat;

iii) The Director mis-interpreted Article 5 of the OECD Convention and took into account irrelevant considerations;

iv) The Director failed to take into account the fact that Saudi Arabia would be breaching its international obligations on terrorism if it carried out the threat;

v) The advice given by ministers was tainted by irrelevant considerations under Article 5 of the OECD Convention;

vi) The Shawcross exercise was improperly conducted as ministers expressed opinion as to what the Director’s decision should be.

4. The Government published the draft Constitutional Renewal Bill on Tuesday 25 March 2008.

Clause 12 empowers the Attorney General to direct a prosecutor to discontinue an investigation or prosecution if satisfied it is necessary to do so to safeguard ‘national security’, which is not defined.

Clause 13 makes such a direction binding on prosecuting authorities. If the direction’s necessity is questioned, a certificate signed by a Government Minister certifying that the direction was necessary would be considered as conclusive evidence of that fact.

Clause 14 obliges the Attorney General to report to Parliament on the giving or withdrawal of a direction, but allows the Attorney General to exclude information that could prejudice national security or international relations.

Clause 17 defines ‘prejudice to international relations’ widely as including:
- relations between the UK and another other state, or international organization or court;
- the interests of the UK abroad;
- the promotion or protection by the UK of its interests abroad.

‘The interests of the UK’ are not defined.