Leicestershire sets aside £2m for the Greville Janner abuse inquiry

From the Leicester Mercury:

Leicestershire County Council has set aside £2 million to cover the cost of assisting the inquiry into Greville Janner's alleged sexual abuse of boys in its care. 

The authority ran the children's homes in the city and county, where the former Labour politician allegedly met, groomed and sexually assaulted boys. 

It believes the £2 million will cover the cost of legal representation and digging out documents and other relevant material from its past. 

It said the cash would also would cover the cost of supporting the welfare of alleged abuse victims. 

The council will give an account of its actions to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, (IICSA) later this year.

The inquiry may cast more light on the actions of the county council in the case of Frank Beck, with whose offences the allegations against Janner are intertwined.

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Scrutiny process "ripped up" on Leicestershire's fire authority

Mike Charlesworth, the leader of the Liberal Democrat group on Leicestershire's fire authority, has written a letter of complaint about the way the authority is being run to its monitoring officer.

The complaint, reports the Leicester Mercury, follows the departure of the county's chief fire officer after just over a year in the job with an £84,000 pay off.

This move was not discussed with the Lib Dem group, which holds the balance of power with the authority. It would probably have remained secret if the Mercury had not revealed it.

There is a widespread perception that the fire authority has been carved up between Sir Peter Soulsby, the Labour mayor of Leicester, and Nick Rushton, the Conservative leader of the county council.

As Mike Charlesworth told the Mercury:

Rushton and Soulsby are running what ought to be a democratic body as a two man show. 

"We appreciate there will be employment issues involved with Richard Chandler leaving, but as a courtesy at the very least we should have been told about this so we could raise any concerns. 

"There are so many questions about this that need answering. 

"We don't know what settlement package has been agreed with the chief fire officer, whether it is justified. 

"They've just ripped up the scrutiny process. 

"They are making major decisions effecting public services as if it was some private club."

The paper also quotes Rushton's reply, which does not seem overconcerned with democratic oversight of the authority's decisions..

Meanwhile the people of Leicestershire wait avidly for news of the police investigation into the hacking of Nick Rushton's Twitter account.

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Greville Janner was allowed to lie about the Kirkwood Inquiry

Lord Janner 'misled inquiry' over link with abuser Frank Beck

So runs the headline on a story on BBC News. I suppose it is a polite way of saying he lied to the Kirkwood Inquiry, which we already knew.

What is more remarkable, as revealed by documents from inquiry the BBC has obtained via a Freedom of Information request, is that Janner was permitted to lie about the inquiry:

The 1992 documents released to the BBC also reveal that, following his questioning by the inquiry, Lord Janner asked chairman Andrew Kirkwood if he could tell the media waiting outside that he had not been asked about allegations of child abuse against him. 

Andrew Kirkwood replied: "Of course, Mr Janner." 

Lord Janner left the hearing and told a BBC camera crew: "I have the chairman's permission to tell you that there was questioning about the social services and their operation, and none whatever concerning the allegations made against me." 

The documents show this was not true, and the revelation that the real substance of the inquiry's questioning was withheld from the media will further fuel allegations of a cover-up.

Indeed it will. As I blogged last year, the authorities were remarkably keen that the public should know as little as possible about Frank Beck's offences and the inquiry into them afterwards.

Press cutting from Spotlight on Abuse.

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A witness statement by a victim of Greville Janner

Only a few months ago the press was finding conspiracies of powerful child abusers under every stone.

Now, judging by the headlines about Lord Bramall and John Inman, the same papers are incensed if the rich and famous are even investigated.

The truth, no doubt, is somewhere in between.

So to remind ourselves that such people can be guilty of such offences, let's look at one of the witness statements alleging abuse by Greville Janner.

It was reproduced in the Daily Mail and on The Needle in April 2015 and begins:

From my earliest childhood I never knew my parents and believe that I was in the care of the Leicestershire Local Authority from when I was about two weeks of age. I recall that I was fostered by a family called Wilkinson ... until I was about seven years of age when I went to live at The Cottage Homes at Countesthorpe, which was a Local Authority owned establishment.

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Conservative councils protest against the scale of spending cuts

Leicestershire's Conservative MPs  were busy retweeting this photograph last week.

It shows them and the Conservative leader of the county council Nick Rushton meeting the local government minister Marcus Jones to press the case for more generous funding for Leicestershire.

The Leicester Mercury quoted Sir Edward Garnier, MP for Harborough:

"The difficult financial situation for Leicestershire County Council means that unless we get an improved funding arrangement, the services that vulnerable people need the most will have to be cut. I know the Minister fully understands the case we made and took into account our concerns as Leicestershire MPs and those of Coun Rushton. We will wait to see what transpires over the next few weeks."

I would love to see a more generous settlement for Leicestershire, particularly if Rushton is right to say that we are the lowest funded county council.

But we are not the only Tory-run county asking for more.

Over to the Shropshire Star and the new leader of the council there:

Shropshire Council leaders today called for Government help to stave off the impact of multi-million pound budget cuts. 

Council leader Malcolm Pate and the authority’s chief executive Clive Wright warned that without assistance they face a considerable reduction in the county’s services. 

They have urged either an increase in the amount they can raise in council tax or an alteration of the formula by which councils receive central Government funding.

The formula cannot be unfair to everybody, so It looks as though Conservatives are really complaining that central government funding is not generous enough. Even David Cameron has been at it.

And they are right. It is not just the slightly quaint things this blog has a weakness for that will suffer - rural bus services, branch libraries - but central services like adult social care.

If there is a country vs court rebellion in the Conservative party, with their council leaders rebelling against the cuts they are being compelled to implement, all Liberal Democrats should welcome it.

For the time being, tax cuts should be off our agenda.

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Valuable sculpture sold off for a song by my old school

Thursday's Front Row on Radio 4 had an item on Historic England's forthcoming exhibition Out There: Our Post-War Public Art, which opens at Somerset House on 3 February.

The item runs from 7:38 to 12:32, though the opening one on how Elton John now fits in touring around the school run makes good listening too.

Sarah Gaventa, the curator of the exhibition, talks about some of the lost works she would like to locate (if they have not already been melted down).

I blogged about Historic England and its quest for these lost public artworks in December.

One of the works Sarah mentions in her interview is the sculpture Astonia by Bryan Kneale, which she said was housed at "a Leicestershire school" between 1973 and 2014.

That school was my alma mater - now the Robert Smyth Academy. I remember the sculpture clearly, though I am afraid we never thought much of it.

It was sold two years ago by Gilding's of Market Harborough (frequent stars of TV's Flog It!) from whose website I have borrowed this image.

Astonia fetched £360 but should have made something like £30,000. Its whereabouts are now a mystery.

Leicestershire County Council had acquired it at the end of a mid 20th century era when the authorities believed the people, and children in particular, needed good public art. The wonderful School Prints come from that era too.

I mourn that era's passing, even if Astonia does not appeal to me today either.

Thanks to @RutlandNed for the tip.

Later. @Stephen25367746 tells me Astonia was originally displayed outside Southampton Art Gallery.

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Report on the handling of allegations against Greville Janner

The independent inquiry into the handling of allegations made against Greville Janner which was commissioned last year by the Director of Public Prosecutions issued its report today.

That inquiry was conducted by the retired High Court Judge Sir Richard Henriques.

You can download the full report from the Crown Prosecution Service website, and the Guardian has a summary of his its findings:

The report found:

• The decision not to charge Janner in 1991 was wrong because there was enough evidence against him to provide a realistic prospect of conviction for offences of indecent assault and buggery. In addition, the police investigation was inadequate and no charging decision should have been taken by the CPS until the police had undertaken further inquiries. 

• In 2002, allegations against Janner were not supplied by the police to the CPS and so no prosecution was possible. This merits investigation by the IPCC. 

• There was sufficient evidence to prosecute Janner in 2007 for indecent assault and buggery. He should have been arrested and interviewed and his home searched.

The evidence of the first complainant against Janner, who gave evidence in the trial of Frank Beck in 1991, is particularly strong.

The Guardian says:

These allegations related to 1975 when, it was alleged, the young boy from a children’s home met Janner after the then MP performed magic tricks. 

The alleged victim, known as Complainant One, said he was quickly befriended by Janner and was sexually abused and raped repeatedly. The complainant went to a wedding with the peer’s family, it was alleged, and it was only two decades later in 2014 that a subsequent police investigation found there was film footage of Complainant One at the event. 

According to the report, the prosecuting authorities discussed the possibility of arresting and interviewing the complainant in relation to charges of perverting the course of justice.

ITV News interviewed Bernard Greaves, who was part of Beck's defence team, about the case this evening.

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Alan Rickman's brother is a member of Harborough District Council

Embed from Getty Images

Alan Rickman's sad death last week revealed that his brother Michael is a member of Harborough District Council.

The Leicester Mercury has published a short article, quoting his tweets, where he thanks fans for their kind messages and says simply and movingly "I am broken."

Michael Rickman is the Conservative member for the Nevill ward, which includes the villages around Hallaton and Medbourne.

It is named after Nevill Holt, which most literary theorists now believe to be the inspiration for Bonkers Hall.

Back in the 1980s the SDP's only county councillor in Leicestershire was the brother of the film director Stephen Frears.

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Market Harborough Conservatives and a lot of tits

Nick Rushton, the Conservative leader of Leicestershire County Council, has just issued the following statement:

“My Twitter account was hacked by someone with malicious intent. Whoever has done this changed my password, as I was unable to log onto it for a considerable period of time. I have reset my account and passwords. I take this kind of issue very seriously and have reported it to the police.”

It comes after a Guido Fawkes post that showed Nick Rushton's Twitter account was following a number of "risque" accounts.

You can see some of them in the image above, which I have shamelessly stolen from Guido's blog.

It is obvious that the hacker had malicious intent. As well as following Huge Boob Pics and ILikeBootyDaily, he followed Market Harborough Conservatives.

Later. I have been blocked!

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