My Responses To Questions Posed By The Save Lewisham Hospital Campaign.

To the Lewisham Labour Party mayoral candidates from the Save Lewisham Hospital Campaign (SLHC)

The outcome of the election for Lewisham Mayor is important to the SLHC.

This is because of the increasingly close interdependency between the NHS and the local authority, and the health and social care services which the local population depend on. 

As a community-based campaign, we feel that would be wrong to endorse one candidate in the internal Labour Party ballot to choose mayoral candidate. 

We are therefore asking each of the Labour Party candidates to answer some questions. We can then publish the answers on our website to help a wider audience know what each of you stand for. 

Thank you for your time. 

Q1 Your record

As you know Lewisham Hospital has been under threat for much of the last 10 years, saved by a campaign led by SLHC, and by the legal campaign led by the campaign and Lewisham Council. 

However, frontline health and social care support services are being cut to the bone. 

Q1: Please tell us about what you as an individual councillor have done to protect Lewisham Hospital and local health services since 2012. 

A1 

One of my guiding beliefs as a Labour Party member is that we are stronger together than separately. 

The community-based campaign to save the hospital obtained massive public attention and support. The Labour Group, of which I am a member, supported the campaign from the start and I was on the march. In December 2012, meetings took place in quick succession of Mayor and Cabinet (of which I was a member), Healthier Communites Select Committee and Overview & Scrutiny Business Panel to agree a collective rejection of the TTSA;’s draft proposals. This has no effect on the Secretary of State, so the Judicial Review protocol was instigated. 

Ultimately, though, it was the court that decided to uphold the applications for Judicial Review. On the first day of the hearing, Mr Justice Silber made it clear the argument was not about whether the hospital was a good hospital, or was highly regarded by local people, but whether the TSA regime (or other processes) had been applied in accordance with the law. And in his judgment, he made clear whose evidence had influenced him (he used the word “fortified”) – that of the Lewisham’s health select committee chair. 

You will not, however, see me claiming personal responsibility for the saving of Lewisham Hospital, or grandstanding with photo opportunities at every turn. That’s not my style. It’s not what I do. It’s not the way I will do things. My leadership style is about empowering others, delegating where necessary and permitted, whilst acknowledging that the buck, in this case accountability, will stop with me. 

Q2 Sustainability and Transformation Plans

Nationally and locally, although STPs may contain some positive ideas in theory, these ideas are mostly unachievable window-dressing in practice

The STPs have become the vehicle for driving through huge government/NHS England financial underfunding. By 2020/21 there will be a £1bn short fall annually in SE London’s budget for health care. These cuts are in the context of already savage LA cuts from central government. 

(Plans include, as we hope you know, putting in post a single accountable officer to make decisions across the six CCGs of SE London. In many areas, CCGs are merging and the dialogue between a CCG its local LA will be distant and unequal.) 

Q2: How will you use your local authority powers and elected status to ensure that the OHSEL STP, accountable care systems and implementation of related plans do not undermine local democratic overview of health and social care in Lewisham and lead to a worsening of care for the population? 

A2 

The STP was originally announced as a plan, and who could possibly object to a plan? However, it transpired that the DH motivation for these plans was not primarily a strategy to transform and improve services, but rather it seemed one to save money, make cuts and prepare services to be snapped up at discount prices by the private sector. 

Much of the statutory power and duty in regard to health matters lies not with the executive, the Mayor, but rather with the Council (since Coalition reforms). In Lewisham, responsibility for health scrutiny has been devolved by full Council to the Healthier Communities Select Committee. 

In South East London, Lewisham, with other SE London Boroughs, is fortunate that the “footprint” is coterminous with the six borough boundaries. These boroughs had already been engaged in formulating the Our Healthier South East London programme. Not just though the Health and Wellbeing Board at the executive level, but, more importantly, through the health select committee. Constituent members of what is now the SE London JHOSC have worked well together over the last few years, despite the potential for conflict between inner and outer London boroughs, between Labour and Tory Councils. It was the London Scrutiny Network, chaired by Lewisham’s health select committee chair, established the Pan-London JHOSC Forum, an informal network representing all London JHOSCs. This important body enables information sharing, so that, for example, STPs are not permitted to shunt patient need across footprint borders. JHOSCs are established by and represent their constituent Councils. As Mayor I will support and endorse challenges by JHOSCs to any and all DH plans to reduce or cut services. 

As evidence of the power of the JHOSC, I commend the video (available from Bexley Council’s website) of the meeting of the Joint Health Overview & Scrutiny Committee taken at the meeting held last winter in Bexley Civic Centre. There you will see scrutiny doing its job. The OHSEL/STP programme director being robustly criticised by Lewisham’s health select committee chair for ignoring what the JHOSC had requested him to do. The ultimate outcome is that the initial proposal to have only two elective orthopaedic centres in SE London (in all likelihood excluding Lewisham Hospital) was superseded by an agreement to have three such centres, safeguarding orthopaedic services at Lewisham Hospital. 

As an aside (because it wasn’t directly linked to one of your questions) I am very worried about the local NHS workforce and our care economy’s abilities to recruit and retain staff after Brexit. One of the most stupid Government decisions was to cut bursaries for student nurses and midwives. Where are the nurses of the future coming from? This is especially worrying as many entrants to these professions are mature students, not particularly likely to want to accrue student loan debt. 

Q3 Local Authority Cuts

Central government has driven massive cuts to LA and NHS budgets. It transferred public health (PH) services to Lewisham in Autumn 2015, removing PH from the national NHS-reported funding plan and has immediately gone on to cut PH funding massively. 

Lewisham & Greenwich NHS Trust and the LA had planned to cooperate on use of estate for the common good. Now the Naylor Review recommendations threaten sale of NHS estate locally and nationally which could remove options for cooperation between the local trust and the LA unless safeguards are underwritten. 

Q3: How would you mitigate cuts already approved in the Public Health Budget and how would you deal with further pressures to sell NHS estate and make service cuts? 

A3 

Prevention must always be key to the maintenance of good health. Not primarily because it saves money, but because keeping everyone healthy for longer is just common sense. When public health was restored local government control, no one suspected that, within months, in year cuts would be imposed on the budgets. We have already seen difficult choices being made, in an attempt to protect well-targeted preventative services. It is difficult to augment public health funding from elsewhere in the Council budget. What should we cut? I believe there are some opportunities for projects to secure funding. For example, the Rushey Green Time Bank has secured three years funding from the Trust for London to develop its project to teach young people about growing vegetables, and healthy eating. But this is no substitute for a properly-funded NHS and public health service, for which I suspect, we must await the return of a Labour Government. 

I also believe as a Council we must consider the public health impacts of all our decisions. I welcome economic development and new business start-ups. I am a little concerned with the support by the Council for opening more licensed premises when excess use of alcohol is one of the main causes of premature mortality in the borough. 

Lewisham’s health select committee has made it clear that, whilst they may well be a case for the better use of some of the land comprising the Lewisham Hospital site, this must be for health or health-related activities. The freehold must never be sold – they are not making land any more. We do not know what future public service requirements will be. We will always need this land. 

On service cuts, let me say I welcome the progress towards adult social care integration. I know that there is no evidence whatsoever that such integration saves money – it’s about delivering better, more effective care in a timely way, not about saving money, and I will never let it be used in that way. 

Q4A  Privatisation

Privatising and outsourcing NHS and LA services are political choices, proven to be extremely expensive and controversial. Lewisham & Greenwich Trust (LGT) was underfunded by £36m in 2016/17 and was technically ‘in debt’ to that amount. Private contracts such as Circle musculoskeletal contract in Greenwich in 2016, threaten to encroach on and destabilise further LGT’s financial stability and threaten partnership delivery with Social Care. 

Q4: What will your approach be towards bringing back into public service important aspects of social care and keeping health services in the public domain? 

A4A 

Although the commissioning of NHS services is essentially a matter for health commissioners, the local authority is not without influence. I believe that NHS services are best provided by the public not private sector. I believe that the internal market should be scrapped, as far from adding value and creating efficiencies, it has added costs and created bureaucracies. 

In Lewisham, our executive Mayor has chaired the Health and Wellbeing Board, and my intention is to continue this practice. Our Mayor has built up excellent working relationships with commissioners – the vice chair of the HWB is chair of the CCG (and a Lewisham GP for 40 years) - and acute trusts. The work of the chair of our heath select committee in Lewisham, in South East London and across London ensures that we continue to challenge robustly DH proposals which could impact adversely on our people. 

I will oppose privatisation of NHS services. I believe that to bring back all home care services into local government direct provision would require primary legislation and will take my lead on this from the next Labour Government. Meanwhile, I will ensure that social care providers pay staff London Living Wage under proper contracts (including travel time). 

Q5 

Queen Elizabeth Hospital’s PFI costs to LGT are approximately £35m in 2017/18 (a year’s payment of £18.7m after a subsidy of £16m from Dept of Health). This rises shockingly to £61.3m at end in 2029-30 (a year’s payment of £39.2m after subsidy). 

Private finance initiatives are wasteful, expensive loans yet public sector borrowing has rarely been cheaper. 

Q5: Can you see any way to work with NHS partners to minimise the damage of local PFI repayments? 

A5 

The legacy Lewisham Hospital PFI is one of the better ones, signed off by the then chair, Sir Steve Bullock. Early PFIs were a licence to print money, when private sector financiers exploited poorly-informed public sector bodies, inexperienced with these vehicles. Risk was never transferred (one of the justifications for PFI), as the financiers insisted that HM Treasury underwrite all such schemes in the event of failure or default. I am not sure what further scope there is renegotiate the QEH PFI beyond the agreement regarding the “excess costs of the PFI” following the demise of the South London Healthcare Trust. 

Thank you very much – we appreciate your time

My Response To Millwall Football Club's Open Letter.

Would you support the introduction of a fresh compulsory purchase order over the land (‘the Millwall land’) currently owned by the Lewisham Council and leased to MFC and MCT?

Yes

Do you support the sale of the freeholds of the Millwall land.

Yes (excluding the stadium)

Would you support Millwall Football Club’s ambition to participate in the regeneration of the land around our stadium, provided such participation was in accordance with the Core Strategy?

I’m not sure if you are talking just about the land you lease from the Council, or the other land beyond that, that is in the Core Strategy and in the main owned by Renewal. Are you talking about the whole of the site now known as New Bermondsey that is identified in the Core Strategy?

The Council’s position has always been that its preferred option was for Renewal and the Club to come to an agreement about the comprehensive redevelopment of the whole site in accordance with its Core Strategy. In response to the failure of the parties to reach such an agreement, the Mayor & Cabinet even agreed a pause in the CPO process last year to allow one last effort to be made for Renewal and the Club to come to terms. The Club’s response to this opportunity was to repeatedly delay agreeing to set a date for the meeting. Then, when they did finally agree to meet, no one from the Club attended. Instead, they sent external representatives who were not empowered to negotiate or authorised to make agreements.

I am taking this opportunity to formally request that the Club publish its plans and intentions, so that they can be subject to public and professional scrutiny. Enough of this war of words, of claim and counter claim. Publish the details of this scheme that you are being prevented from developing. Let’s have a proper debate about its pros and cons.

Do you understand that there is a serious possibility that MFC and MCT will not remain at their current locations in the event the land around them is sold?

I understand that this is being alleged without the release of evidence to support this claim. Similarly, I understand that the Club’s owner, John Berylson, is alleging that the Council (as the Club’s landlord) want them 'gone', without offering any evidence to support this assertion. The Council and Renewal have consistently stated that they want the Club to be part of the New Bermondsey scheme. The Den is protected through the lease granted to the Club, by the Council and in the New Bermondsey planning consent. The Club are set to benefit hugely from the proposed New Bermondsey scheme. 

The claim that the New Bermondsey scheme is so injurious to the Club’s interest that its delivery would necessitate its departure from Lewisham, seems implausible to me once subjected to the most cursory examination. I am not an expert in football finance, but I understand that the new Wembley Stadium cost £1 billion. Meanwhile, the new Chelsea ground cost £500 million. I think it’s reasonable to assume that the cost of a new build stadium for Millwall would run into the 100s of millions of pounds. When I last checked at Companies House, Millwall’s last filed accounts recorded a loss of around £7 million. This was an improvement on the previous year when it posted a loss of around £11 million. I don’t think anyone is suggesting that Millwall’s recent promotion will ensure that it becomes a profitable operation. It’s consequently hard to swallow the claim that someone is willing to spend possibly more than £200 million so that an organisation can lose millions of pounds every year in a different geographical location.

Even if someone would be prepared to fund a move, there is the matter of getting a planning consent. The notion that the prospect of the arrival of an organisation that revels in its motto, ‘No one likes us and we don’t care’, would be greeted with enthusiasm by its prospective new neighbours, is probably excessively optimistic. The Club could well find itself the focus of a rigorous grassroots campaign to keep it out, which would, of course, be rather ironic.

At last year’s Labour Conference John McDonnell announced that a Labour government would ban publicly funded bodies from awarding contracts to companies registered in offshore tax havens. Do you support that policy?

I would need to be clearer on the detail of what was being proposed. I am very much alive to the reality of unintended consequences. I certainly believe that we need to try to act to limit the amount of income that is escaping taxation. Moving against tax havens would be part of that.

Whatever the aspirations of the leadership of the Labour Party, politicians who are actually decision makers in government have to operate within the law as it is, not the law as they wished it was. If on principle they do the latter, their decisions will be open to legal challenge. They could then face the prospect of having to pay compensation to the party who has been treated unlawfully. This would be funded by taxpayers.

If this question is a reference to Renewal, then I would point out that they have confirmed that all profits that they make from the New Bermondsey Scheme will be taxed in the UK, as required by HMRC.

Invitation to meet with Steve Kavanagh, Chief Executive of Millwall Football Club and Steve Bradshaw, Chief Executive of Millwall Community Trust.

You will recall that following the decision by the Mayor & Cabinet not to proceed with the Millwall CPO, I was contacted by Steve Kavanagh, the club's CEO and invited to a meeting at the ground. The meeting was a genuine attempt by Steve to open a dialogue with the Council and rebuild a good relationship. He said that the meeting would include the two of us plus Steve Bradshaw. No one else was in attendance. The three of us met for over two hours. My understanding was that it was a confidential meeting. I came away believing it had been productive. Steve Kavanagh and I exchanged a few cordial emails afterwards in what I saw as a useful exercise in building trust and 'keeping the conversation going'. 

So I was disappointed when, on 6th March, a week or so after our meeting, a phrase I had used at the meeting appeared in a tweet by a supporters group. Two days later I received a call on my personal mobile phone from someone purporting to be “Swiss Tony” who said that, if I didn’t agree to drop a course of action I was pursuing, I would suffer some unspecified disagreeable consequences. I took him to be a Millwall fan. I was confirmed in that judgement when later that evening I was mentioned in this tweet from the Millwall AMS Group.

The tweet contained 2 photographs, taken from the Club’s car park, of me leaving my meeting with you. I reported this matter to the Chief Executive of the Council and the Head of Law. On their advice I reported the matter to the police. 

One of the reasons that this experience was particularly disappointing was that I believe that this action put an end to the prospect of any further meetings between the Council and the club. It appears, given the questions that have been put to me by Barney Ronay of the Guardian, that the press have also been briefed about what was said at this meeting. 

In the light of this experience, I am rather reluctant to agree to another meeting. I think that it would be reasonable for you to provide some assurances at the very least.

I look forward to reading the responses of the other candidates.

My Response To The Open Letter From The Lewisham Trades Council.

I recently received an Open letter from the  Lewisham Trades Council.  In it they put various points that they wanted the 5 shortlisted Labour candidates who are seeking to become Lewisham's next Mayor to respond to.  My reply is below:

Cuts in public services – We believe the Council should stop passing on Government cuts to public services and work with the unions and community to improve them. 

The national policy of the Labour Party is to set balanced budgets, which means abiding by Tory Austerity cuts whilst protecting the most vulnerable, pending the return of a Labour government. Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell, the Shadow Chancellor, have been quite explicit on this point see here 

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2015/12/jeremy-corbyn-warns-labour-councils-not-set-no-cuts-budgets

As Labour Mayor I would not undermine the leadership by going against Labour policy

Education - There should not be any cuts in teaching or support staff in our schools. It is clearly within the council’s gift to resolve the dispute at Forest Hill school and ensure that there is no repetition at any other school in Lewisham. 

No one wants to see cuts in our schools, but as with the previous answer, schools must set balanced budgets. It is sadly not in the Council’s gift to resolve the dispute between the NUT and Forest Hill School. The Council cannot provide money from its own dwindling resources to mitigate cuts which are being imposed by central government. Firstly, this isn’t fair on those schools which are managing the difficult financial challenges, and, secondly, it would mean cuts elsewhere to other hard-pressed services. The Labour Group set up a working group to explore whether more financial assistance could be provided to Forest Hill School and it concluded that it could not.

TUC Living Wage - We would like the Council to campaign with us to establish Lewisham as the Living Wage Borough with all employers in Lewisham paying the TUC Living Wage as a minimum. 

The Council is already committed to seeing the Living Wage paid across Lewisham. I think all candidates, whether they become Mayor or not, would continue to work with partners to pursue this policy.

Employment Rights – alongside the above we want to ensure employment rights and conditions are in place for all employees in the borough. This includes ending the exploitation associated with zero hours contracts and the “gig economy” and the right to join a union, organise it and have that union recognised by employers in the borough. 

Anyone who has looked at the literature outlining the rise in inequality across the developed world since the late 1970’s, will know that one of the main causes is believed to be the decline in the power of trade unions. My aim would be to make sure that all jobs in Lewisham were decently paid, secure jobs carried out in good conditions and to work with all our partners to do that. This would obviously include the trade unions

Housing – We wish to ensure that there is coherent and adequate social housing provision across the borough. 

Firstly, we must stop blaming developers, local Councillors and Planning Officers for the consequences of Tory and previously Tory-Lib Dem Coalition policies. The decision to cut the grant given to developers to build social housing by two-thirds and the consequent switch away from low rent housing to so-called ‘affordable’ housing, which is outside the reach of those who most need it, was obviously going to have a devastating impact that Labour Councils would be powerless to prevent.

Secondly, we need to aim higher and do better. Although our manifesto commitment to build 500 new Council homes by 2018, so far only 17 have been completed.

Thirdly, we need to be more imaginative and less ideological. We must advocate for policies and partnerships that some people don’t like, so long as they deliver results that are fair, transparent, in the public interest and better than the available alternatives. Luton’s Labour Council formed a partnership with private equity firm Cheyne Capital to build 80 new homes for social rent for tenants nominated by the Council. This is zoned as social housing in perpetuity, with the Council having been awarded the maintenance contract, creating local jobs. Other boroughs are building similar schemes. A further benefit of the Luton scheme is that because the Council doesn’t own the land or the homes, the new properties are not subject to Right to Buy. If the new Mayor refuses to sell land to developers because of a wish to build traditional ‘council housing’, then that is a commitment to perpetuating Right to Buy, and the subsequent loss of decent homes. I believe that a changing world compels Labour in Lewisham to be ambitious and think differently. 

Employment and Training – We wish to implement programmes to increase employment and training opportunities for all, especially for younger people. This has to include reversing the cuts imposed at Lewisham and Southwark College.

What has happened to the funding of Further Education across the country is a scandal. We need properly funded FE provision. I oppose the Tory cuts to FE as I have opposed Tory cuts to the funding to our schools. 

Council unions - We seek a guarantee of recognition and consultation with all unions who represent staff working for the council and its contractors. 

I would agree with this.

Open Letter From Millwall Football Club.

I have received this letter from Millwall Football Club. I will respond in due course.

Update - My Story: Why I Am Running To Be Lewisham's Next Mayor.

My story starts in a prefab in Berthon Street in Deptford in 1965. According to my mother, I am at least the fourth generation of my family to come from Deptford. Both the Maslins and the Longs, my mother’s family, were well known in the community. As I get older, I realise how much my life has been shaped by my parents, George and Pat, and the choices they made.

 Me with my wife and our two sons

They did not have the best start in life when they were born in the 1930s. My father was the cause of a shotgun wedding that was not happy and broke up acrimoniously after the War. My mother’s father was an itinerant Irish Labourer whom she never knew. My parents met at the local church, which was the Princess Louise Institute, became the Shaftesbury Christian Centre and eventually the Bear Church, in Frankham Street. They spent their whole lives in what they would have described as Christian service, running the church services and engaged in all kinds of activities for children and young people. Although both my parents died about five years ago, I am still coming across people in Deptford and New Cross who knew my parents and who tell me how they helped them. When I first was selected by the local Labour Party to be a candidate in the local elections, someone came up to me after the vote and told me, with a big smile on his face, that the only reason he voted for me was because I was the son of Pastor George Maslin.

When my parents were children and then young people attending the church, their leaders were a previous generation of children from Deptford who had, through hard work and aspiration, done well in their jobs and careers so that they could afford to buy their own homes and move out of Deptford. They would then commute back to the church to carry on working in the community. This generation of church leaders were examples to my parents. They showed that it was possible to have a different, better life from the one they knew. They showed them what self-improvement looked like. They gave them confidence to aspire to achieve more for themselves and for their family. Being in the church gave them optimism. So the ambition of my working class, Daily Mirror reading, Labour-voting parents was to better themselves by buying their own home and moving out of Deptford, whilst continuing their work in the church. Unfortunately, the need to move to better accommodation came quicker than they had expected.

When my Mother was giving birth to me, I nearly died, but, thanks to the NHS in the form of Greenwich Hospital, I survived. However, I was always ill as a baby. My health was not helped by the fact that we lived in a prefab. Prefabs were very badly insulated which meant that they were freezing in the winter. Our poor housing culminated in me getting pneumonia. I was lucky to survive. After I recovered, the local doctor, Dr Whatman, told my parents that if they did not move to somewhere better, I would never be in good health. So my parents scraped together what they could, and just managed, with the help of a mortgage from Lewisham Council, if you can believe that once upon a time such things existed, to buy a small house in Crofton Park.

Me and Nan, at our prefab in Berthon Street, Deptford, 1968

From there, my brother and I went to Stillness school and then on to Brockley County, a small boys’ school on Hilly Fields, now occupied by Prendergast College. I remember that while I was at school I had a sense of optimism about the future. I believed that if I worked hard I could go to university and get a good job. My parents would say that they did not get a good education. My father passed the 11 plus and could have gone to Addey & Stanhope or Askes’, like some of his church leaders whom he admired so much, but like so many of his generation, his parents would not let him go because they could not afford the uniform and did not see the point of it anyway. Although an avid reader and excellent preacher, his lack of what he believed was a proper education weighed on my father his whole life. Their experience meant that my parents highly valued a good education and consequently gave me every encouragement they could. So they were delighted when I won a place at Cambridge to study Economics, although they did not let it be known, as to them this would have been showing off. To them, ‘showing off’ was frowned upon as this could lead to pride and, to them, pride came before a fall.

My parents taught me, by example, what a privilege it was to serve others. So my plan was to become a Church Minister. I was very active in the Christian Union at University and then worked for a Mission Organisation in Senegal for a year. I then worked in the City for a couple of years to get some business experience which I thought would be useful. I left to help set up Revival Café and Hales Gallery in Deptford High Street in 1992 in a derelict shop that the Shaftesbury Christian Centre owned, as I was interested in urban renewal, economic development and the role that the Church could play in this. By the time the recession of the early 1990s came along Deptford had been suffering from economic decline for many years. Fortunately for us, it meant that we could get some help from the government to start our business. It is still going today, over twenty years later, in bigger and better premises in Shoreditch, but we could not have done it without the help of the Church in Deptford and assistance from the Council and the government.

Hales Gallery, Installation view of Thomas J Price, Worship, 2016

After we started our business, I tried to help improve the area by becoming involved in the Deptford High Street Traders’ Association, Deptford City Challenge and the Deptford Business Development Association. Whilst I was working in these organisations, I was approached to stand for Labour in the 1998 local elections in Lewisham. I have been a Councillor for New Cross and Deptford ever since. 

In truth, my background did not fire me with a burning ambition to succeed. Yes, I remember working hard at school to go to a good university, but my parents’ example taught me that worldly success can come at a high price and you can be satisfied and fulfilled with a decent job, a loving marriage, a healthy family and a home of your own. This will provide the sound platform for you to serve your community and help others to enjoy these things and make your life good. My parents chose to serve others through the church. I chose the Council because I realised that I was, as a neighbour said to Alan Bennett, ‘not a patch on your Father’! 

My work on the Council has been driven by two principles. The first is, ‘whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your strength’. The second is to use your power to improve the lives of ordinary people, whose hopes, dreams and aspirations are, more often than not, simple, modest and ordinary. This is probably not the most inspiring political call to arms. It is not a well-crafted, intellectually rigorous ideology. It does not generate catchy slogans. But decent street lighting, well-kept parks and properly maintained streets are likely to mean more to residents than leaflets through their door telling them about ‘The Big Society’. 

Whilst it would be a privilege to be Lewisham’s next Mayor, it would also be an onerous responsibility. Despite Labour’s better than expected showing in the recent General Election, austerity for local government continues. The Council has tens of millions of cuts still to make on top of the hundred plus already made. I feel I can meet the challenge of providing leadership at this very difficult time. I believe that political colleagues, while perhaps disagreeing with some of my views and approach, are sure that I can do the job. I am standing in this contest to widen the debate. I am standing to offer a broader choice. I am standing to allow people to support a programme of transformation.

You can read more about my views on my blog : themaslinmemo

You can follow me on Twitter @PaulJMas

If you’d like to get in touch you can email me Maslin4Mayor@gmail.com

THANK YOU FOR TAKING THE TIME TO READ MY STORY

My Response To Barney Ronay's Latest Millwall CPO Article In The Guardian.

Barney Ronay is a sports journalist at the Guardian who writes very good columns on football games. His most recent article on the role of nostalgia in the media in his commentary about Manchester United's game against West Ham is worth a read.

But he is not the Guardian's development journalist. Would the Guardian get their leading music journalist to write about the financial and technical viability of the proposed new concert hall in the City of London? No, of course not. Read instead articles in the Guardian by their arts journalists about new developments. They contain none of the rambling innuendo that characterises Ronay's foray into this area. 

His 30 odd articles on the technical feasibility, financing, commercial viability and development of the land around Millwall contain fewer facts than prior suspicions. A pity. For there's a good story there about how a local club has been piled in debt by its owner and, like most Championship and League One clubs, is utterly reliant on the ambitions of one man. 

In his most recent article, (see here) Ronay spends some time talking about the positions of the various candidates seeking selection to become the Labour candidate in next year's Mayoral election in Lewisham, with regard to the proposed CPO of land owned by the Council but leased to the club.  While he mentions Damien Egan's change of mind over the issue, he doesn't point out that Alan Hall, Damien and I all voted to approve the New Bermondsey development not once but twice when it came before the Council's Strategic Planning Committee.  Only Paul Bell voted against. (Brenda Dacres was not on the Council at this time)

A lot of Ronay’s recent article is given over to a blatant attempt to rubbish the Dyson inquiry. This is the investigation set up by the Council to examine whether or not there is any wrong at the heart of New Bermondsey development following various claims made by the Guardian. You would think that Ronay and the Guardian, having spent months raising questions about the probity of the process and individuals involved and frankly, feeding the rumour mill with nods, winks and innuendo, would relish the opportunity to put their evidence before a judge. Judges are, after all, not guns for hire where the job is to shoot your enemies, whoever they may be. Nor is a judge a lawyer paid to plead a case. They are professionals whose job it is to make judgements on the basis of an open-minded analysis of the evidence. Their reputations depend on them doing this. Nor is Lord Dyson any old judge. He is the most recently retired Former Master of the Rolls and until last year was the second highest lawyer in the land. 

When I asked if the Guardian had co-operated fully with Dyson, Ronay was evasive. I suspect that he has, in fact, under legal advice, kept his co-operation to a minimum. I further suspect that on legal advice, he has not appeared before Dyson. I think that if the Mayor, Steve Bullock, had refused to appear before the judge citing legal advice that he had received, Ronay would have held him up to public ridicule and opprobrium in the pages of the Guardian.

Ronay goes out of his way to say that there is no corruption involved here, presumably by Renewal and the Council.

These are not issues of criminality or corruption.

And again

This is not an issue of illegality or corruption.

This is striking because he has spent many months and column yards insinuating the exact opposite. I and my colleagues, officers and members, can attest to the fact that many people believe that we are involved in something corrupt at best and are in fact personally corrupt ourselves at worse.  Much of this impression has been created by Barney Ronay’s articles. 

So why this change of tone? I sense the hand of the Guardian’s lawyers.

Ronay writes:

As previously detailed in these pages it is, for example, clear that Sport England has not “pledged” £2m in funding for Surrey Canal Sports Foundation, the charitable company at the heart of the developer-led scheme. As of 2014, there is not even a current application in train. And yet the link with Sport England has been trumpeted in a PR-ish fashion in various public documents.

What he omits to say, is that this matter formed the basis of a formal complaint that was fully investigated by the Charity Commission and dismissed:

The commission received differing accounts as to the nature of the financial support from Sport England and the charity (SCSF), 

then it adds:

However, it accepts that the charity’s (SCSF’S) statements about Sport England’s support were made in good faith and did not have the intention to mislead.

Following its not guilty verdict, the Commission makes clear that the SCSF cooperated fully with their investigation and implies that, in this respect, they are an example to other charities. No doubt some people will not be satisfied with this result but I defy any open-minded unbiased person to read the report and not to see it as an exoneration of the Foundation. (The full report can be found here.  Its only short, 3 pages and also well worth a read)

I think that the Charity Commission’s report is a gamechanger. It should be remembered that it was reports in the Guardian that SCSF had made false claims about funding from Sport England that led to a media feeding frenzy and local outcry, culminating in the resignation from the charity’s board of trustees of both Steve Bullock and Peter John, the leader of Southwark Council. The pressure for these matters to be properly investigated and the mounting pressure on Bullock personally was what led to the establishment of the Dyson inquiry. 

So having had their big reveal and won the sport-loving public’s prize for investigative journalism, the Guardian has had to watch while the Charity Commission, having conducted a real investigation into their claims, has produced a report that makes clear that it was all a fuss about nothing. Therefore, if anyone is to blame for the £500,000 of scarce taxpayers money that is being spent of on this investigation, it is the Guardian 

I can’t say that I am surprised. It is worth remembering that the origin of this story in the Guardian was an unnamed, unverifiable source at Sport England. This puzzled me from the start. Following the publication of Ronay’s allegation in the Guardian, Lewisham Council’s Chief Executive, Barry Quirk, contacted Sport England to find out more. His calls were not returned. As far as I am aware no named person from Sport England has ever gone on the record in public to substantiate Ronay’s claims. I think that the refusal to make any official comment on this is extraordinary behaviour for a public body funded by public money whose purpose is to act in the public interest. For all we know this unknown insider was merely someone with a grudge.

On top of this, it would not have escaped the Guardian’s attention that a Tribunal has been sitting to investigate what is essentially Millwall’s complaint to the Freedom of Information Commissioner over Lewisham Council’s refusal to release certain documents to them. This has been held in public. I believe that former Guardian journalist Dave Hill has been in attendance. He has written a couple of articles about it (see here and here)  I understand that the fact that the Club sought to pursue its case via a proxy, the journalist Katherine Bergen and were unwilling to be called as a witness failed to impress.

Now Dyson appears to be coming to the end of his evidence gathering. Wiser and more balanced heads at the Guardian than Barney Ronay now seem to have seen the writing on the wall.

So it is no wonder Ronay has embarked on a damage limitation exercise. The strategy appears to be, say there’s no corruption involved and try to give the impression that you never suggested otherwise. Nonetheless proceed to rubbish Dyson by saying it is not going far and wide enough, lacks teeth and anyway it is paid for by the Council, nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more. Then go on to say that their concern really is all about transparency, ethics and the poor people at the bottom. The implication seems to be that it is the foreign owner of a football club, its fans who, in the main, live everywhere but in Lewisham and the Guardian who are the legitimate voices of the local community, not a democratically elected local Council.

Ronay is right about one thing. The development has come to a standstill, what he calls a ceasefire. I can only hope that, at some point, someone in senior management at the Guardian will feel that they have a moral duty to examine why so much time has been spent seeking to derail such a large redevelopment project that is so clearly in the public interest.

My Letter To The Guardian In Response To Barney Ronay's Latest Guardian Article

For months your journalist, Barney Ronay, has been writing about the New Bermondsey development, feeding the rumour mill that has been rumbling darkly about alleged misdeeds and inappropriate relationships between the developer, Renewal, Council Officers and Councillors past and present. In many of his 30 odd articles on this topic, he implied that all of these people were coming together in some underhand way to pursue their own interests at the expense of those of Millwall football club, whose ground is at the centre of the site. So it was gratifying to read his climb-down yesterday. In his article, Mr Ronay, a self-declared Millwall fan, not once but twice stated that there was no corruption involved here. 

This has come as no surprise. The Charity Commission recently published a report dismissing the allegations he made that Renewal were falsely claiming that Sport England had pledged funding to the Surrey Canal Sports Foundation, the Charity set up to deliver New Bermondsey’s planned Sports Village. I hear that claims made by Millwall concerning this proposed development did not impress at the Tribunal that is examining Lewisham Council’s decision not to disclose sensitive information concerning the regeneration plan. Mr Ronay and the Guardian’s lawyers have made submissions to Lord Dyson, who is conducting an inquiry into this matter. They must now anticipate that he will conclude that there is no basis to the claims they have made and that the Council has acted properly. How else can one explain Mr Ronay’s attempt to rubbish the inquiry before it has been published? It is clearly an attempt to get his retaliation in first. I can only hope that at some point someone senior at your newspaper will feel that they have a moral duty to examine why so much time has been spent seeking to derail such a large redevelopment project that is so clearly in the public interest. 

My Mayoral Plan: Point 3

In previous posts, I have outlined the first 2 of my 3 point plan to deal with the coming financial challenge, if I become Mayor of Lewisham. The first is to be honest about the estimated £52 million worth of cuts that will have to be made over the next 4 years and what that is likely to mean for Council services. We cannot hope to build a broad-based coalition across Lewisham to fight Tory Austerity unless we are honest about the scale of the problem. The second point is to conduct a review of the way the Council governs with the express intention of streamlining its structures and modernising its Constitution. My personal commitment is that, if I become Mayor, I will govern initially with a Cabinet of 2, compared to a Cabinet of 9 which the Constitution allows and is the case at present. I will consider increasing this to 4 after 6 months. I anticipate that ensuring that this review endorses radical recommendations will be challenging because it will mean changing the role of Councillors and reducing some allowances. However, my judgement is that this is the right way forward.

Over the last few years I have met with a number of former senior managers of the Council. I wanted to gain their insight into what Lewisham was like to run and how they thought things could be improved. This, together with my own experience and judgement has led me to develop my third point. We must make changes to the Council's senior management team. We need to appoint a new, full-time Chief Executive to lead on a programme of innovation and change. Once s/he is recruited we must appoint a new Transformation Team to support her/him.

During my time as Cabinet Member for Children & Young People, I have seen at first hand what a huge difference a change in senior leadership can make to the drive and direction of travel of an organisation. In the last 2 years, 3 out of the 4 most senior managers in this directorate changed, including the Director. These new professionals brought different experience, fresh ideas and new dynamism into the Directorate. As a result, we are seeing significant progress in the way we support schools to improve their performance and reduce exclusions and in the management and delivery of Children's Social Services.

Times have changed since the Mayoralty was introduced in 2002. Change has accelerated since Austerity was introduced in 2010. We need senior managers who are appointed to meet the challenges of the next 4 years and beyond, not the requirements of the past. This is not to denigrate current managers. It is merely a sensible, objective response to new circumstances. It requires leadership to identify what needs changing, set out a plan of change and then see the plan through to the end.

I believe that there are considerable opportunities for the Council to adopt a radical transformative agenda in the field of income generation, house-building and Adult Social Care, for example. But we need entrepreneurs and innovators, people who can disrupt existing structures and practices, to exploit them for the good of our residents. I am an entrepreneur. My business partner and I set up Hales Gallery in 1992. When we started we had no capital, no clients and little experience, just lots of enthusiasm. Yet we grew the business from nothing to an organisation run by a team of 9 people, operating out of 2 sites in London and New York, representing 17 artists and generating a turnover in excess of £3 million a year. I have been the general manager and finance director since we started. If I am elected Mayor, Lewisham will have the political leadership it needs to press forward and build a better place. But political leadership is not enough. We need the right blend of skills, professional experience and drive at the highest levels of management.

If you are seeking to be the Mayor, I do not believe that it is enough to say what you want to do. You need to set out how you plan to do it. My 3 point plan is an attempt to do that. It's an attempt to ensure that, as the new Mayor, I would hit the ground running. It demonstrates a determination to make sure that not a day is wasted. It shows I have a grip of the issues and challenges facing the Council and the ability and expertise to drive change forward. This is why I took the decision to put myself forward for selection and seek your support.

Why I Supported The Millwall CPO

I have been a Councillor representing New Cross and Deptford for nineteen years. Rather than support the New Bermondsey, formerly the Surrey Canal Triangle, Scheme for selfish reasons, I was motivated by my duty to promote the public interest. I believe that the public interest case was always clearly demonstrated in the reports that were written by Council Officers that recommended approval of planning consents and to proceed with a CPO, subject to conditions. My own judgement of the evidence they presented supported their conclusions.

I had assumed that Millwall Football Club were supportive of Renewal's plans. I believed this because it seemed to me that the completion of the development was in their interests, providing as it did better transport links to the stadium and more sporting facilities so as to make the location more of a desirable destination for people. I also thought that the 2,400 new homes would provide the opportunity for the club to develop a much larger local fan base, something that I thought it was clearly in need of, as most of its supporters live outside Lewisham.

A number of things persuaded me that the club and its owners supported the development. Firstly, the fact that the Council’s aspiration for a large regeneration scheme on the site occupied by Millwall and some of the surrounding area, was part of its Core Strategy. This is a document that was subject to statutory public consultation and all the Council’s democratic processes of Overview & Scrutiny. I therefore assumed that the club would have had ample opportunity to have input into it. I wasn’t aware that the Club had expressed any opposition to the Council’s Core Strategy.

Secondly, I was a member of the Council’s Strategic Planning Committee that approved Renewal’s planning applications regarding the Surrey Canal Triangle in February 2011 and October 2011. I do not remember anyone from Millwall being in attendance. I do not recall them making any objection either in person or in writing.

Thirdly, I attended the Mayor & Cabinet meeting on 7th March 2012 where the decision in principle was taken to agree to proceed to a CPO on the land leased by Millwall from the Council, subject to conditions. I recall that the then Chief Executive of the Club, Mr Andy Amber, was in attendance and addressed the committee. I don’t recall that he spoke in opposition to the proposal.

Lastly, on the 30th March 2012, the Club’s owners and the Club signed up to the Section 106 Agreement which set out the mitigation that Renewal would offer the club in exchange for the club surrendering the land they leased from the Council. I presumed that this meant that the Club and its owners were content for the scheme to proceed.

As has been widely reported, the proposed New Bermondsey development is now the subject of an inquiry led by former Master of the Rolls and Supreme Court judge, Lord Dyson. I can not predict what the outcome of this inquiry will be. Even if it were to completely exonerate the Council, the Mayor, the Cabinet, all Council Officers and Renewal, I fear that it may not be possible for the Council to implement its policy and agree the CPO, thereby facilitating the New Bermondsey development. The politics may be far too toxic and the imagined consequences for any individual politician far too disadvantageous. If this proves to be the case then Renewal’s reaction could be to act robustly to safeguard their interest and recover the investment that they have made on the presumption that they had our support. This would have injurious consequences for the Council. It seems to me that none of this would be in the public interest.

I have found the whole decision-making process relating to the CPO deeply frustrating. On numerous occasions, the Cabinet has been stood up to make a decision, only for the lawyers to stand us down again. This has been because of last minute objections or submission of other matters such as the supposed impact on the Club’s FA Academy status which could have been raised months if not years earlier. Delays have also been due to ‘call-ins’ by the Council’s Business Panel on grounds which seemed to me at the time to be thin. This marched right up to the top of the hill’ only to be ‘marched back down again’, has been bad enough. But the fact that it is played out in public gives the impression that the Council is ineffective. 

However, what has been most damaging in my view, is the fact that the Council, the Mayor and the Cabinet have been prevented from explaining their position, advocating for the scheme and defending their own policy, by legal advice that seeks to protect the Council from an accusation of predetermination. A person is not a decision maker if he is prevented from taking a decision. A politician who is prevented from advocating policy is no longer a politician. This situation can be endured and tolerated for a short period. But when it is permitted to persist in the case of one particular issue for years, then the credibility of the Council is undermined.

My experience of trying to determine the Millwall CPO has made me question whether it is possible, given the legal constraints, for the Council, indeed any Council, to make a decision in the public interest concerning a very large regeneration scheme, which is being opposed by a powerful third party, where that party is capable of mobilising a mass grass roots campaign and where that campaign is supported by the media. Perhaps city and national governments have the means and resilience to cope with these pressures. I fear that local Councils that are made up of members who are elected with majorities of a few thousand at most and often much less, do not.