Ombudsman Services:Property - The Full English Cover-Up (86) Who Guards The Guardians / Who Regulates The Regulators?
Inbox
| x |
|
6:09 PM (20 minutes ago)
|  | ||
| ||||
Met officers will not face action over VIP child abuse inquiry
Watchdog faces claims of whitewash over report on botched Scotland Yard investigation
Vikram Dodd Police and crime correspondent
Mon 7 Oct 2019 11.29 BSTFirst published on Mon 7 Oct 2019 11.10 BST
Harvey Proctor attacked the police watchdog’s findings, saying: ‘This report shows the IOPC is worse than useless.’ Photograph: Danny Lawson/PA
Dear Reader,
We're told that:
The police watchdog has decided no officer should face disciplinary action over the botched Scotland Yard investigation into bogus claims of a VIP child abuse ring.
The report from the Independent Office for Police Conduct was released on Monday morning amid claims of a whitewash.
Sir Richard Henriques has every reason to believe that the IOPC is "unfit for purpose." Although if its purpose is to exonerate those responsible for the "investigation" of "Nick" and the alleged subsequent whitewash of that inept investigation, then it's very fit indeed.
"The IOPC said it had found 'shortcomings and organisational failings', with 16 recommendations made to change policing practice. It said it found no evidence officers had deliberately misled a district court judge when it applied for search warrants in February 2015 to raid the home of suspects who turned out to be innocent.
The IOPC inquiry began after the Metropolitan police referred five officers who had been involved in Operation Midland to the police watchdog."
What the IOPC said and what was said in Sir Richard Henriques Report are two quite different things and yet they were both apparently examining the same evidence.
This bizarre approach to "looking at the evidence" and following it faithfully to wherever it might lead characterised the Ombudsman Services:Property ombudsman's approach to her work. A point repeatedly highlighted in DJS Research's Customer Satisfaction Reports for the company.
In their 2010 report DJS revealed that:
6.6: The majority disagreed that the ombudsman had helped sort out their problem / 6.22: Accuracy of content - 31% very dissatisfied. Report Recommendations: 48% very dissatisfied. Outcome of the Case: 61% felt the outcome was against them (hence: Te Ombudsmans61percent Campaign) with 43% feeling it was completely against them.
Why did so many feel they had been so badly let down?
DJS Research at 8.24 reported: "to be effective the SOS (later rebranded as OS:P) must be seen as an impartial arbitrator between parties - currently this does not seem to be the general consensus of opinion." In other words the property ombudsman was biased towards her fee-paying members - otherwise things would have been different but they weren't.
So what happened? DJS Research was too hot to handle and they were quietly replaced by another independent research company whose approach to research was very different. We complained to Shehan Sadin Head of the Enquiries and Reporting Centre and were told, "I have investigated this matter and understand that OS:P has confirmed that the new company will ask the same questions as those used on previous surveys, with the addition of some new questions about the OS:P website."
Really? For two years Ombudsman Services:Property released NO Customer Satisfaction Reports whatsoever.
The question as to why DJS Research were replaced by a company supposedly asking the exact same questions was never answered by government.
Quick guideWhat was Operation Midland and how did it go wrong?
Show
Advertisement
"The high-profile Met investigation ran from 2014 to 2016 and hunted for establishment figures alleged to have been involved in a child sexual abuse and murder ring, which turned out to be based on lies from a fantasist.
A report commissioned for the Met and carried out by retired judge Sir Richard Henriques castigated the Met and found 43 errors. The key error, Henriques said, was that police misled a judge to get warrants to search suspects’ homes.
Michael Lockwood, director general of the IOPC, said: “Did the officers involved make mistakes? Yes. Could police processes have been improved? Almost certainly. But did they deliberately exclude information to secure the warrants? Our investigation found no evidence of that."
Here, there is no meaningful response by the General Director of the IOPC to the 43 "errors" or whether the Met Police acted unlawfully in order to get warrants to illegally search the homes of innocent people. Which mirrors what were and weren't told and comes straight out of The Full English Cover-Up Handbook - Rule 1: Whatever you say - say nothing.
“The IOPC is very clear that there must be accountability and assurance to the public that the weaknesses we have identified are addressed so these mistakes can never be repeated. Our report makes 16 recommendations for the MPS and other stakeholders in the police and criminal justice system."
One of the OFT's Criterion for approving the Ombudsman Services:Property ADR scheme on behalf of the taxpayer was it must report annually on its performance so when it didn't we tried asking the government monitors a) why hadn't it? b) why hadn't they - the monitors - acted to defend consumers? We didn't get a response. So no transparency there.
"One of those who was a target of Operation Midland, the former Conservative MP Harvey Proctor, attacked the police watchdog’s findings, saying: “This report shows the IOPC is worse than useless. It actually defends the police against the authoritative findings of Henriques because they wanted to boost public confidence in themselves."
Harvey Proctor could be talking about the government "monitors" of this government "approved" scheme.
“The home secretary should remove the IOPC director general and the IOPC must be abolished and replaced by experts who are genuinely qualified to assess and to criticise police failings. We now know the police watchdog is blind...”
We repeatedly asked politicians how it was that The RICS, who the OFT had said couldn't adequately regulate the Members and (Un)Regulated Firms in the first place could "appoint" Ombudsman Services:Property, have a MoU with their "appointed" company that enabled them to monitor the effective resolution of disputes brought against their inadequately regulated Members and (Un)Regulated Firms and find an 85% complainant dissatisfaction rate (Martin Lewis - Sharper Teeth the Consumer Need for Ombudsman Reform) - "effective?"
No-one's bothered to answer. Not: Yvonne Fovargue Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on ADR nor Dame Helena Kennedy Chair of the EU Justice Sub-Committee.
"Police also targeted former military chief Edwin Bramall and former home secretary Leon Brittan. The Met now accepts that Lord Bramall, Lord Brittan and Proctor are innocent and falsely accused by Carl Beech, who in July was jailed for 18 years for his lies.
Henriques also criticised the IOPC’s findings before the police watchdog published its report, writing in the Daily Mail: “Maintenance of law and order depends upon the effective oversight of those invested with power. Who guards the guards themselves? A malfunctioning police force has not received the necessary oversight.”
Here Sir Richard Henriques could be talking about a) The RICS - who regulates the regulator (The Privy Council - so why don't they?) and b) Ombudsman Services:Property (The RICS and taxpayer funded government "monitors" - so why didn't they?)
Henriques claimed the IOPC investigator who conducted the case “informed me she had no legal training [and] was not fully aware of the process for obtaining warrants
The retired judge added: “The investigative process itself was minimal, unprofessional and the decision-making was flawed.”
DJS Research's CSRs also shone light on what passed for a OS:P "entirely independent investigation" of a case. In their 2011 Report they found 7.31: Most 64% felt the outcome was against them. Why? a) because there were; errors in the report b) 56% felt the investigator did not understand / missed the point / misinterpreted the nature of the complaint c) was not arrived at in a logical manner d) was not supported by the available evidence and e) was not fair and reasonable.
Although the Ombudsman Services:Property ombudsman was appointed because of her mediation skills many respondents believed she failed to do just that - mediate.
We were told by the OS:P ombudsman that she did not routinely ask her fee-paying Members and (Un)Regulated Firms questions. How anyone can carry out a "fair and independent" investigation of a complaint without bothering to ask questions was never explained.
"The IOPC defended itself from Henriques and said: “As Sir Richard writes ‘no subject should be tried without proper investigation’. And, as he acknowledges in his own review, the IOPC is the right and correct authority to do this. Our investigation was both independent and impartial. "
Rule 2 of The Full English Cover-Up Handbook is quite explicit. It states - Always answer a question by taking the question and repeating it. Alter as few as words as possible. Their ludicrously titled Independent Assessor believed that it was easy to feel things had gone wrong when you didn't get the decision you wanted. We tried pointing out that we - and at that time 64% of complainants - just wanted justice. Although 83% took their complaint to The Further Representation Process most failed to get their illogical decision overturned.
In his first Foreword for the company the present Chair of Ombudsman Services, Lord Tim Clement-Jones, believed for some his best efforts would never be good enough. He seemed to be unaware of the findings contained in Sharper Teeth: The Consumer Need for Ombudsman Reform where almost 85% of property complainants were described as being "dissatisfied" with the outcome of their case.
"Of the five officers referred to the police watchdog after the Henriques report, two were exonerated by the IOPC at the first stage, including the former deputy assistant commissioner Steve Rodhouse, who oversaw the latter stages of Operation Midland. Three detectives faced investigations, of whom two declined to answer oral questions and attend face-to-face interviews with IOPC investigators. The watchdog said it did not have the power to compel them to do so because they were retired at that point, so it accepted written answers. The third detective was interviewed face to face."
Rule 3 of this well thumbed and highly over-used Handbook is depressingly cynical. Rule 3 - waste as much time as possible and then a little more.
"The home secretary, Priti Patel, has asked the inspectorate of constabulary to check the Met is carrying out reforms recommended by both the IOPC and Henriques.nds"
As usual another rule-bending MP offering too little too late.
Yours sincerely,
Stephen Gilbert - The Ombudsmans61percent Campaign. Time for a public inquiry into Ombudsman Services:Property.
No comments:
Post a Comment