To: The Leader of the House of Commons / The Business Secretary and The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government:
Ombudsman Services Part 4: The Full English Cover-Up. (Attempt 32)
32) Ombudsman Services: "Spectre Is Haunting Brexit Britain."
Dear Mrs Leadsom, Mr Clark and Mr Javid,
The speech below would appear to be a belated admission that arms-length, self-regulating de-regulated markets are indeed Good For Business but an unmitigated disaster for the rest of us.
The Ombudsmans61percent Campaign believes that the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government speech raises hugely important questions about: regulation, transparency, accountability, the politicisation of the civil service, ADR, so-called civil justice, the competency and corruption of ombudsmen and a disappearing democracy.
(Transcript of the speech, exactly as it was delivered)
Good afternoon everyone, it’s great to be back here once again. Now, as you can imagine, I talk about housing to a lot of audiences in a lot of different places. But the NHBC lunch is the only event where I can discard my script and instead just read the inscription off the wall. The one that promises people will “inherit a home of unfading splendour, wherein they rejoice with gladness evermore”! Q. Mr Javid, we didn't inherit our home we worked in numerous jobs for years to save to buy it. Before buying it we paid a RICS surveyor to survey it. In this day and age why are RICS unable to adequately regulate their Members and Regulated Firms? Q. Mr Javid, by failing to do so how are RICS fulfilling their Royal Charter obligations to work for the benefit of the general public? That’s basically the NHBC’s mission statement! Or it should be! And it feels good speaking with an audience where you know who I am. That’s not always the case. I was on my way home a little while back when a guy walks up to me and he says “I know you! You’re that guy off the telly! You’re that politician who’s always going on about houses!” So we had a little chat, and he said he was a big fan, asked for a selfie. Q. Mr Javid, when you were Business Secretary we sent you over hundred emails warning of Ombudsman Services' "broken solution in a broken market." But you didn't reply. Why not? Q. Mr Javid, was it because RICS politically influenced and engaged civil servants had intercepted our correspondence and deleted it or was it because you were totally indifferent to the plight of the victims of Ombudsman Services:Property's, "broken solutions?" Either way we're not big fans of yours and won't be asking for a selfie. I was feeling pretty pleased with myself. Not often I get that kind of praise from strangers. And as he’s walking away he gets on the iPhone to his mate and says: “Guess who I just met? Sadiq Khan!” Anyway, thank you to Isabel for that very kind introduction, you know who I am at least! And thank you everyone for coming along today. But above all, thank you for adding 217,350 homes to this country’s housing stock last year. It’s the biggest increase in housing supply for almost a decade, and it’s the highest level of building since the recession. In fact, with the exception of the peak in the housing bubble just before the crash, it’s the highest level of net additions in a generation. And it wouldn’t have happened without you, the people in this room. The builders, the developers, the housing associations, the financiers… There’s only so much any single organisation can achieve. But when we bring everything together, everyone together, we get 217,000 homes for 217,000 hardworking families. Now, last year I stood here on this very spot and gave a speech that was called “Building the Homes We Need”. Well, since then you’ve certainly been busy doing just that. So give yourselves a well-deserved pat on the back. But only a quick one! Because, let’s not kid ourselves, there’s still a long, long way to go. If we’re going to do more than just stand still, if we’re going to make serious in-roads into tackling this nation’s housing crisis, we’re going to have to build at least 300,000 homes a year. It’s easy to throw out numbers like that. But, as you know, actually getting the homes built is much more challenging. But this is a government that backs builders. That invests in the housing and the infrastructure we need. That delivers planning reform. A government that’s freeing up land, tearing down barriers and making sure local authorities plan for the homes that they need. And that’s not just warm words. As you saw in last week’s Budget we’re putting up the cold, hard cash. At least £44 billion over the next 5 years in capital funding, loans and guarantees. Money to unstick build-out on thousands of small sites. To fund estate regeneration. To unlock strategic sites including new settlements and urban regeneration schemes. And £8 billion of new financial guarantees to support private house building and the purpose-built private rented sector. Alongside this we’re continuing to reform the planning process. We’re intervening with councils that haven’t produced a local plan. And we’re simplifying the process of dealing with protected species. Now, I like newts as much as any other Secretary of State! But I also like getting homes built! So we’re giving the industry the tools it needs to succeed. And now it’s up to you to take those tools and use them well. And I do, of course, expect you to use them. Across the country we’re seeing record numbers of planning permissions granted, but the speed of build-out is still too slow. Here in London, for example, detailed planning permission has been granted for almost 130,000 residential units that have yet to be built. 130,000. And that’s in a city with 50,000 homeless households, with people living in temporary accommodation and more than a thousand people sleeping rough every night. I know it’s a complex issue. I know there are many reasons for the delays. The industry, particularly the Home Builders Federation, have done a lot of fine work identifying and explaining the hurdles that are there. As a result, for example, we’re cracking down on local authorities that impose burdensome, pointless pre-commencement conditions. Yet concerns remain. And that’s particularly true among communities that support the need for new housing, that accept the granting of planning permission, then get increasingly frustrated when months or even years pass without ground even being broken. That’s why, in the Budget, we announced an urgent review of the problem, to be led by Sir Oliver Letwin. With an interim report due in the spring, he will look at causes of and solutions to the gap between permissions and completions. Contrary to what some commentators have suggested, Oliver’s conclusions have not been written in advance! I know it’s not as simple as the popular narrative of greedy builders sitting on vast land banks. I also know Oliver well enough to be sure he’ll approach this with a completely open mind, and will be led by evidence rather than anecdote. Q. Mr Javid, we wrote to you to point out that the Ombudsman Services:Property Property Ombudsman was not, "led by the evidence" but arrived at decisions in, "an illogical manner." Why didn't you intervene to put an end to this appalling injustice? Regardless of who is responsible for the gap, there will be no hiding place. Q. Mr Javid, the CEO and Chief Ombudsman of Ombudsman Services, the Rev Shand Smith has described the company's illogical Final Decisions as being, "a broken solution in a broken market." Why have they been permitted to hide this fact for years and been allowed to get away with it for so long? It was happening on your watch. So I’d urge you all to get involved, to engage with the process, and to share your views with Oliver and the panel that will support him in the review. All of us here today have a common ambition, to get more homes built more quickly. And this review will help make sure that happens. But we don’t just want to see more homes. As we’ve just heard from Isabel, we want to see better homes. That’s something the NHBC has been committed to for more than 80 years now. And it’s something that you’ve worked hard to deliver. Over the decades, there’s countless people who have been able to buy a new home safe in the knowledge that you’ve got their back if something goes wrong. But while I don’t for one moment doubt that everyone in this room goes about their business with the best of intentions and the utmost integrity, what I can’t avoid – and what I think no one can deny – is that too many new-build homes are simply not good enough. I see it in the media. I see it my postbag. I see it in Parliament, where the subject was recently debated with the Housing Minister. Roofs that leak, front doors that don’t properly close, insulation that has been promised but never fitted. Bare wires in showers, extractor fans that blow air in rather than sucking it out, patios that flood at the first sign of rain. Brickwork that’s damaged, paintwork that’s been rushed… I even heard about one couple who arrived with all their belongings in a van only to find that the road to their off-plan home hadn’t yet been built. In another case, a whole family had to move out of their brand new home while the NHBC oversaw the repair of more than 20 major faults. These kind of people are not alone. Earlier this year, Shelter said that more than half of new-build owners discovered major faults after moving in. Now of course you can argue with those figures. You can point to customer satisfaction levels of between 80 and 90%, something I’m often told about. But just think about those 217,000 new homes built last year. Even if 80% of them have no issues, that still leaves well over 40,000 families living in accommodation that they don’t think is good enough. Imagine what that’s like. You’ve saved hard for years, made sacrifices, put a little aside each month. You’ve found a place you can afford that suits your needs. You’ve secured a mortgage. You’ve made an offer. You’ve gone through all the rigmarole of buying and then, when you think the stress is behind you and that you can finally sit back and enjoy your new home, you start finding faults that take months and sometimes even years to remedy. It’s not just disappointing. It’s devastating. Consumer Focus warned Government that sometimes an entire market had developed practices that did not work in the customer's interests and they placed the blame shiny beautifully painted doors of the RICS. They said the RICS failed to adequately regulate their Members and (Un)Regulated Firms. Q. Mr Javid, why didn't you act to protect the clients of inadequately regulated RICS surveyors? And when the biggest, most expensive, most important purchase of your life has turned into something of a nightmare, it’s little consolation to hear that other people are happy. It’s easy to see why new-build homes have developed something of a reputation. With most purchases, modern is seen as a virtue. People want to own the latest car, they want to own the newest phone, the most up-to-date computer. But when YouGov spoke to people right across the nation they found that less than a third of Britons – only 29% – said they would choose living in a new home over an old one. Worse still, barely a fifth said that new homes were built to a higher standard than older ones. Again, you can argue with whether or not people should actually think this. But the steady drip, drip, drip of horror stories is clearly having an effect on the public perception of your industry. And the fact that after-sales costs for builders are steadily rising suggests that problems are becoming more widespread. That might be down to bad design, it might be down to poor workmanship. It could be the result of sometimes rushing to get homes completed and sold on timetable driven by profit reports. Whatever the cause, it’s clear that the current system is not working as well as it should. Now, I’m not naïve. You’re building hundreds of thousands of complex structures, and you’re doing it outside in all weathers. Some problems are inevitable. Initiatives like the HBF’s Home Building Skills Partnership are doing much to raise standards, but mistakes will still happen. To err is human. Q. Mr Javid, we sent you a break-down of DJS Research's Customer Satisfaction Reports for Ombudsman Services which detailed the company's already,"broken solution." It's Ombudsman erred endlessly. How is that humanly possible? What’s vital is that, when things do go wrong, those responsible admit there’s a problem and they get it fixed. Right now, that doesn’t always happen. Alongside the reports of faults with new-build homes I see almost as many stories about the problems people face in getting them rectified. There’s the new estate in Rainham where residents have spent more than 2 years fighting to get faults fixed. The man in Devon who has taken to staging protests outside the HQ of the company that built and sold him a home that’s suffering from damp. The family who moved into a new home in South Wales and found more than 300 faults. Just last weekend I read about a couple who were stuck in limbo due to an administrative error that meant their next-door neighbours owned half of their master bedroom. The developers blamed their lawyers, their lawyers blamed the owners’ conveyancers and so on. The one thing that everyone agreed on was that it wasn’t the fault of the owners. But that didn’t make their lives any easier. You already know that this is an issue, a real issue. Stewart and the NHBC have recognised the need to do better, and are already following up on recommendations from the All Party Parliamentary Group, as we’ve just heard. But I’m not yet convinced that the industry can go far enough within the current framework, not least because the problems go well beyond the new-build industry. The existing mechanisms of redress in the housing sector are confusing and they are uncoordinated. There are 4 different redress providers that can officially deal with complaints: the Housing Ombudsman, the Property Ombudsman, Ombudsman Services: Property, and the Property Redress scheme. Even this combination of overlapping schemes fails to provide full coverage of the potential issues that consumers might encounter. Nor do they cover all parts of the market. And there are also all kinds of issues and inconsistencies. So, for example, membership of the Housing Ombudsman scheme is compulsory for all social landlords, but getting a case considered by the Ombudsman takes too long, and there are all kinds of barriers to doing so. Sales, lettings and property managing agents have to be part of a redress scheme, but private landlords do not. Abuse of the leasehold system is rife, yet leaseholders and tenants can find it almost impossible to get their complaints heard and acted on. And the current system contains all manner of unjustifiable loopholes. Just look at tenants living in properties, for example, that are owned by the National Trust. Because their landlord is a charity, the only regulator they have recourse to is the Charity Commission. Don’t get me wrong, I think the Commission is a great body, it does some fantastic, excellent work. But housing is a hugely specialised area, well outside its usual remit. And that means tenants of charities like the National Trust are ill-served by the situation as it stands. Then, of course, there’s new build. It’s clear the current redress system for buyers of new properties is not working properly. There are a confusing number of schemes in place and gaps in protection, particularly where the buyer has a problem with their home in the first 2 years. Regulation of the property market is not something we’ve been ignoring. Q. Mr Javid, if that is indeed the case why have you been ignoring our complaint about Ombudsman Services and what it fancifully describes as its, broken solution?" Q. Mr Javid, you had a, "close and continuing relationship" with those responsible for the broken solution at Ombudsman Services. Why didn't you act to protect its victims? Earlier this year I announced that we will be changing the law so that all landlords have to be covered by an ombudsman scheme… …giving all tenants access to quick and easy dispute resolution over critical issues like repairs and maintenance. We’re also going to be consulting on reforms of the leasehold market to tackle abuses there, and launching a call for evidence on regulation of property agents. Now I believe the time is right to go further, to look at what can be done to improve the means of securing redress right across the housing sector. One of the options to do that is to create a new Housing Ombudsman. A single, transparent and accountable body with a remit that covers the whole of the housing sector – including both private and social landlords and the providers of new-build homes. Q. Mr Javid, Ombudsman Services:Proerty stopped compiling and publishing an annual Customer satisfaction Report for Property in 2011 when DJS Research lost the contract. There has been NO Annual report for the whole of 2017 and yet it is supposedly regulated by the RICS. (The organisation that cannot regulate its Members or (Un)Regulated Firms) Why didn't you act when we pointed this fact out to you? Research in other sectors has shown that redress works more efficiently for consumers when there’s a single ombudsman in place. So, in the new year, we’re going to consult on this and see whether it’s right for the housing sector too. Now, I’ve talked a lot about raising standards on the technical side. Making sure work is done properly, making sure homes are fit for purpose, making sure there’s redress when things go wrong. But that’s not the only area of housing standards where I think there’s room for improvement. There’s also the standard of design. Because one thing that singles out architecture from other artistic endeavours is that it’s unavoidable. If you don’t like a piece of music, you can just turn off your radio. If you don’t like a particular painting or sculpture, you don’t have to visit the gallery in which it’s displayed. But if the field across the road from your home is turned into 500 houses? Well, like it or not, you’re going to have to look at them every morning when you open the curtains. They’re not going anywhere. That’s why the appearance of new homes, the aesthetic element, is not just important to students of design. One of the reasons people move to communities, particularly in rural areas, is because they like the way they look. Their unique character. And one of the single best ways to guarantee that a community will rise up against plans for any kind of development is to try and impose row upon row of identikit red-roofed boxes. Off-the-peg homes with no sense of setting. Estates that, when you stand in the middle of them, could be anywhere from Cornwall to Cumbria. To put it bluntly, ugly homes don’t get planning permission. And nor should they. Yes, we want to build more homes more quickly. But that doesn’t have to mean ignoring the aesthetic or rejecting the local vernacular. Quite the opposite, in fact. If you want people to quickly accept new homes in their area, they have to be homes that local people don’t mind looking at. They have to be homes that people want to live in, and homes that people want to live next door to. I’m not going to stand here and tell you what good architecture looks like. That’s not my job. I’m not saying that every development should mirror Poundbury. Nor am I saying that every new home should be fit for inclusion in the next series of Grand Designs. Even Kevin McCloud would struggle to go round 300,000 sites each year! All I’m saying is that engaging with the local community and giving them a greater influence over design will reap rewards for everyone, and it can work wonders in turning NIMBYs into YIMBYs! The core of everything I’m saying today is that quality and quantity are not mutually exclusive. We don’t have to choose between building more and building better – we can do both. Nor should we be satisfied with simply meeting minimum standards. They’re just that, the absolute minimum, the lowest level you can get away with reaching. They’re not something to aim for, they’re something to exceed. And that applies whether we’re talking about design or build quality or the way in which the industry responds when things go wrong. Because when it comes to housing, “good enough” just isn’t good enough. Our homes are our biggest financial investment, but they’re more than that. They’re the places we invest our hopes and dreams, the places we live our lives. We uproot our families and move across cities, across counties, across the whole country to find the right home for us. Q. Mr Javid, Jonathan May OFT Executive Director stated: "The SOS scheme (now rebranded as Ombudsman Services:Property) has successfully met the criteria applied by the OFT. Buying or selling a home is a significant and complex transaction. So it is good news that from October there will be access to free, easily accessible and speedy redress schemes that will ensure (our emphasis) fairness and transparency." Yet there has been NO annual report for the whole of 2017 and MoneySavingExperts - Sharper Teeth: The Consumer Need For Ombudsman Reform report nearly 90% of property complainants thought that their cases had been handled unfairly. This scandal has been going on since 2009. Why hasn't there been a public inquiry into this farcical ombudsman service? That doesn’t happen in any other market, and that’s why it’s right that developers and builders are held to a higher standard. There is some really great work going on out there, examples the whole industry should be proud of. But, just as there’s a long way to go until we build enough homes, so we shouldn’t be patting ourselves on the back about quality of homes. Much has been done and – thanks to organisations like the NHBC – much has been improved. But as long as there is more to be done, as long as we can still find ways to do better, I’ll be right here fighting to make that happen. And I look forward to having you by my side to build not just more homes, but the very best homes. Not just the homes this country needs, but the homes this country deserves. Thank you.
Published 29 November 2017 . We would add:
Not only has there been a total regulatory failure by RICS the so-called regulator but via their Memorandum of Understanding and regular contacts with their company's executives, they clearly saw its "broken solutions" to have been, "effective." Otherwise they would have acted to protect the public. They didn't.
This is undoubtedly a rigged market in alternative dispute redress and without a full judge-led public inquiry it's set to take its place in the long and shameful tradition of Full English Cover-Ups.
The maladministrators at Ombudsman Services have even resorted to blaming the market for their, "broken solutions."
To: The Leader of the House of Commons / The Business Secretary and The Secretary of State for Housing, Communications and Local Government..
Ombudsman Services Part 4: The Full English Cover-Up. (Attempt 31)
31) A Spectre Is Haunting Brexit Britain cont.
Dear Mrs Leadsom, Mr Clark and Mr Javid,
Writing about Ombudsman Services', "broken solution in a broken market" Property Industry Eye say;
"The organisation made clear its support for the plans Secretary of State Sajid Javid has outlined for an effective regulator supported by a single ombudsman across the whole housing sector."
We're living through a time when the British public knows more about the Skripals and the nerve agent Novichok than it does about the curious case of the regulator - RICS - and its failure to actually regulate and its ombudsman and the mystery surrounding his broken solutions.
An agent for Ombudsman Services had the nerve to say,
"We fully support Sajid Javid regarding the need or a single ombudsman for housing - only then will the housing sector be able to restore trust and ensure that consumers get a much better standard of service."
We really do live in The Golden Age of the Ombudsman and his uncanny ability to disseminate misinformation and apportion blame to any one but himself.
Q. Mr Javid, blogs 407 - 500 were addressed to you as the then Business Secretary and sought to raise the serious issue of Ombudsman Services:Property's, "broken solution" to Alternative Dispute Resolution. Why didn't you respond?
Was it because:
a) RICS' politically engaged and influenced civil servants had intercepted our correspondence and you were completely unaware of this company's broken solutions?
Or
b) You were totally indifferent to the plight of the victims of the Ombudsman Services:Property Property Ombudsman's illogical Final Decisions?
Either way complainants got ripped-off by rigged private redress.
It wasn't the housing sector that arrived at decisions in an illogical manner and then stopped gathering an publishing data on its woeful performance, but Ombudsman Services.
Q. Mrs Leadsom and Mr Clark, isn't the only way to restore trust in the housing sector and give consumers the standard of service they have a right to expect - for you to order a full public inquiry into RICS the regulator, its, "appointed" company Ombudsman Services:Property and that company's, "broken solutions?"
Mrs Leadsom, Mr Clark and Mr Javid, given the RICS' appalling track record of failing to regulate its Members and (Un) Regulated Firms and Ombudsman Services appalling track record of broken solutions, the proposed regulator and ombudsman will surely have to come from elsewhere if consumer trust is to be restored in this, "broken market."
They'll need to know why it came to broken too.
Meanwhile the former Chair of the Parole Board, Professor Hardwick, took full responsibility for his organisation's failings saying that the buck stopped with him.
Unfortunately, such laudable standards do not appear to apply at Ombudsman Services.
TO; The Leader of the House of Commons and the Business Secretary:
Ombudsman Services Part 4: The Full English Cover-Up. (Attempt 30)
30) Ombudsman Services: A Spectre Is Haunting Brexit Britain.
Dear Mrs Leadsom and Mr Clark,
We now appear to know far more about the nerve agent attack on the Skripals than we do about Ombudsman Services and the mystery surrounding its, "broken solution to a broken market."
This is both chilling and deeply disturbing especially given the fact that no-one would seem to have the faintest idea as to how many members of the public there are out there struggling to come to terms and cope with one of its Property Ombudsman's pearlers.
Alarmingly, - at least that is for the Ombudsmans61percent Campaign - a spokesman for Ombudsman Services is reported as warning Property Industry Eye that;
"Ombudsman Services will come back into the housing market as quickly as we can - once we feel that action is being taken to make the system for redress less confusing and more transparent."
What an extraordinarily arrogant statement. One which seeks to apportion blame for its eyewateringly ludicrous decisions - eyewateringly ludicrous decisions wholly of its own making - on the, "system."
Q. Mrs Leadsom and Mr Clark, Ombudsman Services have failed to produce an Annual Report for the whole of 2017. Where is the transparency that Ombudsman Services is talking about?
Indeed, we're told on their website that;
"In accordance with the Ombudsman Association's requirements to be open, transparent and accountable, the annual report has details about our performance, accounts and the complaints we have handled."
Q Mrs Leadsom and Mr Clark, if the Ombudsman Association require Ombudsman Services to be; open, transparent and accountable about their performance - why aren't they?
Martin Lewis' report: Sharper Teeth: The Consumer Need For Ombudsman Reform told us that nearly 90% of property complainants believed that their complaints hadn't been handled fairly.
That is staggering. At least it is to the Ombudsman61percent Campaign.
Q. Mrs Leadsom and Mr Clark, why did it take MoneySavingExperts to discover this staggering degree of complainant dissatisfaction and not your Government's monitors of this Government approved scheme?
Martin Lewis came to the remarkable conclusion that both the Ombudsman Association and the BEIS should be responsible for determining what a "Gold Standard" in ombudsmanry should be. Yet neither the BEIS nor the Ombudsman Association have done anything whatsoever to protect the British public from the maladministrators', "broken solution."
Q. Mrs Leadsom and Mr Clark, is this because you are engaged in a Full English Cover-Up of this private Alternative Dispute Redress scheme's eyewateringly ludicrous decisions?
Otherwise wouldn't things be different? And the British consumer would know just exactly why the maladministrators of this private redress scheme had come up with an repairable, "broken solution."
The spectre of these maladministrators coming back into the market when someone else has swept their appalling mess under the carpet is truly haunting.
Thank you for taking the tie to read about our campaign for a public
inquiry into the RICS and its, "appointed" company: Ombudsman
Services:Property.
We sent the following email to the Government. A Government who
approved this private redress scheme and who allegedly, "monitor" it:
To the Leader of the House of Commons and the Business Secretary:
Ombudsman Services Part 4: The Full English Cover-Up. (Attempt 29)
29) A Spectre Is Haunting Brexit Britain.
Dear Mrs Leadsom and Mr Clark,
We did say that the Ombudsman Services:Property model of private Alternative Dispute resolution would provide a blueprint for the future running of certain organisations in this country..
A future with little or no transparency, accountability, fairness or justice.
And so its proven to be the case. We read the following in today's Guardian:
Alarm as government rewrites UK 'torture guidance' in secret. Civil liberties groups fear guidance to prevent human rights abuses may be weakened
MI6 headquarters in London. Officers from MI6 had helped to plan so-called rendition operations. Photograph: Tim Ireland/PA
A British government guidance paper that is intended to prevent the country’s intelligence officers from becoming involved in human rights abuses is being rewritten in secret, much to the alarm of civil liberties groups.
Rights activists are deeply worried that the UK government may be tempted to water down the guidance at a time when the US president, Donald Trump, has said he hopes to restore waterboarding – “and a hell of a lot worse” – and has nominated Gina Haspel as the next head of the CIA. Haspel reportedly oversaw a secret CIA prison in Thailand, where a terrorism suspect was tortured. The UK paper, known in Whitehall as the ”consolidated guidance”, was rewritten and made public by the coalition government following a series of scandals in the years following the 9/11 attack on the twin towers in New York. Under the terms of the previous version, drawn up early in 2002, MI6 officers had helped to plan a number of so-called rendition operations. Officers from MI5 and MI6 had also become embroiled in the torture of detainees held overseas, usually by handing questions to overseas intelligence agencies with poor human rights records. On publishing the current version of the consolidated guidance, David Cameron, then prime minister, told MPs: “We are determined to resolve the problems of the past so are we determined to have greater clarity about what is and what is not acceptable in the future.” Cameron said that in future, MI5 and MI6 officers should not do anything that they believe could lead to an individual being tortured, and that only ministers could decide what steps to take if the agencies wanted to interrogate prisoners who could hold information crucial to saving lives. The consolidated guidance is now being redrafted again after a 2016 report by the intelligence services commissioner, Sir Mark Waller, was critical of both the wording of the guidance and MI6’s dealings with a Kenyan anti-terrorism unit.
The Camp Delta US military-run prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in 2006. Photograph: Brennan Linsley/AP So far, however, government departments, the intelligence agencies and Scotland Yard’s counter-terrorism command are the only bodies known to have been consulted.
Advertisement
Waller had also recommended that “in order to improve transparency and accountability”, the Cabinet Office should consult rights groups about the new version, and suggested the Equality and Human Rights Commission, Fair Trials Abroad, Prisoners Abroad, Redress and Reprieve. However, none of these organisations have been consulted and a number of groups are concerned that the guidance may be weakened during the process. In a joint letter to Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, five human rights groups – including Fair Trials Abroad, Reprieve and Redress, as well as Amnesty International and Liberty – have warned: “The deep and lasting stain of UK complicity in extraordinary rendition and torture over the so-called war on terror powerfully demonstrates the need for safeguards. “We therefore have serious concerns that the government may be seeking to amend or even water down its guidance on torture behind closed doors. “The government has provided no justification for why it has failed to adhere to the recommendations of its own commissioner and engage in a meaningful and transparent consultation, and chosen instead to talk only to itself and its own intelligence agencies.” At the legal charity Reprieve, director Maya Foa said: “Donald Trump has nominated one of George Bush’s torturers-in-chief to lead the CIA. Gina Haspel oversaw a ‘black site’ in Thailand and helped destroy video evidence of detainees being subjected to beatings and extreme abuse. As the US regresses, the UK government must stand firm and reject torture in all its forms. “The government’s secret internal review risks watering down the high standards expected of the UK’s intelligence agencies,” she added. “It must be opened up to full public consultation without delay.” The Cabinet Office declined to say why rights groups were not being consulted in line with Waller’s recommendation. A government spokeswoman said: “Work is ongoing to identify what, if any, further changes could be made to the consolidated guidance, following the intelligence services commissioner’s recommendations. “We have engaged with both the intelligence services commissioner and the office of the investigatory powers commissioner, to whom the prime minister has issued a direction to continue the statutory oversight of the consolidated guidance.” She added that the government would consider any comments from parliament’s intelligence and security committee, the group of MPs and peers that provides oversight of the intelligence agencies, and that the guidance paper would be made public once it had been rewritten. The existence of official guidance for intelligence officers seeking information from detainees held by overseas intelligence agencies became known publicly in 2009, during the cross-examination of an MI5 officer who had interrogated a British resident, Binyam Mohamed, who was being tortured by CIA officers at a prison in Pakistan. The coalition government acted to rewrite the consolidated guidance and make it public in 2010 after the Guardian highlighted a series of cases in which terrorism suspects were tortured by overseas intelligence agencies while being asked questions that had been drawn up by the UK’s intelligence agencies. The victims included one man, later convicted and jailed for life for terrorism offences, who had three fingernails pulled out by Pakistani intelligence officers after MI5 had drawn up a series of questions to be put to him, and MI6 had handed him over to the Pakistani authorities. The following year the Guardian obtained a copy of the post-9/11 guidance, which showed that senior intelligence officers were expected to weigh the importance of the information being sought against the level of mistreatment the detainee was likely to suffer while it was being extracted. The document also warned that the agencies’ reputation was likely to be damaged if the existence of the guidance was disclosed. Later that year, a number of MI6 and CIA documents discovered during the Libyan revolution exposed the way in which MI6 had assisted in the kidnap of two of Muammar Gaddafi’s Islamist opponents, who were flown to a Tripoli prison, along with their wives – one of whom was pregnant – and four children.
Q. Mrs Leadsom and Mr Clark, by refusing to implement a Whistleblowing Policy at Ombudsman Services haven't its maladministrators abused the Human Rights of those employees working there?
Q. Mrs Leadsom and Mr Clark, by failing to inform complainants of their right to request a face to face meeting with their ombudsmen, haven't the maladministrators of this private redress scheme not also abused the Human Rights of British consumers?
Yours sincerely,
Steve Gilbert - Workstock Number - 510458. The Ombudsmans61percent Campaign is at: www.blogger.com
