Archives for January 2011

Council leaders in the four Yorkshire cities earmarked to have all-powerful executive mayors have said they want nothing to do with the idea.

They say imposing directly elected mayors is undemocratic and totally impractical.

Bradford, Leeds, Sheffield and Wakefield are amongst the twelve "core cities" in England which will switch to the system if the Government's controversial Localism legislation comes into force.

The new breed of mayor would be far more powerful than the existing ones including Boris Johnson in London. They would combine the roles of Mayor and Chief Executive.

The democratic changes would also be significant. At the moment the council leader is elected by councillors rather than the public and governs through a cabinet. If they lose the support of their councillors they can be replaced.

A directly elected mayor is voted in by the public for a full four year term and cannot be sacked by councillors however unpopular he or she might become.

The Government says these "New York" style mayors would create a much more efficient way to run a city which would bypass the political quagmire of most council chambers.

As for democracy, supporters of the move, like Alec Shelbrooke the Conservative MP for the West Yorkshire seat of Elmet and Rothwell, point out that the public currently has no direct say in choosing the leader of the council.

If the change comes about, the reluctant leaders of the four city councils council will have no choice in the matter and would be automatically converted into executive "shadow" mayors.

The public would not be consulted on whether they want mayors until referendums in each city are held a year later.

The first elections for a Mayor would be dependent on a "yes" vote being achieved.

The opposition is as strong with Liberal Democrats as Labour.

Sheffield is currently run by the Liberal Democrats as a minority administration. That puts leader Paul Scriven in line to be appointed as the city's first shadow Executive Mayor. Julie Dore leads the Labour group which has every intention of taking the city at May's elections. That would leapfrog her into the role.

Neither wants the job.

All of the Yorkshire city council leaders say they look in horror at Doncaster.

In 2002 it became the only place in Yorkshire to elect an Executive Mayor. Two men have held the post so far and both have been mired in controversy.

In a rare interview with me for the Politics Show for Yorkshire Lincolnshire and the North Midlands, Peter Davies, who became the second mayor in 2009, claims he is living proof that they do work.

Even he draws the line at combining the political role with the professional managerial job of a chief executive which he describes as "ludicrous".

But he clearly had his problems.

The blunt spoken former teacher unexpectedly won the election in Doncaster on a cost-cutting, anti-political correctness agenda set by his little known right wing party the English Democrats.
He gained few allies at the town hall and for months could barely form a cabinet.

Six months ago Eric Pickles, the Secretary of State for Local Government, by-passed him and appointed central government Commissioners to oversee the running of the town.

For the Government, the Davies administration had done little to improve matters in what a damning Government report described as 15 years of "dysfunctional" political leadership in the town.

Davies claims any problems under his watch are entirely due to feuding "antediluvian" councillors who refuse accept the role of Mayor and will not give him the support he needs.

Whatever the truth of the matter, Doncaster will clearly not figure as a role model when the argument in the argument over the introduction of the next generation of directly elected Executive Mayors in Yorkshire.

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Dan Jarvis

For the first time since 1938 Labour has chosen a candidate for the Barnsley Central seat who was not born in Yorkshire.

Dan Jarvis, the surprise choice at last night's constituency selection meeting at the town's Oakwell football ground, is also the first one not to be directly linked to the coal industry.

Labour has chosen him to replace disgraced MP Eric Illsley who is on bail awaiting sentencing after admitting fiddling his expenses in court earlier this month.

Thirty-eight-year old Jarvis is a former army major. He served for 15 years in the Parachute Regiment and was seen to be the outsider of the four-strong shortlist of candidates put to members.

He comes from Nottingham but is currently living in Hampshire.

It is thought there had been at least at least 100 nominations as the South Yorkshire seat has been held by Labour for the past 73 years.

Eric Illsley won at the last election with a substantial majority of just over 11,000.

As they streamed out after the vote members told me that Dan Jarvis's five minute speech had been the strongest of the other candidates which included a Barnsley councillor and two party activists who came from other parts of Yorkshire.

The clearly delighted candidate told me last night that he was delighted and honoured to have been chosen and was ready to start his campaign.

A by-election is inevitable following the fall from grace of Eric Illsley who has held the seat since 1987.

But It cannot be called until Illsley formally resigns his seat. Almost three weeks after his conviction he has failed to quit and remains on full pay. He will be back in court next month for sentencing.

Labour has held what was the old Barnsley seat continuously since 1938 when it was won by local man Frank Collindridge. He remained as MP for 15 years.

Former Northern Ireland Secretary Roy Mason left the pit to be his home town's MP for even longer.

Now, Lord Mason of Barnsley, he served for 30 years from 1953.

Eric Illsley, born on the town's Kendray estate and a former official of the NUM, took what had now become Barnsley Central, in 1987.

In fact in seven decades the only MP who was not actually born in Barnsley was Sidney Schofield. He held the seat for two years from 1951.

Schofield, who went on to become General Secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers, was the only "outsider".

He came from Pontefract. It is 15 miles across the border in West Yorkshire.

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Two weeks after his Crown Court appearance Eric Illsley is still technically the Member of Parliament for Barnsley Central even though he is on bail awaiting sentencing after admitting fiddling his expenses.

Twenty four hours after his appearance in court he issued an abject apology to the constituency that had re-elected him for the sixth time at last year's General Election.

In the same statement he said he would resign "soon".

A couple of hours later his agent said that meant within two weeks.

There has been no word since then and until he officially goes the disgraced MP is blocking the process of calling of a by-election to replace him.

Even though Eric Illsley is guilty of the 21st Century crime of fiddling his expenses he has to get round a bit of 17th Century legislation to quit.

In 1624 parliament decided that it was so important for MPs to keep on serving their constituents that they were legally barred for resigning between elections.

By the 19th Century it soon became apparent that in some circumstances, usually through illness or moving on to another job, an MP had to stand down.

So instead of resigning MPs have to apply to be appointed to a number of "offices of profit under the crown".

Legally anybody holding a crown office cannot sit in the House of Commons. The Chancellor of the Exchequer appoints these positions.

There is no pay involved but the holder of the title cannot be an MP.

There used to be many of these posts but now four are used and appointments are made in turn.

There are three positions as Crown Steward and Bailiff of the three Chiltern Hundreds of Stoke, Desborough and Burnham.

The other is the Crown Stewardship and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead.

The Manor of Northstead is the next in line for an appointment.

So Eric Illsley will join a long list appointments to the Manor of Northstead.

Amongst them are:

- Dick Tavern the Lincoln Labour MP temporarily left parliament in October 1972 to fight and win back his seat as the first of the Social Democrats;

- Former Labour cabinet member and Chesterfield MP Eric Varley became become Chairman of Coalite in January 1984;

- Ian Paisley and Enoch Powell both left the House of Commons in protest over the Anglo Irish agreement of 1985;

- Robert Kilroy Silk became a TV star in 1986;

- Leon Brittan the Conservative MP for Richmond and Cabinet Member was appointed a European Commissioner in 1988;

- Boris Johnson became Mayor of London in 2008.

But Eric Illsley will join the very select few on that long list who are leaving because of breaking the law.

Until he does the process of calling a by-election cannot begin.

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It is a jobs bonanza from the North Sea that could turn the Humber into another Aberdeen. This time the source of power for this potential economic miracle is not oil or gas - but the wind.

This week the global engineering company Siemens picked a run down docks near Hull as "preferred site" to build an assembly plant for a new generation of giant wind turbines which must be installed in their thousands off shore if the UK is to meet its renewable energy targets by 2020.

That single plant brings with it the possibility of up to 900 jobs in what has been an unemployment blackspot for a generation.

Thousands more could be on the way if the supply chain for this huge project can be persuaded to locate on sites being made available on both sides of the Humber.
And that would bring a knock-on effect for component manufacturers right the way across industrial Yorkshire.

One senior executive of a company bidding for business said that what we are seeing in Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire could be the equivalent of what happened to Aberdeen 40 years ago when it became the centre for building and supplying the North Sea oil industry.

I also spent some time with the boss of a tiny engineering supply company at his office in Sheffield. He is anxious to sell his product to the commercial operators developing those North Sea sites. He is about as far from the sea as you can possibly get in Yorkshire.

But who will do the lobbying at political and commercial level to attract this extra inward investment now that the Regional Development Agency Yorkshire Forward is being wound down on the orders of the Coalition Government?

A special edition of the Politics Show for Yorkshire and Lincolnshire poses that question on BBC 1 on Sunday 23 January at 12 noon.

Myself and presenter Tim Iredale have been interviewing business leaders and government ministers. I even trecked down to the Midlands home of that outspoken advocate of British engineering Lord Digby Jones who was headhunted by Gordon Brown to join the government as a trade minister after leaving his job as Director General of the CBI.

The affable Digby Jones knows a fair bit about engineering and manufacturing. He has joined quite a few of the best known names in the field since his time as Director General of the CBI and then a globe trotting Minister head hunted by Gordon Brown to drum up international trade for Britian.

He now the chairman of classic motorcycle manufacturer Triumph and is a board member of both Jaguar and JCB.

He says the potential is enormous but there's a big problem the region must adress.

Achievement levels in education and training must be put in order if global businesses are going to be tempted to switch their manufacturing plant here rather than to Germany or Holland.

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Labour will announce its choice of a replacement for disgraced Barnsley Central MP Eric Illsley within a week.

I understand that e-mails to all members will go out today detailing the timetable which will lead to a final selection meeting on the evening of Thursday 27 January.

As Barnsley Central is one of the safest Labour seats in the country the party can expect a flood applications over this weekend before nominations close at noon on Monday 24 January.

The party's National Executive will then select a short list which will be put to Barnsley Central members at the selection meeting.

So far two local councillors have said they will throw their hats into the ring and a number of losing Labour candidates at last year's General Election have been expressing an interest.

Labour is clearly expecting a by-election within weeks but so far Eric Illsley is sitting tight as the MP so a date cannot be fixed.

There has been anger in the town that he remains as an MP on full salary 10 days after admitting to Southwark Crown Court that he fiddled over £14,000 in expenses.

He was freed on bail until next month's sentencing hearing and within 48 hours had issued a statement apologising for his actions and saying that he would resign soon.

Nothing more has been more has been heard from him since.

Although he faces the likelihood of prison when he returns to court he is not automatically barred from sitting in the House of Commons unless his sentence is for more than 12 months.

For the past few months he has been sitting as an Independent because the Labour Party suspended him as soon as police charged him with his offences.

That was just a few weeks after the General Election where he easily retained the Barnsley Central seat he has held since 1987 with a majority of just over 11,000.

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Have you heard the one about the BBC reporter who was sent abroad to report on prostitution and discovered he needed a couple of extra nights to on the job?

It actually happened but it is certainly no joke.

Sean Stowell produced an astonished report from Germany for the Yorkshire and Lincolnshire edition of the Politics Show.

He showed the extraordinary arrangements taken by the authorities in the city of Cologne to tackle violence against prostitutes on the streets.

The result is a prostitutes' "drive-in" at the end of a specially constructed private road.

Cars must park so close to the wall on the driver's side that the door cannot be opened.

For the passenger there's plenty of space to get out to a panic button installed on the wall. There's even an escape route through a door which automatically locks when anybody goes through it.

Violence against the women sex workers in Cologne is minimal.

Back I Bradford exactly thirty years after the Yorkshire Ripper's reign of terror came to an end I discussed the Cologne report with senior police officers and politicians.

After all, there were calls for changes in the law to protect street girls from violence back in those dark days when Peter Sutcliffe stalked West Yorkshire. Not all of his 13 victims were prostitutes but many of them were.

Has much changed to stop men like him?

Just last month the self-styled "cross-bow cannibal", Stephen Griffiths, admitted murdering three prostitutes in the city.

Alison Rose was a young uniformed police constable on the beat in Halifax at the height of the Ripper's reign of terror.

Today she is Superintendant Rose and in charge of operations for West Yorkshire Police in South Bradford.

She says legalising soliciting and setting up a Cologne-style "drive-in" would not work in Bradford because the prime reason young women going out on the streets is the "Class A drugs problem".

She says that women who are raising money to feed a drugs habit would not use a facility which is regulated in this way.

And even in Germany women using drugs are not welcome in the specially created "tolerance zone".

Superintendant Rose favours the twin approach of tackling drugs and squeezing customers both financially and publically.

She points out that police have the powers to crush a car being driven by anyone found not to have insurance.

Any man convicted of curb crawling faces a maximum £250 fine.

She wants bigger penalties with the money made available to enhance support schemes to help women come off drugs and the streets.

She also wants compulsory DNA testing of the men convicted in red light areas and an "ugly mugs" scheme where photographs are taken and published in the local press.

She is backed up by the leader of Bradford City Council Ian Greenwood.

"What's the point of setting up tolerance zones which will allow young women the scope to feed their drugs habit?" he told me.

But Bradford South MP Gerry Sutcliffe has a different view. He doesn't feel that the "drive-ins" would ever be accepted in the UK but he does support a quiet part of the city being designated for legal prostitution.

In fact, as a Home Office minister under the Labour Government, he proposed "tolerance zones".

But he does make one point which must strike a chord with all the families whose loved ones have died on the streets at the hands of violent men.

"The problem," he says, "is we keep talking about this. But nothing is done."

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There has been astonished reaction on the streets of Barnsley to disgraced MP Eric Illsley's announcement that he will keep the town waiting for another two weeks before he formally resigns.

There is bewilderment that Eric Illsley can even be in a position where he can choose when he goes.

But House of Commons rules are clear. Unless the Barnsley Central MP is put behind bars for more than a year he is not automatically disqualified from office.

At the moment he is on bail and will be sentenced next month after admitting defrauding the taxpayer of £14,000 by deliberately inflating allowance claims on his second home.

He has now admitted he cannot go on and has issued a statement saying he will resign but not just yet.

So why the delay?

Well, those who buttonholed me in the town's market today were quick to point out that he remains on full pay until things are sorted out.

That is around £1,300 a week.

But there is also concern that his actions are blocking a by-election being called.

The clock cannot start ticking on the six weeks it takes to hold a by-election until the speaker receives Eric Illsley's letter saying he no longer wants to be an MP.

There was also concern that he could be due a big payout as compensation for leaving his job.

In fact, until the reform of MPs expenses and allowances last year he would have been entitles to around £65,000 in a "transition payment". But that has now been abolished.

But taxpayers will not entirely be cutting their losses when Eric Illsley officially stops being an MP.

Under the new rules he is entitles to £40,609 "winding up expenses" to cover the cost of paying off the three research and secretarial staff he employs and moving out of his office accommodation.

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Eric Illsley

Barnsley Central MP Eric Illsley has today become the first sitting member to be convicted of fraud for fiddling his expenses.

Right up until today's scheduled hearing at Southwark Crown Court in London he had protested his innocence.

But he switched his plea to guilty at the 11th hour to admit dishonestly inflating claims for reimbursement of his Council tax and other running costs at his second home in London to the tune of £14,000.

He will now have to wait a month to hear what his sentence will be.

At the back of his mind must be the case of David Chaytor, the former Halifax councillor and Lancashire MP who was sentenced to 18 months in prison just a few days ago.

But now come the questions for Barnsley and the House of Commons authorities.

The law says that any sitting MP is automatically thrown out of the house if sentenced to a year or more in prison.

Clearly it is up to the courts to decide the appropriate punishment.

If Eric Illsley receives less than 12 months he could insist on continuing as an MP. In theory he could still receive his salary from behind bars.

Nobody from the Labour Party in Yorkshire is speaking at the moment but privately I hear that is seen as the horror scenario.

Would he do it?

Well, he has stubbornly sat it out for months as an Independent after the Labour Party suspended him when he was charged just a few weeks after last year's general election.

On the occasions I have met him since then he has said how unfair it has been to single him out. He insists other MPs had been dealt with by sending a cheque for repayment of expense "accidentally" or "mistakenly" claimed and maybe a slap over the wrist from the parliamentary authorities.

Clearly the police and the court think his actions are far more serious than that.

This is all academic if his sentence is more than 12 months.

In which case he would join a small select group of sitting MPs who have been thrown out of the House because of lengthy jail sentences.

In fact I can only find the case of Peter Baker, the Conservative MP for South Norfolk, who was sentenced to seven years for forgery. Never heard of him? Not surprising it was in 1954!

John Stonehouse, the former Labour minister, resigned before he actually started his sentence for fraud in 1976.

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New Labour leader Ed Miliband is certainly not being blindly followed by his fellow Yorkshire MPs when it comes to the debate over ditching the first-past-the-post election system.

Both the Labour Yes! for Fairer Voting Campaign and the No2AV camps scrambled for attention in what is normally the political dead zone between the Christmas and New Year holidays.

Between them they had grabbed a fair bit of the space in my e-mail inbox by the time I returned from my Christmas break.

Ed Miliband had made it a key part of his leadership election campaign that he supports the switch to AV.

That is not much of a surprise as he wrote the party's general election manifesto which promised this May's referendum in the first place.

What is perhaps more surprising is the long list of Yorkshire and North Midlands MPs who have apparently signed up to the No campaign.

So far, they number 14.

It brings together some strange bedfellows with the shadow health minister and Wentworth MP John Healey marching side-by-side with Bolsover's veteran left-winger Dennis Skinner under the No2AV campaign banner.

The rest of those listed as opposing AV include Sheffield MPs Clive Betts and David Blunkett; South Yorkshire's Caroline Flint and Angela Smith; West Yorkshire's Gerry Sutcliffe, George Mudie, Rachel Reeves and Linda Riordan. North Derbyshire new boy Toby Perkins has also said he disagrees with his party leader.

Apparently, Huddersfield's Barry Sheerman was a little put out when he was also included on the No campaign's list. He told his local Huddersfield Examiner that he has yet to make up his mind.

The numbers of our region's Labour MPs definitely following their leader by supporting the switch to AV are a little thinner.

The "Labour Yes! for Fairer Voting Campaign" lists Leeds MPs Hilary Benn and Fabian Hamilton; York's Hugh Bayley; Sheffield's Paul Blomfield and the region's sole Labour MEP MEP Linda McAvan.

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