I detect enthusiasm in Team Boris for the work of district auditor Michael Haworth-Maden. As he writes in this letter he's been looking into "allegations...reported in the media in late 2007/early 2008 concerning the former Mayor's Policy Director - Equality and Policing" - that's Lee Jasper, to you and me. He goes on to explain:
My work at the LDA in respect of these matters is still in progress, in particular having regard to ongoing police investigations, and I am not therefore able to report my findings to that organisation at this time. I have, however, completed my work at the Greater London Authority.
That work is to be considered by the Audit Panel next week but you can consider it now. It stresses (para 7) that:
The scope of my work was to assess the adequacy of the Authority's investigation into the allegations and the validity of the subsequent findings and conclusions drawn...my focus is the Authority's arrangements for securing value for money.
In other words, he aks if the GLA under Ken Livingstone's mayoralty did its job properly in terms of testing the allegations and acting on what it found. It also looks at arrangements for funding organisations and GLA staff declaring interests. Some of it's main findings are:
- "whilst I have found no evidence of the misappropriation of funds," the organisation couldn't show that it had secured value for money and that there was some sloppy commissioning and monitoring (para 12)- there were "omissions in the recorded declaration of required interests," made by Jasper and that "the governance arrangements of the Authority were not as they should have been" in this respect (paras 13 and 14). He also finds that "the role in the sign off process for the related Mayoral approvals was also, in my view, in a number of cases inappropriate given his interests."
- "no evidence of fraud and/or corruption has been identified," (para 17), "the amounts of the specific grants themselves are small in the overall financial context of the Authority" (para 18) and "the costs of further work on my part that would fall on the public purse cannot, in my view, be justified." (para 19)
Those are my highlights one the basis of a first reading. So far, I'm sticking to my usual line on this saga: it wasn't good or clever, but it wasn't the scandal of the century either. You, of course, can make up your own minds.
