Mayor Johnson's defence of the events by which Veronica Wadley became his choice to chair of the Arts Council's London regional committee rests on two arguments. One concerns the role of Sir David Durie, and I'll return to that later. The other is contained in the Mayor's office's account of his telephone conversation on 17 July with ACE chair Liz Forgan.
According to this (which was released to me last Thursday) Forgan told Boris she thought Wadley "would not be the best advocate for London on the national council [of ACE]" had "an 'amatuerish' experience of the arts and was 'a long chalk' behind the other 3 candidates put forward." City Hall's account also says:
LF also outlined her misgivings about the process, arguing that three very serious people had been put through an open process. LF argued that it would have been different if BJ had said at the start that he intended to appoint a specific candidate, but that he had set up a different process.
However, the City Hall account also says:
The Mayor concluded he would think about what LF had said. He noted he might need to see all 4 candidates and said that it might be in the course of the interviews that he came to the same conclusion as LF. LF replied she couldn't say fairer than than that, and thought it would be very helpful for the Mayor to see all four candidates. She repeated this was the Mayor's appointment and wanted someone with whom the Mayor felt
comfortable.
This is the part of the City Hall account taken issue with most directly in the ACE "note of clarification" issued later the same day. It says:
Liz Forgan made completely plain her opposition to his behaviour and set this out in a letter to him of 6 July 2009. His proposal to interview the three recommended candidates as well as the candidate whose name was not put forward was only "fairer" in the context of what she clearly pointed out to him was a grossly unfair alternative – the dropping of a name that the panel had judged as being of sufficient merit to forward to him.
Moreover:
Liz Forgan's letter to the Department of Culture, Media and Sport fully explained her reasons for concluding that the Mayor's nomination had breached the agreed process and had not been made on merit. They were and are unaffected by the telephone conversation of July 17.
As Munira Mirza later wrote to EDCST chair Dee Doocey, there was nothing in that letter about Forgan saying it would be "helpful for the Mayor to see all four candidates" nor any indication that she was content with any aspect of his wishing to interview Wadley. But in a statement preceding its "note of clarification" ACE alleged that Mirza's letter gives "a misleading account of events".
So there we have it. Forgan says that she made clear in a letter to Boris on 6 July (which I haven't seen) that her "opposition to his behaviour" over Wadley was complete, just as her letter to the DCMS of 18 August did. She says that the telephone conversation with Boris on 17 July made no difference to her position.
For its part, City Hall is resting on its account of that telephone conversation of 17 July - both the written account itself and the reference to it in Mirza's letter to Doocey - to suggest that Forgan had, in fact, reached some sort of compromise with the Mayor over his wish to interview Wadley and, in the end, despite all her misgivings about the process and Wadley's suitability, had expressed contentment with his intention to do so then failed to mention this in her letter to the DCMS.
The EDCST committee meets tomorrow. In agenda item 8 it is "recommended to note the correspondence relating to the Chair of the Arts Council for London." What form will said noting take?
