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Independent inquiry rejects Evening Standard smears against Livingstone administration

Tuesday, 07 July 2009 13:42

The Guardian on 2 July reported that another independent inquiry into the three months of allegations of corruption against Ken Livingstone’s administration by the Evening Standard immediately before the last Mayoral election has rejected the corruption charges.

The Guardian reported:

`Allegations that Ken Livingstone's former mayoral administration exerted undue influence on grant funding decisions made by the London Development Agency have been quashed in an independent report, following an 18-month review.

`The findings by the legal firm DLA Piper, conducted for the LDA, found no evidence of widespread external interference in LDA decision-making, and kicks into touch some of the allegations that dogged Livingstone's final months in power.

`Reserving its strongest criticisms for systemic project management failures within the LDA, the regional development agency for London, the report concluded that there was no evidence of "any involvement" of any of the mayor's policy directors or other representatives of the GLA in all but three of the 55 projects reviewed.

`The involvement on the part of the Greater London authority of Livingstone's adviser Lee Jasper in the remaining projects was "limited", the report added, "and does not appear to have affected the application of the LDA's decision-making process".’

It might be expected that having devoted page after page to its allegations virtually daily for month after month before the Mayoral election, that the Evening Standard would feel obliged to report that its charges have been rejected by an independent investigation. Instead the Standard said nothing.

Dave Hill commented on his London blog:

‘The Standard and the LDA: sorrier still

‘Let's build a timeline.

‘January, 2008: The LDA publishes a review of the Lee Jasper affair, one conducted in conjunction with the prestigious auditing company Deloitte. The review rubbished most of a glut of allegations that had appeared in the Evening Standard and passed those outside its competence to the police.

July 2008: Boris Johnson's Tory Forensic Audit Panel publishes the report he commissioned on GLA and LDA spending. It claimed to have found examples of Ken ‘Livingstone's advisers' involvement being "inappropriate and excessive" and creating "confusion", but said such interventions "did not breach any rules or protocols." (para 2.8).

‘March 2009: The Audit Commission produces its annual audit letter, relating to 2007/2008. This refers to past "serious governance and performance management failures" (para 10) and "poor" accounting and auditing procedures (para 22) within the LDA, but makes no direct reference to Lee Jasper or other members of Livingstone's team.

‘April 2009: The LDA publishes a fully independent review of the allegations made by the Standard, conducted by the law firm DLA Piper. As the Guardian reported yesterday, this criticised Jasper's involvement in one of the many projects the Standard wrote about as "entirely inappropriate" (para 34). But it found evidence of involvement by Jasper, any of Livingstone's other policy advisers or anyone else at the GLA in just three of the 55 projects to receive LDA funding that it reviewed (para 9.2). It judges this involvement to have been "limited", and to have made no difference to the LDA's decision-making processes (para 9.3).

‘Meanwhile, no one has gone to jail for stealing anything. And that is the story so far of how the bad old Evening Standard's 2008 election "cronyism" stories are falling apart.’