Boris Watch

[again crossing posts with Mr. Stop Boris - apologies for duplication]

I was fairly ambivalent about the Lewis case up until now - internal church disciplinary issues are a matter for the church, the police evidently weren’t bothered about criminality and Newham witholding cash is, again, up to them (although he’s now not allowed to claim they still are, there was sufficient confusion over it from Newham’s end for some benefit of the doubt).  However, if this latest from Dave Hill is anything to go by it’s looking actually rather serious.

Lewis had three main claims to be a suitable man for a top job in Team Boris - a leadership role in the Church, a job as a prison governor and as a JP - a Justice of the Peace.  JPs are, obviously, upright, honest citizens and have to stick to quite tough rules.  They’re the front line of Justice in this country and must be seen to be worthy of that role.  If Lewis is considered sufficiently honest to be a JP, the argument goes, what the Church thinks of him is fairly much irrelevant.  Fine argument as far as it goes, but what’s this now:

Ray Lewis “Is Not And Never Has Been A Magistrate”
The Ministry of Justice has just used those very words to me

If this is backed up (remembering the MoJ used to be the Home Office and their record keeping isn’t always great) then he’s not only given a false impression of his honesty but has actually pretended to be something he isn’t.  If you pretend you’re a police officer it’s a serious offence.  So is pretending to be a JP or magistrate.

Now, is there wiggle room?  What has Lewis actually said about being a JP?  Boris yesterday in his supporting statement said of the allegations:

These allegations did not stop him from becoming a JP. They did not stop him from becoming an outstanding and respected prison governor. They did not stop him founding a school that has done untold good for East London children and they should not stop him from serving as my deputy Mayor.”

Back when he was announced, what were the words used.  Operation Black Vote report:

Lewis who is also a magistrate (JP), motto is: “We see no shortage of young black males in the courtrooms, so my vision is to seek to prepare as many as possible for the boardrooms.”

So the world was indeed given to understand that he was a magistrate/JP, back in the first week of May.  There’s therefore no semantic defence that referring to Lewis as a ‘JP’ doesn’t mean ‘magistrate’ as used by the MoJ - the roles and titles of judges have been mucked around with in recent years - stipendiary magistrates are now called ‘District Judges’, for instance, but the concept of JP being a layman with no legal qualifications appointed on the basis of intelligence and honesty to pass judgement on minor offences is still perfectly true.

What rather beggars belief is that no one checked this back in May.  How far have the Labour Party machine sunk from the Mandelson/Campbell rapid rebuttal days, eh?  We now have to rely on the Double Standard, which appears to have woken up:

A City Hall spokesman insisted that the Mayor and his officials were satisfied Mr Lewis had been adequately checked, and repeated the claim that he had been vetted as a magistrate.

“Boris appointed a man who had been vetted as a magistrate, a prison governor, who had set up a charity and worked with children. He has been through the strongest vetting process outside of MI5,” said the spokesman.

There’s a lot more in there about Lewis seeming to have slalomed through a lot the normal vetting procedures on the basis that people already trusted him (what’s the point of vetting procedures then, Boris?).

There remains just one chink in this which may let him off the charge of deliberate dishonesty (but not the one of misleading) - if he was vetted for the job as magistrate and cleared, but never actually sat as one, then both the MoJ story (’Has Never Been A Magistrate’) and the City Hall spokesman one (’Had Been Vetted As A Magistrate’) are both true.  However, he can’t say he’s been a JP or rely on that as part of his experience.

It seems increasingly clear that his main employment has been as a church minister with a brief period at a junior level in the prison service, which does slightly make one wonder whether the ‘100 academies’ he wants to set up are any more than faith schools promoted by the evangelical conservative wing of the Anglican church but funded by London taxpayers (which I, personally, would be extremely angry about - this is a multifaith city after all, not a testing ground for reactionary religiously-inspired social theories promoted by the likes of John Sentamu, the neocon’s favourite Archbishop and patron of Lewis’ EYLA).

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