Following the GLA grilling of Sir Simon Milton and Martin Clarke (the GLA finance chief, inherited from the previous regime) on Martin ‘Mayorwatch’ Hoscik’s Twitter feed:
Milton says Chief of Staff is not his official role although the Mayor sometimes calls him it.
Milton says he signs off Mayoral decisions before the reach the Mayor and helps in the recruitment of otyher Mayoral advisors.
Makes it clear he isn’t the line manager for other Mayoral advisors. Clarke says “no-one” has been exempted form the GLAs rules on expenses.
Clarke says Clement requested the card, he was given it as the equiv post holder under Ken held one.
Being questioned by LibDem Mike Tuffrey he confirms no other person in the Mayor’s team holds a card.
Clarke: In April, May and June the expenses were signed off by the Mayor himself.
Tuffrey asks why the Mayor isn’t present to answer why he signed off the expenses.
Faces of Tory AMs on the Committee show they know how serious this issue, and Clarke’s last answer, is.
The Committee is now talking about adjourning tosummon the Mayor to a future meeting.
They will question Clarke today, but it sseems Milton is unable to answer anything of importance.
So there we have it, at some point this year Boris decided to start signing off people’s expenses himself, which begs two questions: first, why did this change happen and second, is Boris qualified to do it, given that the first anomalies were discovered in November? We’ll see when the list of expenses incurred since April has been analysed by teams of crack crowdsourcing zeitgeisty people and stuck up somewhere.
What’s clear is that this issue is now dragging the Mayor in, amid increasingly desperate shouts of ‘Lee Jasper’ and ‘Look, it shows Boris is decisive’. As Boris said in an interview at the State of London shindig, he didn’t want to ‘intrude on private grief’ over the MPs expenses, but it looks very much like private grief is intruding on him.
Update: Boris apparently became aware of the misuse on the 1st June, about seven months or so later than his team. Boris apparently wasn’t aware Clement even had a card.
Tags: credit card · expenses · gla · ian clement · scandal · tuffrey7 Comments
7 responses so far ↓
Boris wasn’t aware of previous years’ St Georges’ Day events, either, despite having said in MQT that he’d be spending the same amount of money on this year’s events as was…er…spent last year.
The Leadership under The Right Honourable Mayor for London Boris Johnson is now starting to look Delirious and Deluded if this is what Boris Johnson’s idea of Transparecy and Accountability is . Maybe it is about time Boris Johnson handed in his Resignation along with the long list of others that has occured in such a short space of time under his Mayoralty .. Once Boris Johnson has handed in his resignation he could take a vacation with Ray Lewis , the man he wants to employ again once he can clear his name after all those numerous allegations of crimes that he commited . As a Londoner I am horrified by how many resignations have taken place since Sir Ian Blair , Ray Lewis and others and now this. The GLA needs to get a tight grip on this situation befor they become a complete laughing stock.
They’ll be down to Johnson and Sir Simon soon enough, Leo. Then the latter can lock the former in his office and do the job himself.
Who *was* the equivalent post-holder under Ken?
The Head of the European Office, Anne Harradine, an old Ken crony from Brent days. It can be readily understood that she was based abroad and responsible for London’s relations with a political union of 25 countries and 400 million people, while Ian Clement was representing a few borough Tories, so the equivalence is obvious, all right.
Does beg the question as to who’s running the European Office under Boris, since AFAIK he hasn’t actually closed it.
To my knowledge no member of Ken Livingstone’s office had a corporate credit card nor ever asked for one. Corporate credit cards were held only by permanent GLA staff who were not not the Mayor’s Office advisers and were not appointed by the Mayor.
Therefore this statement that the equivalent person under Ken Livingstone’s administration had a corporate credit card is very curious. Is it it a misunderstanding of what was said in the report and if it is stated that someone in an equivalent position to Iam Clement held one could it be stated who it was, I held an equivalent position to Ian Clement, certainly did not have a corporate credit card and as I knew the other members of Ken Livingstone’s office I believe none of them had a corporate credit card either. Therefore it would be important to know if the statement made was correct or whether, as appears more likely, it was only under Boris Johnson’s administration that corporate credit cards were issued to any of his advisers.
All I heard was that IIRC Martin Clarke said that the equivalent person was the head of the European Office, and she held one. I was being slightly snide about equivalence, since there isn’t much equivalence between someone whose job is external affairs based in Brussels and someone whose job is external affairs based in Bexley other than the words ‘external affairs’.
I assumed that since the European Office is based away from City Hall there was some arrangement for local expenses to be handled locally, like a Euro bank account/credit card or something, which would seem to be reasonable, but for all I know they may have been scrutinised back in London before being approved, or something – you’d know more than me, John.
What we’re all also assuming is that a) Clement isn’t the sole source of the idea that the equivalent post holder held a card and b) if so, that he was telling the truth. Do we think for a moment that proper checks would have been carried out if he’d rocked up saying ‘hey, I should get one because so-and-so did in the last administration’. Good chaps don’t question good chaps, as we’ve seen.