23 March 2017

Molly Scott Cato, Green MEP for the South West, has accused the government of failing consumers and the environment over energy policy. The accusation follows new projections from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) which estimate that onshore wind and solar will be as cheap or cheaper than gas by 2020 [1]. BEIS now acknowledge an increased role for renewables, particularly due to potential improvements in battery storage. Molly Scott Cato said:

“Having hammered the renewables sector for ideological reasons, the government now discovers that wind and solar are set to become the cheapest ways to generate electricity.

“Government energy policy supposedly seeks to deliver secure, affordable and low carbon energy. They have failed on all three counts. But in particular we now see that by failing to pursue a transition to renewable energy they have missed the opportunity to provide electricity for the consumer at the lowest cost.”

Two years ago, Dr Scott Cato commissioned a report which concluded that the South West could generate over 100% of its energy needs from a mix of renewable sources and create 122,000 new jobs through a renewable energy transition [2]. She said:

“The UK has some of the best potential for renewable energy generation in Europe. It is clear that renewable energy should form the backbone of our economic strategy post-Brexit. This will not only be good for the economy and for creating thousands of new jobs, it would, by the government’s own belated acknowledgement, be good for consumers too.”        

[1] https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-dramatic-shift-uk-government-outlook-gas-clean-energy

[2] http://mollymep.org.uk/2015/04/17/power-to-transform/

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Two reports have been published today that will help inform the government’s review of the State Pension age which is due in May 2017.

The Charity Commission has today (23 March 2017) published a report of its statutory inquiry into the Ipswich Kurdish Islamic Cultural Centre (registered charity number 1149580) (‘the charity’), concluding that there was misconduct and mismanagement in the charity’s administration.

The report sets out multiple failings by the trustees and concludes that the charity’s financial management was poor.

The inquiry, which began in November 2015, found that the trustees:

• made unauthorised salary payments to one trustee amounting to £1,360, even though the charity’s governing document prohibits the employment of trustees
• provided a zero interest loan to 2 members of the local community totalling £20,000 which amounted to twice the size of the charity’s 2015 income
• did not have a safeguarding policy in place despite the fact that the charity operates weekend classes for children

The report also criticises the trustees’ approach to engaging with the Commission, saying that their conduct fell below that which the regulator and the public expect, including by initially failing to take prompt action to address concerns identified by the Commission before it opened the inquiry. Following the opening of the inquiry, and as reflected in the report, the Commission acknowledges improvements in the trustees’ conduct.

As part of the inquiry, the Commission has made an order requiring the trustees to complete a number of actions to address the failings and regulatory concerns identified.

The report states that the regulator will take further regulatory action if the trustees fail to comply with the order within a stated timeframe.

Michelle Russell, Director of Investigations Monitoring and Enforcement at the Charity Commission said:

Our inquiry into the Ipswich Kurdish Islamic Cultural Centre found serious problems and basic failures. As our core guidance, The essential trustee, explains, trustees must comply with their charity’s governing document and the law and must manage their charity’s resources responsibly. That hasn’t always happened at this charity, putting it at risk of not being able to carry out its charitable purposes. I now hope the trustees take the necessary steps we have set out in our Order to improve the charity’s governance in the future.

The full report is available on GOV.UK.

Ends

PR 21/17

Notes to editors

1. The Charity Commission is the independent regulator of charities in England and Wales. To find out more about our work, see our annual report.
2. Search for charities on our online register.

22 March 2017

Caroline Lucas, the co-leader of the Green Party, has responded to Wednesday’s attack in Westminster. 

She said:

“Our thoughts go out to all those affected by today’s attacks and we send deep thanks to the public servants who responded so quickly, bravely, and with care to treat the injured and minimise the number of casualties. We pay tribute to the lives that were so sadly lost and in particular to the police officer who died in the line of duty – we are truly in his debt.

“The response to such a heinous attack must be to strengthen our democracy, and refuse to give in to those who would harm it.”

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22 March 2017

The Domestic Extremism unit run by the Metropolitan Police deleted files in a bid to cover up illegal hacking of campaigners’ emails, a police whistleblower has revealed to Green peer Jenny Jones.

The unit, called the National Domestic Extremism and Disorder Intelligence Unit (NDEDIU), deleted the files in May 2014 to hide the fact an operative, who was working under orders from a police officer, had been spying on the email accounts of a number of environmental and social justice campaigners. The police officer had been supplied with the campaigners’ passwords by the Covert Human Intelligence Source, the whistleblower revealed.

Lawyers at Bindmans, who are acting on behalf of Jenny Jones and others whose files had been shredded by the NDEDIU approached six of the people on the list to verify that the private email accounts and passwords were theirs. They then presented the letter to senior investigators at the Independent Police Complaints Commission and Baroness Jones had a follow-up meeting with the deputy head of the IPCC (over a week ago) to discuss what progress had been made. Baroness Jones discussed with the IPCC when she intended to publish.

Jenny Jones said:

”This illegal hacking by a police officer along with the collusion of officers within the Domestic Extremism Unit, is one of the worst cases of state snooping that I’ve ever heard. The personal information within the letter is accurate and it could only have been obtained illegally. There is more than enough to justify a full-scale criminal investigation into the activities of these police officers and referral to a public inquiry. I have urged the IPCC to act quickly to secure further evidence and to find out how many people were victims of this nasty practice. These emails could have contained personal information about medical conditions, worries of parents about their kids, family arguments and people’s love lives. It is completely unacceptable that the police can stick their noses into the lives of innocent people without a shred of evidence that they are involved in terrorism or serious crime.

“We need an immediate end to the police surveillance of non-violent campaign groups who have no association with serious crime. By allowing the police to spy on environmentalists and campaigners for social justice, the government invites the security services to intrude on ordinary people’s lives. That invitation to snoop provides cover for some officers to go further and to by-pass the law regulating state surveillance to read private emails about people’s personal lives. Whether it is undercover police forming long-term sexual relationships or these allegations that the police employ foreign hackers to open people’s emails. It all starts with the government giving the green light to spy on innocent people.

“I want to praise the brave whistleblowers within the Met Police who have given me this information. Given the appalling treatment by the Met of whistleblowers acting in the public interest,  I can completely understand why police officers might want to remain anonymous. Officers who care about the professionalism and political neutrality of the police are one of mainstays of a democratic society and deserve our support.”

Notes:

1. The IPCC were notified by phone on the 17th February, after six of the ten personal email accounts and passwords contained in the letter had been checked with the people concerned. The first meeting with them and Jenny’s lawyer took place on the 23rd Feb. IPCC investigators have now requested a formal witness statement from Jenny. 

2. The IPCC previously confirmed that there is evidence which suggests other documents were shredded after the Undercover Policing Inquiry (UCPI) was announced, and a specific MPS instruction had been issued that documents should not be destroyed without express permission.

In the IPCC press release Feb 2017, they state that:

Following a referral from the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) in May 2016, the IPCC has been investigating allegations that documents kept by the National Domestic Extremism and Disorder Intelligence Unit (NDEDIU) were shredded in May 2014.

The IPCC can confirm that there is evidence which suggests documents were shredded after the Undercover Policing Inquiry (UCPI) was announced, and a specific MPS instruction had been issued that documents should not be destroyed without express permission.

IPCC Deputy Chair Sarah Green, said “… investigation is ongoing. While the evidence indicates that a large number of documents were shredded over a period of days in May 2014, the difficult task ahead for our investigators is to determine what the documentation was, why it was destroyed, whether electronic copies were kept and who may have ordered its destruction.

“We are also examining what action the Metropolitan Police took once it was alerted, by a member of staff, to the allegations in December 2014.”

“Separately a complaint by Baroness Jenny Jones, that records held by the Metropolitan Police relating to her were destroyed or deleted in or about June 2014, was referred to the IPCC on 27 January. That complaint is now also subject to independent investigation.”

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