Shirley Porter
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Dame Shirley Porter DBE (born 29 November 1930) is a former British Conservative leader of Westminster City Council in London. She is the daughter and heir of Jack Cohen, the founder of Tesco supermarkets. She was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1991.
While leader of Westminster City Council she oversaw the "Building Stable Communities" policy, later derided as "homes for votes". The policy was judged illegal by the district auditor, and a surcharge of £27m levied on her in 1996. In a review of the biography of Mrs Porter by Andrew Hosken (see: Further reading) Nicholas Lezard described her as "...the most corrupt British political figure in living memory, with the possible exception of Robert Maxwell. " [1]. She retired to Israel in 1993 during the inquiry, and lived in self-imposed exile until 2006.
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[edit] Origins and political career
She was born in Clapton, London, and married Sir Leslie Porter in 1949. In 1974, she was elected to Westminster City Council as a Conservative councillor for Hyde Park Ward. In the early 1980s, she chaired the Environment Committee, calling for strict enforcement of litter laws. In 1983, she was elected as Leader of the Council.
[edit] Building Stable Communities
The Conservatives were narrowly re-elected in Westminster in the 1986 local council elections. Fearing that they would eventually lose control unless there was a permanent change in the social composition of the borough, Porter instituted a secret policy known as Building Stable Communities.
Eight wards were selected as 'key wards' - in public it was claimed that these wards were subject to particular 'stress factors' leading to a decline in the population of Westminster. In reality, secret documents showed that the wards most subject to these stress factors were rather different, and that the eight wards chosen had been the most marginal in the City Council elections of 1986. Three - Bayswater, Maida Vale and Millbank, had been narrowly won by Labour, a further three, St. James's, Victoria and Cavendish had been narrowly lost by them, in West End ward an Independent had split the two seats with the Conservatives while in Hamilton Terrace the Conservatives were threatened by the SDP.
An important part of this policy was the designation of much of Westminster's welfare housing (council housing) for commercial sale, rather than re-letting when the properties became vacant. The designated housing was concentrated in those wards most likely to change hands to Labour in the elections. Much of this designated housing lay vacant for months or even years before it could be sold. To prevent its occupation by squatters or drug dealers, these flats were fitted with security doors provided by the company Sitex at a cost to local tax payers of £50 per week per door.
Other council services were subverted to ensure the re-election of the majority party in the 1990 elections. In services as disparate as street cleaning, pavement repair and environmental improvements, marginal wards were given priority while safely Labour and safely Conservative parts of the City were neglected.
Another vital part of Building Stable Communities was the removal of homeless voters and others who lived in hostels and were perceived less likely to vote Conservative, such as students and nurses, from the City of Westminster. While this initially proved successful, other Councils in London and the Home Counties soon became aware of homeless individuals and families from Westminster, many with complex mental health and addiction problems, being dumped in their area.
As the City Council found it more and more difficult to move homeless people outside Westminster, increasingly the logic of Building Stable Communities required the concentration of homeless people within safe wards in the City. The most morally disturbing aspect of Building Stable Communities occurred in 1989 when over 100 homeless families were removed from hostels in marginal wards and placed in the Hermes and Chantry Point tower blocks in the safe Labour ward of Harrow Road. These blocks were riddled with the most dangerous form of asbestos, and should have either been cleaned up or demolished a decade before, but had somehow remained in place due to funding disputes between the City Council and the by now abolished Greater London Council. Many of the flats had had their heating and santitation systems destroyed by the council to prevent their use as drug dens, others had indeed been taken over by heroin users and still others had pigeons making nests out of asbestos, with the level of asbestos in flats in Hermes and Chantry Points well above safe norms.
Labour councillors and members of the public referred this policy to the District Auditor to check on its legality, and as a result it was ordered to be halted in 1989 whilst investigations continued. Nevetheless the plan had already done its work and, in 1990, the Conservatives were re-elected in Westminster in a landslide election victory in which they won all but one of the wards targeted by Building Stable Communities.
Porter stood down as Leader of the Council in 1991, and served as Lord Mayor of Westminster in 1991-2. She resigned from the council in 1993, and retired to live in Israel with her husband.
[edit] Court cases
In 1996, after much complicated legal investigation work, the District Auditor finally concluded that the Building Stable Communities policy had been illegal, and ordered Porter and five others to pay the cost of the illegal policy, which were calculated as £27,000,000. This judgement was upheld by the High Court in 1997 with liability reduced solely to Porter and her Deputy Leader, David Weeks.
The Court of Appeal overturned the judgement in 1999, but the House of Lords reinstated it in 2001. In Israel, Porter transferred substantial parts of her great wealth to other members of her family and into secret trusts in an effort to avoid the charge, and subsequently claimed assets of only £300,000. [1]
[edit] Final agreement
On 24 April 2004, Westminster City Council and the Audit Commission announced that an agreement had been reached for a payment of £12.3 million in settlement of the debt. The Council declared that the cost of legal action would be far greater than the amount to be recovered, while Porter still maintained her innocence. The decision was appealed by Labour members on the Council and the District Auditor began another investigation. The ensuing report, issued on 15th March 2007, accepted the position of the council that further action would not be cost effective.[citation needed] The Auditor further stated that Westminster had recovered substantially all of Dame Shirley's personal wealth[citation needed] and had acted at all times in the best interests of the tax payers of the City.[citation needed]
The Labour Party in London has continued its pursuit of Porter and following the settlement, Porter has returned to Westminster to live, buying a £1.5m flat with family money (her husband and son are independently[citation needed] wealthy)[2] [3]. The Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, subsequently requested that Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney General, commence an investigation into Shirley Porter to determine if she committed perjury, or other offences, during the conduct of the 'homes for votes' case. [4]
[edit] Miscellaneous
In the early 1990s, Porter was chairman of Chelverton Investments, which owned London radio station LBC. In 1993 the station was unsuccessful in renewing its licences and Chelverton Investments went bankrupt in 1994 leaving many staff and contributors jobless and in financial difficulty.
[edit] References
- ^ Porter's son in US loan row – The Observer, Sunday February 18, 2007
- ^ Evening Standard. August 7, 2006
- ^ Guardian August 7, 2006
- ^ Letter from Mayor Livingstone to Lord Goldsmith, August 18, 2006
[edit] Further reading
- Hosken, Andrew. Nothing Like a Dame: The Scandals of Lady Porter. ISBN 1-86207-809-2
- Paul, Dimoldenberg. "The Westminster Whistleblowers: Shirley Porter, Homes for Votes and Scandal in Britain's Rottenest Borough". ISBN 1-84275-179-4
