So what was Bryony Rudkin’s prejudicial interest in the BT contract scandal?  I’m afraid that it’s actually rather pedestrian, and not sinister in the slightest.  You see, she’s married into the BT family.

Her husband, Steve Rudkin, is a scientist, a rather senior and succesful one, at BT.  Obviously she can’t have anything to do with BT and at least in the decisive meeting this seems to have been the case, at least according to Ipswich Spy.

However that does lead to another question, why on earth was it considered at all appropriate to comment on it in such gushing terms?  Who advised that this could be ever seen as appropriate?  Was advice even requested? Another freedom of information request has been sent.

From Private Eye (pdf):

Pembroke has been waffling since 2005 about becoming an “enabling” council and the huge savings to be achieved by outsourcing on a grand scale.  A year earlier Suffolk embarked on a 10 year “partnership” with BT.

The fact that the leader of Suffolk Council a year earlier had not been Pembroke and that it had been run by a Liberal-Labour coalition may be important.  Perhaps not to the source of the story…

There’s a useful summary of the Look East interview with Michael Gower, the whistle blower on the BT overcharging scandal (although I apologise for the offensive language in the side bars).  It has a rather worrying point:

Michael Gower says that BT have done nothing wrong. “They were being extremely commercial and the council were being rather naive. The contract wasn’t set up properly at the outset and that lead to us paying for a lot of services – or some services – which should have been included in the original contract. It led to ambiguity over what was in the contract and what was out of the contract.”

There is much breast beating now about how the Conservative councl in Suffolk managed to get stuck with a contract.  Of course argue the Guardian and Private Eye, this is the Tories fault (rather than Jeremy Pembroke’s fault – who does seem to deserve a lot of the blame).

Perhaps the Tories could have opposed it, and perhaps Jeremy Pembroke himself should not have been so gung ho for this classic corporatist scheme.  And a good point is that it does not help to make the case for the admittedly necessary outsourcing that we will need to do to preserve services – whatever the unions think.  But the real blame lies with the administration that signed the deal.

I said before that the Bryony Rudkin quote was used in marketing copy, by which I meant a press release.

But there is real marketing copy, on one of the provider’s websites

We chose CGI for its excellent track record in innovative working with government agencies in North America, where it has successfully pioneered its single-window government approach. Having adopted this approach in Suffolk, we are now able to put the priorities of our citizens first and organize the way we deliver council services to meet their needs.

Bryony Rudkin, Leader of Suffolk County Council

And this, where the Labour government puts its seal of approval on the deal, and we have this quote:

Councillor Bryony Rudkin, Leader of Suffolk County Council, said the centre’s success in just four months speaks for itself.

She said: “People expect higher levels of service in all aspects of their lives. Longer, more convenient opening hours, 24 hour web access and help on the end of a phone are commonplace in everything from retailing to banking. In Suffolk we said – why not in public services?”

This is not a pro-Tory point.  The Tories on the County essentially failed as an opposition, which is why they still didn’t control Suffolk when less Tory counties such as Essex and Norfolk went blue.  Jeremy Pembroke is very vulnerable.

Ipswich Spy has a rather turgid account of Suffolk’s BT difficulty, which lights up with an obviously well informed postscript which is worth reproducing in full:

UPDATE: This decision to set up the joint venture was taken behind closed doors in a meeting of county councillors not open to the public on 22nd April 2004. The then leader of the council, Bryony Rudkin, declared a prejudicial interest and so left the meeting during the discussions, but we wonder if she had been involved in negotiating the contract. If she had such a personal conflict of interest that she couldn’t even be in the room when a behind closed doors meeting took a decision, surely her conflict was so great as to taint the negotiating process.

I have put in a freedom of information request for that meeting as well as details of any prejudicial interests that were announced by Bryony Rudkin.

Ipswich Spy raises the role that Bryony Rudkin may have played in the negotiations, and I don’t have that inside knowledge to comment one way or another except to say that I strongly doubt that anything improper – rather than simply stupid – was done in the negotiations or for that matter the winnowing out of competitors to BT.

Talking about the simply stupid, as Bryony Rudkin apparently had a prejudicial interest in the decision why on earth did she make such a glowing tribute to BT after the decision was made?  Unlike the decisions before this is in the public domain.  To repeat:

Bryony Rudkin, Leader of Suffolk County Council, said: “We put BT through an exacting procurement process to ensure they were up to the job. As a result we have confidence our partnership with them will be good for the people of Suffolk, offering the highest quality services and technology at a price which gives our taxpayers excellent value.

Considering the prejudicial interest, why on earth didn’t she get another senior Labour or Liberal councillor to make a statement so gushing that it was used in marketing copy?

Remember the brave new world of early 2005 when Labour still had control of the People’s Republic of Suffolk and Commissar (not yet Dame) Bryony was in charge?

There was a contract with BT which some people couldn’t stop boasting about.  Here’s the story:

And here’s the money quote:

Bryony Rudkin, Leader of Suffolk County Council, said: “We put BT through an exacting procurement process to ensure they were up to the job. As a result we have confidence our partnership with them will be good for the people of Suffolk, offering the highest quality services and technology at a price which gives our taxpayers excellent value.

That the Labour supporting Guardian would omit this information is not surprising.  That the BBC would also omit, oh who am I trying to kid?

This story looks like it could keep on giving.

Even the most loyal Labour scribe (also known as Paul Geater) admits that there is an 11% cut in the nominal income for Suffolk County Council, and in a time or rising prices this is a far larger real cut.  Suffolk County Council have a plan that they think will save the most services by drastically squeezing efficiencies and using the private sector.

You would think that this would put the Labour group in a quandry.  After all if Unison get their way, and the plans are shelved this will mean that the cuts will have to be deeper than they are currently planned to cover for the administrative roles that Unison wants to save.  That’s basic arithmetic.  In Bridge and other Labour held wards the council services are far more used than they are in richer wards.  So supporting Unison will mean hurting Labour constituents in return for rewarding Labour donors.

But Unison members are vastly over represented in both Labour Party membership and in Labour party funds.

So who do Sandy Martin and Dame Bryony represent, their donors or their voters?

Unison is the Countryside Alliance of the Labour Party, they may have money and activists – but you don’t really want to show them to the public.  By all means let them help – but treat them like the junior partner that they are and don’t let them dictate policy as they have been doing locally.  Unison need Labour in a way that Labour simply does not need Unison.

By not realising this Sandy Martin has proved that although he may be a good local representative he’s just not ready for the big time.  Not ready in the slightest.

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From the Labour Party website, how the Ipswich Labour Party voted on first preferences:

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Now I know that our absentee Labour Councillors are decent, well meaning types, but the thing that gets me up in the morning is their patronising attitude that they know best and we, mere residents, know least.  And that we should be grateful for their concern.

The Labour Party conference showed another example of this paternalistic attitude.  Bryony Rudkin attacked the Suffolk County Council divestment plans.  There’s a lot of questions to ask about this, and there is a job of opposition that needs to be done to keep a place healthy.

But what really stuck in my craw, and those who know me can imagine the violent revulsion that I had to this, was this little point:

At the council meeting last Thursday, one Conservative said his village had come together to build a new doctor’s surgery.

“That might be fine in the nice comfortable villages but who’s going to come together to build the doctor’s surgery in my area of Ipswich where there are some quite serious deprivation issues?”

Now, please tell me that was a clap line for a Neanderthal audience smarting from defeat, and that she didn’t think that it was a serious point.  There may be a more complete speech, which I will be glad to publish.

Bridge has the Wherstead Road Residents Association, still going strong after forty years and the longest continuously functioning residents’ association in Ipswich.  It has the Maidenhall Residents Association that keeps a presence and a community together.  The port noise was stopped largely by a concerted action from residents across Bridge and Stoke Park, spontaneously organising.  There is the Stoke Green Baptist church and Saint Mary Stoke which have great outreach services to people more deprived than you would find on Corder Road, which if we are going to get picky about this is closer to the area which Dame Bryony represents.  And this is not to mention such groups from allotment holders, social clubs, Pentecostal churches and Neighbourhood watch groups that do a great deal of good in Bridge.

These groups are ignored by that sort of dismissal.  Now building a doctor’s surgery may be a stretch but just because we do not have the most expensive houses in Ipswich does not mean that we are incapable of organising ourselves.  We need help, not direction.

If you want to insult us go and do it to our faces and in your leaflets, not to a hall of useless, overpaid, overpromoted and spendthrift public sector middle managers up in Manchester who got us in this mess in the first place.

She’s done it again.  On BBC Look East just now Dame Bryony Rudkin was quoted by the reporter offering support to Ed Miliband who lost the Labour Party members’ vote, and so won the election.

However Mama Rudkin was credited as “Labour Group Leader on Suffolk County Council”.  I know she’s a Dame, but she’s only a deputy leader.  She has form.

As Sandy Martin, who supported the candidate with the fewer votes, may say, once is an accident, twice is a bit of a pattern.