Sorry to go on about this but the Customer Service Direct contract is looking more expensive every time it gets revisited.  Just to put it in context the overspend is more than two times this year’s savings.  Some of that overspend may genuinely be extra services that weren’t envisioned at the time that the council signed it, but few people who were not tied to it think it makes up the majority of the overspend.

As Ipswich Spy have proved the remnants of the Suffolk Labour led regime are remarkably complacent about this.  Paraphrasing former senior comrade Julian Swainson, Ipswich Spy said “As our eagle eyed reader from up Norfolk way pointed out, the big problem with the CSD contract is the lack of scrutiny of the contract since 2005.”  Even as partisan sniping that fails, as a Labour opposition would be a crucial part of that scrutiny.

And that’s before pointing out that despite Jeremy Pembroke’s other failings, at least he made sure a County Councillor was named to the board, something that doesn’t seem to have been a priority when the red flag was flying over County Hall.

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.

The Guardian has a piece attacking Suffolk County Council’s plan for a virtual council.  Nothing wrong (or new) there.

It’s about a BT contract that has gone out of control to the tune of £100 billion and the fact that Andrea Hill stayed in two hotels in the USA paid for by BT.  Good investigative reporting.

However one little fact seems to be underplayed “Gower said that under the original Customer Service Direct agreement in 2004, Suffolk was to pay BT £301m over 10 years while BT agreed to invest £53m in the council’s infrastructure.”

2004.  Now this may not mean a lot to people who are not interested in the minutiae of Suffolk politics, but that was before the Tories won back the council in 2006.  It was run by a Lib-Lab coalition.  Perhaps the Guardian should have mentioned this?

So the original contract, which was criticised as the source of the overspending was written by?  The Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats.

So why’s Andrew Cann on the BBC condemning this contract?  Why are the Guardian making out that it’s the current administration who’s the instigator rather than the victim of a previous administration’s mistake?

And why on earth are Suffolk’s seven Conservative MP, and numerous County Councillors not pointing this out?  You can’t (completely) blame the media for this misapprehension, it’s a poor show from the Tories.

EDIT: I got the election year wrong.  The Tories won the council in 2005 , not 2006.  The contract was still written in 2004, by a Labour led administration.  Thank you to an eagle eyed reader who pointed out my mistake.

I’ve been saying, both on this blog and whenever someone’s asked me, that Phil Smart is someone who is dedicated to public transport and who really cares about that issue.  The problem that I have with him, and another councillor, is that they see Bridge as a platform and not an end in itself.  It’s very easy when you don’t live there.

Consider this, from the council agenda for Wednesday:

To consider the following motion moved by Councillor P Smart:

This Council notes with concern the decision of Suffolk County Council to close Bury Road Park and Ride and calls on the Executive of Ipswich Borough Council to work with local bus operators and others to establish a replacement service from this site.”

This will involve quite a considerable amount of money being spent on Norwich Road bus routes.  This may be a perfectly good thing for a councillor who represents the Norwich Road area to be doing, but this is money that Suffolk or Ipswich will not have to help Wherstead Road, which has a far more pressing issue with the buses.  The most frustrating thing about this is that Wherstead Road would need very little extra money, instead needing  co-ordination with the bus companies to space out their services.  Something that stupid EU regulations insist that  councillors need to be involved in.

Park and Ride is very nice, but shouldn’t there be some focus closer to home?  Or failing that, closer to your ward?

Related articles

• Suffolk: Bus routes face the axe (eadt.co.uk)
• Council to ‘outsource everything’ (bbc.co.uk)