"Newham: Councillors rebel against Mayor over emission-based parking permit scheme"

 More than half of the east London council's dominant Labour group have taken a very public stand against the borough's Labour Mayor

JOSHUA NEICHO

Thirty-two Newham councillors, more than half the total number, have signed an open letter calling on the borough’s Mayor Rokhsana Fiaz to reconsider a new emission-based parking permit scheme introduced yesterday. The councillors say their inboxes have been “overwhelmed” by concerns about the charge and note that the council’s own consultations have shown a large majority of residents are against the scheme. 

“With job losses and furlough, many [residents] now rely on food banks and Universal Credit to survive,” they write. “Residents need a council that will stand by them, not imposing regressive and unfair taxes. We believe that air pollution is a serious issue that must be tackled, but these charges will not resolve air quality issues in the borough”.

All of the 32 councillors are Labour members – as is every councillor in Newham – and their action is a significant revolt against a policy backed by a Labour Mayor.

Under the new scheme, Newham residents pay an emissions charge when they renew their annual parking permit based on their vehicle’s tax band. A council spokesperson said it had been “subject to extensive consultation with residents and members over the last year, and has been passed by both the cabinet and full council” and James Asser, Newham’s lead member for environment, highways and sustainable transport, says: “The pandemic has highlighted the effect poor air quality has on public health. Those with underlying respiratory illnesses have been the most vulnerable to the most severe outcomes of Covid-19 infection.”

However, former cabinet member John Gray, one of the signatories of the letter, told On London that although he is “a passionate advocate of emissions-based charging” and believes “we’ve got to do something about reducing pollution,” he believes “the world has changed” since the council’s present budget was agreed last February, before the pandemic took effect, and that many residents cannot cope financially with an extra bill from the council.  

Gray says “102,00 Newham residents are on furlough and/or Universal Credit, and there’s tremendous poverty, especially after housing costs”. He claims he has “never been lobbied so hard by residents” over an issue in his ten years on the council.

Newham has previously been one of only two London boroughs which does not charge residents for their first vehicle permit. Very low emission vehicles in Vehicle Excise Duty bands A-B will still incur no charge. But a vehicle in bands G-I, such as a 1.4 litre 2017 VW Golf, falls into Tier 3 of the Newham system, meaning a permit for a first vehicle costs £80, while a band L-M vehicle, such as a 3 litre Grand Cherokee Jeep, is in Tier 5, costs owners £160.

The basic cost of permits for second, third and additional vehicles per household remain unchanged, but they are also subject to an emissions charge on a slightly more steeply rising basis than for the first vehicle. In light of the pandemic, the council has announced a one-off 20% discount on the overall cost of the first resident permit per household. Its website states that even without the discount, charges are cheaper than neighbouring boroughs’ and are in the bottom 50% of all London boroughs, taking account of higher levels of hardship in Newham.

Gray suggests “a need to compromise – you need to have a look at getting rid of the anomaly that the first permit is completely free. We can achieve a lot of what we have to do in a different way,” he says. But Asser argues that, “Just last month, in a landmark ruling, a coroner found that air pollution was a contributory factor in the death of nine year old Ella Kissi-Debrah [in Lewisham] and this highlights that we have a responsibility to do everything in our power to protect our communities and improve our air quality.”

The councillors who’ve signed the open letter are drawn from a mix of factions within Newham’s entirely Labour council chamber. Gray, who is campaigning for changing Newham’s governance system from the mayoral system to a council leader and committee model in the borough’s  referendum on the issue scheduled for 6 May, says lobbying the Mayor via a letter “is unusual” but that “circumstances justified bringing it to the fore”.

He adds that the way the group agreed a collective line was “an example of councillors working collectively and appropriately, acting in the interests of people who elect them”. Another signatory, Royal Docks councillor Pat Murphy, who been chosen as the group’s spokesperson on environmental issues – a role he previously held as a cabinet member under Newham’s previous Mayor, Sir Robin Wales – says councillors opposed to the scheme had been on the verge of issuing two separate letters, but that he had argued they should join forces behind a single one.

The same group appears to have come together around the issue of Mayor Fiaz’s proposed abolition of Newham’s “Eat for Free” universal free school meals provision for primary pupils, which is currently being consulted on with a deadline of 17 January for responses.

Murphy points out that the parking permit charges don’t impact on non-resident drivers using trunk roads across the borough, such as the A12 and A13, and that they weigh more heavily on poorer residents, for example by exempting people with driveways, who he says are more likely to be comparatively well off. In the context of lockdown, he says a car is “the safest form of transport – an emergency form of transport. We need to come up with something that doesn’t penalise the poor and that helps the environment,” he says. He is discussing alternative ideas to the scheme with an Extinction Rebellion member.

Forty-six per cent of Newham households own a car, according to TfL’s 2019 London Travel Demand Survey, based on 2015-18 figures – above the 40% Inner London average but below the 56% average for the capital as a whole. A British Heart Foundation study in February 2020 named Newham as the most polluted local authority in the UK, with an annual average of 13.0 micrograms of PM2.5 particulate pollution per cubic metre – above the World Health Organisation’s 10.0 micrograms/m3 danger level.

The FAQs about the new permit scheme on the council’s website note that Newham has “the worst air quality in the country” with pollution from vehicles equating to ninety six people dying prematurely each year, and that it has the highest number of children admitted to hospital due to asthma-related conditions. Air pollution from London City Airport in Royal Docks, and the proposed Greenwich-Silvertown road tunnel are major topics of controversy in the borough.

Mayor Fiaz has been approached for comment about the councillors’ letter and will be issuing a statement in due course, the council says.

"Labour members call for immediate ‘open selection’ to choose Newham mayoral candidate"

Another sensible article from "On London" journalist Dave Hill on the Newham Mayoral trigger debacle. He features Newham Councillor and former mayoral advisor (one of the very few female advisors) Julianne Marriott, calling for an open selection. The NEC are meeting tomorrow and I have also lobbied its members calling for the same thing.

"Labour Party members in Newham having asked the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) to order an immediate open selection contest for choosing their candidate for May’s mayoral election in the borough, rather than re-running the disputed “trigger ballot” that initially saw the incumbent Sir Robin Wales go forward automatically for the role.

Newham Labour councillor Julianne Marriott reported on Twitter yesterday that she had emailed the NEC with the request, stating that she does not believe “a re-run of the trigger ballot is in the best interest of Newham residents”. Her fellow Labour councillor Charlene McLean has written a letter to Labour’s general secretary Iain McNicol in her capacity as chair of West Ham Consitutency Labour Party making the same appeal on behalf of herself and her fellow CLP officers.

The interventions follow Labour’s acting Greater London regional director Neil Fleming informing local members last week that the original trigger ballot – or affirmative nomination process – which was held in autumn 2016 would be re-run from regional level following claims that there had been a number of irregularities in its administration by the party’s local campaign forum and a resulting legal challenge when the NEC failing to investigate them.

Fleming did not give a date on which the re-run trigger ballot would start and there are concerns locally that conducting it and then completing a possible ensuing open selection contest should Sir Robin fail to secure the majority he needs for automatic re-selection would create unmanageable time and organisational pressures with the election only four months away, and accentuate tensions within the local membership.

Re-selection processes for sitting Labour councillors have yet to be completed, meaning that ordinary members are already being asked to absorb campaign literature and attend special meetings. The original mayoral trigger ballot process took approximately five weeks to complete.

McLean’s letter expresses concerns that “there is no longer sufficient time” in which to run a new trigger ballot process and any open selection contest that might follow, adding the view that “it is the Labour Party’s delay in addressing our concerns which has created this urgency”.

She also reminds McNicol that West Ham CLP, one of the two CLPs in Newham, passed a vote of no confidence in the original trigger ballot process in January 2017, reaffirming this the following November, and says there has been “no constructive engagement” with them on the issues raised.

Elaborating on her reasons for writing to the NEC on Twitter, Marriott expressed her personal expectation that “a re-run trigger ballot will go to open selection” and that this would result in a delay in Newham residents “knowing who [the] Labour candidate is [and] what they stand for”. She added that she thinks a new trigger ballot and possible wider media coverage of it “unlikely to be positive experience for residents and members”.

Sir Robin is seeking an unprecedented fifth term as Newham’s Mayor, having previously been leader of the council under the previous local government system in the borough. Labour’s political dominance in Newham is such the eventual winner of the internal candidate selection contest is almost certain to go on to become the borough’s Mayor in May.

This article was updated on 8 January at 17:25 to include details from the west Ham CLP letter. Previous coverage of the Newham trigger ballot dispute can be read here."

"Sir Robin Wales calls for contested mayoral ‘trigger ballot’ outcome to be cancelled"

Hat tip Dave Hill's On London blog 

"Sir Robin Wales has asked the Labour Party to cancel the outcome of the internal selection process that saw him endorsed to seek a fifth term as Mayor of Newham following a campaign by local members for an investigation into its conduct.

An affirmative nomination or “trigger ballot” held in the autumn of 2016, saw Sir Robin prevail by 20 votes to 17, and Labour’s governing National Executive Committee (NEC) has resisted calls by party members in Newham, including ten councillors, to look into what they described as “many failures of process/propriety and procedural irregularities”.

But now Sir Robin has told the Newham Recorder that although the trigger ballot outcome was confirmed by the NEC, legal action against it by some of the complainants had prompted him ask for it to be quashed because “the costs of a court case would be significant and Labour Party members’ money should not be used in this way”.

Sir Robin’s initiative came after those pursuing the legal action secured the funds they required to move to the “statement of claim” stage, setting out the grounds for their case that their party has “behaved improperly” over the trigger ballot, both locally and nationally.

A letter to the NEC sent in January signed by 47 Labour members, including 10 councillors, argued that seven of the votes cast in favour of Sir Robin going forward automatically as Labour candidate for next year’s mayoral election rather than facing potential challenges from other hopefuls had been dubious and that there had been inconsistencies in the way unions affiliated to the party locally had been enfranchised.

Each of Newham’s 20 ward branches had a single vote in an electoral college, which also included 11 affiliates, seven of which were trade unions. The branches voted by 11 to nine against Sir Robin progressing without a further contest, but the balance of affiliates’ votes gave the incumbent the majority he needed.

A review by the Fabian Society of the approach taken by its Newham branch to deciding which way to vote found that it had “breached the society’s rules” in coming to its decision to back Sir Robin’s automatic candidacy.

It has been established by On London that the headquarters of Bectu, one of the unions with a local affiliated branch at the time of the ballot, cannot confirm that an affiliation fee was paid for the relevant year. (For unrelated reasons, Bectu is no longer affiliated to Labour).

On London has also learned that the ballot paper for an affiliated branch of the TSSA union was conveyed directly to an officer of that branch by a councillor who is a member of Sir Robin’s mayoral team rather than being sent initially to a more senior figure in the organisation, as appears to have been the case with other unions. The TSSA vote was eventually cast in favour of Sir Robin.

One key point of the dispute has been whether Labour party rules entitle each affiliated union branch to vote separately in mayoral trigger ballots or whether just a single vote per union should be accepted, regardless of how many different branches are affiliated locally.

Not all the unions involved interpreted the rules in the same way, resulting in Unison casting just one vote – against Sir Robin going forward automatically – despite having six branches affiliated, whereas the GMB – which supported Sir Robin – cast four votes, the CWU cast three and Unite cast two.

It is understood that an audio recording, heard by On London, which those who have been seeking an investigation believe reveal an ally of Sir Robin disclosing questionable conduct concerning the trigger ballot process, has been sent to a senior Labour Party official.

In his comments to the Newham Recorder Sir Robin says he is “supporting a new process to be undertaken under the auspices of the national or regional Labour Party”. The complainants have criticised the involvement of at least one member of Sir Robin’s mayoral team in the running of the process.

Any decision by the party to instigate a fresh trigger ballot or to hold an open selection contest will entail settling on a “freeze date” in advance of which members and affiliates will have to had have had their documentation in order to be eligible to vote.

Since the completion of the original ballot, the GMB has affiliated 26 branches to West Ham constituency Labour Party in Newham, each of which would have a separate vote if a freeze date subsequent to their affiliation were set and multiple votes per union again accepted.

Read all of On London’s coverage of the Newham mayor trigger ballot dispute via here.

"Labour refuses Newham ‘trigger ballot’ inquiry as affiliate finds breach of its own rules"

From Guardian journalist Dave Hills on his blog. "Labour’s governing national executive committee (NEC) has turned down a request from party members in Newham to hold an inquiry into how the borough’s executive mayor Sir Robin Wales was narrowly chosen to seek election to the post for a fifth time next year despite two of the affiliated organisations that supported him conducting their own investigations into how their votes were cast, one of which has now concluded that its local branch broke its own rules.

Sir Robin announced his re-selection, secured by 20 votes to 17, to a full meeting of Newham Council on Monday. The NEC had concluded on 24 January that the result of the close-run local “trigger ballot” to decide if he would automatically become Labour’s candidate for May 2018 or face challenges from other hopefuls should stand.

However, the national Fabian Society has informed its Newham branch, which is affiliated to Labour locally and voted “yes” to Sir Robin’s automatic re-selection, that it had “breached the society’s rules” for determining how trigger ballot votes should be cast and that “the Labour Party has been informed” of the outcome of its review of what occurred.

In a 13-page letter sent to the NEC prior to its meeting last week, 47 Labour members in Newham, including ten councillors, asked that the Fabians’ vote “be held in abeyance and not counted” on grounds that included failure by local officers to hold a meeting of members to discuss which way their “trigger ballot” vote should be cast. A statement from the national Fabians said, while it accepted that its Newham officers had acted in good faith, “the national society’s by-laws require a vote of members in the re-selection of a mayoral candidate” and that this had not taken place.

Separately, one of the trade unions whose vote helped Sir Robin to victory is looking into whether the locally-affiliated branch responsible for the decision followed the correct procedures. Gerry Morrissey, general secretary of media union BECTU, has told On London that, although the union’s head office had no involvement in the matter, the way the “yes” vote was settled is to be considered by its executive committee later this month. BECTU has recently become a sector of another union, Prospect, and dis-affiliated from Labour with effect from 1 January.

The letter from the Newham members to the NEC stated that the signatories “do not believe” that local affiliation fees to East Ham constituency Labour Party (CLP) had been paid by the BECTU branch and that “a communication” from the union’s branch delegate suggests that the person concerned decided how to vote in the ballot without any consultation with fellow BECTU branch members. In this case, they asked that the ballot “be declared void and that BECTU be deemed not to have voted”.

It was among a large number of points made about the trigger ballot process as a whole in a sometimes the strongly-worded document, which asked the NEC to void or hold in abeyance a total of seven of the 20 individual “yes” votes, comprising two from unions, two from other affiliates and three from party ward branches, of which two took the “yes” option by a single vote. Eleven out of 20 ward branches voted “no” to the automatic re-selection of Sir Robin.

The letter also asked the NEC to examine why some eligible unions cast more than one vote and suggests that inconsistent interpretation of the rules arose from a major failing in the running of the trigger ballot process. The GMB cast four votes (all “yes”), the CWU cast three (two “yes”, one “no”) and Unite cast two (all “no”) while Unison (“no”), Usdaw (“yes”), the TSSA (“yes”) and Bectu (“yes”) cast only one each. The letter attributes this to some locally-affiliated union branches each casting individual and other unions only voting once no matter many branches had affiliated locally to one of the two Newham CLPs as a result of rules being interpreted differently.

The CWU and TSSA have not responded to email requests to comment on the matter and the GMB, despite several requests and an assurance that a response would be provided, have yet to offer answers to any of the questions first put to them about the trigger ballot process before Christmas.

In email correspondence Newham party members, Labour Party general secretary Iain McNicol has written that the trigger ballot was “raised very briefly” at the NEC meeting and that “there was a short discussion” but that the body “did not discuss or agree to pausing or changing the result of this process”. He added that “NEC members have agreed to come to Newham and speak to members about what lessons can be learned from this process [regarding] how future trigger ballot processes can be conducted in a way that best engages members and affiliates”. It is believed that two NEC members will be involved. Signatories to the letter are considering how to respond. One has expressed dissatisfaction to McNicol that the request for an inquiry has not been granted.

In a statement, Labour’s London region has said that, “the process in Newham was carried out in line with established rules and procedures”. A source close to Sir Robin has denied that the ballot process was flawed and suggested that an influx of new members prompted to join the party since May 2015 in order to support Jeremy Corbyn, Labour’s leader, lies behind much of the opposition to Sir Robin, although only members who joined before 25 April 2016 were entitled to vote in their ward ballots to determine which way to vote in the trigger ballot, which ran from 25 October until 4 December. This would have excluded any Newham members who joined Labour last summer in order to help Corbyn defeat the challenge to his leadership by Owen Smith.

The source also contends that a group of local Labour members called Trigger Democracy, which has campaigned for an open selection, is a manifestation of this, something the group itself denies, saying its members “aren’t anti-Robin” and “don’t represent any faction”. Those behind it decline to reveal their names on the grounds that they “wanted to provide as neutral a platform as possible” and because some of them work in or for the borough.

Newham is notable for all 60 of its councillors being Labour. Some of these and other local members believe that Sir Robin has been in the job too long and that his grip on the machinery of the Town Hall has made it difficult to hold him to account. Even so, the letter to the NEC said that its signatories would support his candidacy without equivocation if they considered it secured “as a result of an open and fair re-selection process”.