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Appendix 3 Item 18 – Consideration of an Investigation Report Claer Lloyd-Jones (Chair, Independent Member): I would like to welcome Claire Lefort who is the author of the investigation report that we have here. Fiona [Ledden] is going to help us but I believe that the first decision that we need to make is that we agree to do this consideration in open session. Do we agree to do that? Committee Members: Yes. Claer Lloyd-Jones (Chair, Independent Member): Good, thank you very much. Fiona, I would like you to guide us through what we need to do now. Fiona Ledden (Head of Legal & Procurement, GLA): Very briefly, we have the investigation report for you. I, as Monitoring Officer, recommend the report and the conclusions to you. What you now need to do is you need to consider the recommendation and then you need to decide, on the basis of the recommendation, whether you accept it or whether you reject it and whether you follow the recommendations. Then following what you do I can then take you through the further steps. In your considerations I am sure you may well have some questions for Claire Lefort and you may want to explore whether or not there are any things that would be useful even if you decided that, on following the recommendation, this matter was not to go to a hearing. There may be issues that you think would be useful, such as training, to be undertaken so it is a matter for you to consider and discuss those items. I do not think that I will take any more of your time in taking you through. As we reach each decision then I will come back to you, Chair, if I may. Claer Lloyd-Jones (Chair, Independent Member): Thank you, but it is your strong recommendation to accept the conclusions to the investigation report that there has been no failure to comply with the code of conduct? Fiona Ledden (Head of Legal & Procurement, GLA): Indeed, Chair. If I just might add; you may want to just explore the issue of scope, which perhaps is not quite as full in the report, or you may not, you may be very satisfied on the issue of whether or not it falls within the scope whether or not the Member was acting as a Member in this particular instance. Claer Lloyd-Jones (Chair, Independent Member): Well, we are being asked whether we accept recommendations to the investigator or not, so I am not entirely sure that that is one of the options that is open to us at the moment unless the investigator raises it. That must be right, isn’t it? Claire Lefort (Associate, Weightmans LLP): Yes. Claer Lloyd-Jones (Chair, Independent Member): Claire, as I say, welcome. Thank you very much for doing this piece of work on our behalf. I am sure that all of my colleagues have read the investigation report and probably actually turned to this first 39 on the agenda in terms of making sure that we did read it. So, I guess what we are going to want to do is actually ask you questions principally but I think it would be great if you could perhaps spend, say, five minutes just introducing it to us and then I will invite my colleagues to ask you questions and then we will take discussion after that, OK? Claire Lefort (Associate, Weightmans LLP): Thank you very much for inviting me today. I will be very brief because it is all very clear in the report. It is perhaps helpful just to go back to see what the original allegation was. The allegation was made by Assembly Member Mr Cleverly that Mr Barnbrook had failed to comply with paragraph 6.2 of the code of conduct. It was in relation to the literature which was produced which was a leaflet headed ‘London’s Mothers Against Knives’. This was alleged to have been circulated during a by-election in Bexley. My investigation has covered whether or not I thought there was a failure to comply both with paragraph 6(b)(i) and (ii) as well as 6(c) which was the result of your deliberations when you considered it at assessment. My conclusion, as you can see, is that there has not been a breach of those particular paragraphs and I suppose that is as much of the outline that I could give which would assist you and I am more than happy to answer any questions on my report. Claer Lloyd-Jones (Chair, Independent Member): Thank you very much, Claire. Colleagues, the floor is open now to questions to Claire on why she has reached her conclusions and why she is making recommendations that she is. Murad Qureshi (AM): I think the most interesting thing is actually seeing a copy of the flyer in the back of the document. I always thought there were actually quite strict rules about the use of GLA resources on clearly party-political material and campaigns, when he is using a phone number which is a GLA one and using the address of the GLA to organise this campaign. My understanding of the rules, as an Assembly Member, was that it was something my officers in the Labour group have made quite clear, that it is not custom and practice here, so I am surprised you have seen it fit to say it is within the code of conduct. Claire Lefort (Associate, Weightmans LLP): My view on the telephone number - I did actually review this before I came - is it is directly in Richard Barnbrook’s office, answered, as far as I understand it, by him. When we went to Emma Colgate [Richard Barnbrook’s research assistant], we interviewed her in Richard Barnbrook’s office and when she rung that number it was direct to his line. As far as I understand, I have no detail expressly as to how many telephone calls have been made by people who have responded to this document and I think that would be very difficult to actually identify in any event. The other issue about using the address of City Hall; I could not see anything specifically in the literature which said that you could not use the address of City Hall on a leaflet such as this. What I saw was that you could not produce it at City Hall, you could not send it from City Hall, and you could not use any of the officers’ time and trouble in perceiving it, producing and sending it out. As far as my investigation went I could not see any of that happening and that is why I came to the conclusions I did. I did actually say within the report that I felt that there was some ambiguity over what the rules said about the use of the address of City Hall. 40 Murad Qureshi (AM): Can I just follow that up, Chair? Claer Lloyd-Jones (Chair, Independent Member): Yes, of course you can. Murad Qureshi (AM): OK. There is a distinction between phone calls that come direct to an Assembly Member and those that go to their staff, whether it be a personal assistant (PA) or a researcher - but that is a distinction I could not make in my head. What you were saying - you could see that it was coming into the GLA. I would actually imagine that you can assume very well that it also came out of the GLA if he is using the resources to receive the material. Did you investigate that at all? Claire Lefort (Associate, Weightmans LLP): As far as my investigation, in terms of where it was sent from, they were not printed at GLA at all. There was no detail of it being printed. There was a receipt that 5,000 of them were actually printed by Richard Barnbrook’s colleague in Leeds; others of them, he does have - I cannot remember the specific word that was used - a lino printer that he has at his home that he has used to print a lot of these and my report refers to leaflets being handed out by British National Party (BNP) activists. Effectively London’s Mothers Against Knives is Richard Barnbrook’s campaign and BNP activists have produced those. There is no information that I have that post, stamps or other equipment of the GLA has been used to send this out. Murad Qureshi (AM): Yes, so you did investigate that. Just a final thing: this kind of material is clearly used for electoral purposes and we are told quite clearly that we have got to go out and do that kind of stuff outside of this building when it is a GLA election, European election or whatever. Are there different rules in different contexts as well, whether it is a local election, a European or a GLA election? Claire Lefort (Associate, Weightmans LLP): I think my report actually refers to whether there is a question whether this is actually a political leaflet in any event. When I interviewed Richard Barnbrook and Emma Colgate their view was that actually this was not a political leaflet and the only statement that it refers to the British National Party is the very fact that Richard Barnbrook is a British National Party Assembly Member. The statement, in my view, and I appreciate there may be differences, that individuals are asked to sign is that there is a growing problem about knife crime and new measures are demanded. That does not specifically refer to BNP or any of the policies or BNP and I think perhaps most political parties would have a similar concurring view on that.

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