The British government has decided to intervene in the management of Tower Hamlets council in east London after inspectors criticised the administration on several matters, including not “effectively” managing local tensions over Gaza.
The government is set to appoint ministerial envoys to monitor the council’s management decisions in a blow for independent mayor Lutfur Rahman – after an audit found a lack of scrutiny, a “suspicious and defensive” administration and concerns over a “culture of patronage”.
Inspectors also said “it is not clear that the Council has acted particularly effectively to manage tensions” over the conflict in Gaza.
They said some borough residents “found the presence and extent” of Palestinian flags flown in the area “concerning”, concluding that the council was “too slow to respond”.
Last February, under the previous Conservative government, Communities Secretary Michael Gove ordered the audit of Tower Hamlets council.
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The move came after the Local Government Association (LGA) reported in late 2023 a “lack of trust between the mayor’s office and senior officers, with examples of inappropriate questioning and pressure to feed things into the mayor’s office for ‘sign off’.”
The inspection team was asked to look at a range of issues, including expenditure and senior job appointments, and were instructed to report back by the end of May on “whether the standards expected for effective and convenient local government are being upheld”.
However, the request was delayed after a general election was called in late May.
The report was submitted in July and finally released months later on Tuesday.
‘Suspicious and defensive’
The report identified “several positive features at the Council”, including that it has already taken “steps to make improvements” based on previous criticisms.
However, the report found that a “lack of respect and co-operation between political parties which is having a negative effect on good governance”.
Inspectors said: “We observed a full Council meeting in which female opposition councillors felt unsafe.”
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Inspectors described the council’s scrutiny culture as “weak and confused” and the administration as “suspicious and defensive in its behaviour”.
Jim McMahon, the current minister of state for local government and English devolution, said in parliament on Tuesday: “A culture of patronage, even if not at play in every appointment, is perceived as pervasive enough to undermine trust between members, staff and leadership, as well as with external stakeholders.”
However, the report did not detail what the “culture of patronage” specifically entailed.
The report also highlighted Israel’s war on Gaza.
The audit had coincided with a political furore over Palestinian flags and pro-Palestinian murals in Tower Hamlets.
In January, pressure group UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) had sent a letter to the London Metropolitan Police, arguing that flags and other signs of Palestinian support in the borough were offensive.
Then in late February, former minister for London, Paul Scully, claimed that Tower Hamlets and other neighbourhoods were “no-go zones” because of their large Muslim populations.
He apologised for his comments the next day amid widespread criticism.
In March, Local Government Lawyer reported that the council would take the flags down on residential roads, for which it has responsibility. This came after UKLFI warned it would take legal action against the council.
Inspectors said: “Some residents have wished to demonstrate their views through the flying of Palestinian flags in the area. Others have found the presence and extent of these flags concerning.
“We consider that the Council has been too slow to respond to this issue.”
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The report also said: “Schools also raised that they felt exposed to risk and unsupported by the Council as a result of the lack of appropriate guidance from the Council following 7 October 2023 on issues arising from the situation in Gaza.
“In the absence of timely advice from the Council, schools fell back onto the generic government Department for Education advice.”
Inspectors added: “We are not aware of any corporate communications from the Council’s leadership to its staff or with schools about the conflict and impacts in the local area, and understand some Jewish staff members to have felt uneasy as a result of this omission.”
They suggested the council’s Tension Monitoring Group should have met to discuss “tensions apparent during the recent parliamentary election”.
These tensions apparently refer to the contest between Labour incumbent Rushanara Ali, who narrowly won, and independent candidate Ajmal Masroor, who stood on a pro-Gaza platform.
The report did not detail the nature of these “tensions”.
On Tuesday, the council said: “We welcome the Government’s decision to appoint an envoy rather than send in commissioners, with a plan to work together with us on a support package, with the council retaining all its powers.
“We look forward to working with the Ministerial envoy to build on the good Peer Review we received from the Local Government Association and an improved Investors in People inspection silver rating.”
‘Undue spiritual influence’
The new report is the latest in a series of controversies surrounding Rahman, a former Labour politician, who now stands for the Aspire Party and was elected mayor of Tower Hamlets in May 2022.
He previously held the post from 2010 to 2015 but was found guilty of electoral fraud in April 2015 and banned from standing for public office for six years.
Among the reasons for the ban was that Rahman was found to have exerted “undue spiritual influence” on voters.
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But the concept of “undue spiritual influence” is controversial because it is associated with nineteenth-century anti-Catholic legislation.
In fact, it dates back to the 1883 Corrupt and Illegal Practices Act, which was introduced to combat the influence of the Roman Catholic clergy on the Irish working classes.
More recently, after the government ordered an audit of the council earlier this year a controversy broke out when one of the appointed inspectors was accused of endorsing social media posts that are “Islamophobic”, “defend Islamophobia” or that peddle in “propaganda against Muslims”.
The charges against Sir John Jenkins, who was briefly the UK’s ambassador to Syria and Libya before he saw out a longer stint in Saudi Arabia, come in a letter sent by local community leaders to Michael Gove, the government minister who appointed him.
The letter said the “long list of diplomatic roles assigned to him raises many concerns as to why a former Middle East diplomat would be assigned specifically as an inspector of this borough, which is one of the most diverse boroughs in the country”.
Tower Hamlets has the highest proportion of Muslims in the UK, at 39 per cent, alongside some of the highest rates of poverty in the UK.
