Havering’s council leader says he cannot publish a dossier of “disturbing” racism and sexism allegations in case staff quit their jobs in protest.
Ray Morgon defended the council’s decision to hire barristers to continue fighting to suppress the report, after a court ordered its disclosure.
While in opposition, Cllr Morgon called for the report’s release – but after becoming leader, he changed his mind and backed its continued suppression.
He sought to justify his U-turn in an interview with the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) by repeating the council’s claim that it had promised staff confidentiality in the results of the 2021 investigation.
“What I didn’t know at that time was that a pledge had been made to staff that anything they said would not be attributable. So, in a sense, they could speak freely. What we can’t do now is go back on that pledge,” he said.
“They would feel the trust they had in the council had gone and could think that this is not the organisation they want to work for anymore. The concern is that a lot of staff would leave the organisation if we went back on our word.”
The Romford Recorder has been fighting since 2021 to uncover the 400-page dossier, compiled for the Local Government Association (LGA).
The LGA read it and concluded Havering had a “disturbing” culture of “normalised” racism and sexism. There were also complaints of homophobia and disability discrimination.
Councillors were asked to approve spending on a raft of improvement measures, despite being banned from reading any of the allegations or evidence the LGA had relied on.
The Recorder therefore demanded the taxpayer-funded dossier be released under the Freedom of Information Act.
The council refused and the Information Commissioner sided with the council, which had argued that if Havering had to be honest about its own racism and sexism problems, it would inspire other councils to work harder to cover up their own.
It also claimed participating staff had been promised everything they said would be kept secret.
The Recorder instigated a legal action via the First Tier Tribunal (FTT), also known as an Information Tribunal, arguing that there was overwhelming public interest in disclosing the dossier.
In August, three judges agreed, dismissing the council’s arguments (as relayed by the Information Commissioner).
We argued that while it was reasonable to promise staff their identities would be kept secret, it was not reasonable to promise all information they provided would be kept secret.
We said there would be no merit in an investigation whose findings would be hidden even from elected councillors tasked with fixing the problems.
We also said the council had failed to provide any evidence of the assurances given to staff about how their information would be treated, despite now relying on those alleged assurances to try to cover up the dossier.
The FTT judges wrote in their decision: “It is inevitable that the self-assessment would be passed to an external body, the LGA, as part of that review, the results of which would be publicly available.
“This self-assessment was not purely for internal analysis by the council and any assurance to the contrary would have been unwise.”
They added: “The redaction of personal data will protect identification of individuals to the limited extent that any personal data appears in the self-assessment.”
But Cllr Morgon, who neglected to mention these FTT findings in his LDRS interview, insisted the council now hiring top barristers to appeal the FTT’s decision was “not about covering anything up”.
He said: “I’d be more than happy to be open, honest and transparent about this, but we cannot go back on that pledge (to keep staff anonymous).”
He added that the council had “moved on” and “is not the council that was around when [the dossier] was written”.
“These days, I don’t hear any comments about racism, sexism or any ‘ism’,” he said.
According to a May 2024 council report, complaints filed about councillors between December 2022 and March 2024 included allegations of bullying, lying and racism.
One councillor, not identified in the report, had to apologise over a racism complaint.
Conservative councillor David Taylor has called on the council to disclose how much it has already spent trying to cover up the document.
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