This is the second time that my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) and I have raised the issue of those who formerly worked for Walsall who were badly treated. It was raised previously in an Adjournment debate on 26 April 2007.

If anything came of our concerns, we remain oblivious of it. I very much welcome this unexpected opportunity to speak again. There is a new Minister, and a further opportunity to express my deep concern—to put it incredibly mildly—about the lack of action by those who are responsible for ensuring the probity, efficiency, transparency and legality of municipal government in Walsall and elsewhere. I would include in that long list the Audit Commission; perhaps the district auditor, who has worked hard; the police; the Government office for the west midlands; Walsall council’s internal audit committee, and—we should not forget—central Government. Many investigations and much activity have taken place, but how much positive action? Have all those organisations that are so entrusted, individually or collectively, achieved the objectives laid down in law and practice? I regret to say that, in my humble judgment, they have fallen short—far short—of the tasks that they have been set.

As I said almost a year ago, I believe that those in the local authority have been guilty of many things, and have been surrounded by a ring of steel, perhaps on the basis of personal relationships, misplaced loyalty or vested interest—a need to protect the credibility of alleged improvements in the council. I must admit that, since special measures, there have been improvements, in some cases considerable ones, but at an unacceptable cost to the reputation of local government and the lives of those discredited, dumped and in some cases not even compensated. Is that to be set against the achievement of three stars?

I raise the issue again and will continue to do so until justice is done and those who have besmirched municipal government are held properly to account and, if necessary, punished. So far, their actions appear to have been rewarded—in one particular case, handsomely so. I will not bore the Minister or the House by re-hashing events of the last four years, that period when Walsall was deservedly put into special measures by the Government, and put under the tutelage of—once again, diplomatically expressed—a highly centralised, idiosyncratic and deeply flawed leadership. However, I am more than prepared to give the Minister, and those whom he may designate, chapter and verse on what befell loyal employees of the local authority, and I am sure that others will do the same.

There are three basic issues: first, the governance, good and bad, of Walsall council in recent years; secondly, how the many allegations were investigated or not investigated; and thirdly, the monstrous treatment of four, possibly five, loyal public servants who, in my view, have been treated shamefully.

Most people in Walsall have heard of the tribulations that befell Peter Francis and the former chief superintendent of police, Dave Parish. Less well known was the appalling treatment of Liz McDonald, who was very sick. I knew there was at least one other who had experienced the heavy hand of the former leadership of the local authority and their loyal accomplices. His name, I later found out, was Mark Kemp. The reason he had disappeared from the radar screen was the sheer terror that he had experienced from unknown perpetrators, exacerbated by the usual suspects in the council to whom I have referred. If anything, his treatment was far worse than that of the others.

I thought that this small group of abused employees comprised the “Walsall four”, but another name has very recently been added to the list—that of Carl Teesdale, who has just lodged an application to the employment tribunal. I am sure that there are still others out there who have been on the receiving end of the long and totally unacceptable treatment meted out to those who dared to raise their voices, ostensibly under the protection of the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998—AKA the Whistleblowing Act.

A common thread runs through all four—possibly five—cases. These were all loyal, long-serving, hard-working, honest public officials, including Mr. Teesdale. All but Liz McDonald identified varying deficiencies and activities relating to flawed corporate governance, conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, malfeasance in public office, illegal payments, falsification of accounts and criminal deception—and that is for starters. For their courage and persistence, what did they get from their employers? Was it their sincere thanks? No, it was not. Was it a bonus or recommendation for a gong? No, it was not. Was it promotion? No, it was not. What they got was the following. They were ostracised, bullied, intimidated, marginalised, demoralised and pursued with relentless pressure, and virtually all of them succumbed and became ill. They were then unceremonially booted out.

The common element to support the employment tribunal case was the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, of which the local authority was apparently oblivious although it is 10 years old. Fortunately, the former employees had the courage, resilience and persistence to fight back. For a long time they acted independently, as they were oblivious of what was happening to the others. They obtained good legal advice, belatedly in the case of Liz McDonald, who had been fired by fax. As I said in the last Adjournment debate, she found legal advice having discovered, late in the day, that her home insurance policy funded certain legal actions.

Liz McDonald, Dave Parish and Peter Francis fortunately proceeded with their application to an employment tribunal. The council sought that well-known device procrastination, trying to weaken their resolve financially and emotionally. When it had nowhere further to run, the council, acting on strong legal advice, capitulated, on the day of the hearing or in some cases the day before. The cost to the council tax payer of the Peter Francis case was well over £1 million, excluding the cost of legal advice. In all the cases the enormous costs to the Walsall taxpayer could have been saved, and the lives of loyal public servants might not have been blighted or possibly damaged permanently. Why did that happen? It was because proper legal advice was either not given or taken, or totally ignored.

I refer the House to a report by the district auditor, John Gregory. Although diplomatically presented, it was a damning indictment of the actions of the former chief executive. It was obvious that she would lose, as her lawyers had told her. Mr. Gregory identified many failures. The former chief executive clearly did not take the advice that she was given. She made decisions on the Francis case without the requisite legal knowledge of, in particular, disability discrimination. She dominated and thwarted the council's preparation of its weak case, which became weaker. In the words of Mr. Gregory,

“the former Chief Executive took clear personal control of matters relating to Mr Francis from the beginning of September 2004”.

I will not list all the criticisms. I must not lose sight of the issues raised by Peter Francis, Dave Parish, Liz McDonald and Mark Kemp which led to their Kafkaesque treatment. It was fraud and theft pure and simple in some cases, together with a large dollop of gross inefficiency, malevolence and maladministration.

I believe that in the early days of the neighbourhood renewal fund, which was meant to alleviate deprivation, the instructions or advice from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister were vague. That was eagerly leapt upon by a grossly inefficient Walsall bureaucracy, which was analysed and exposed by the district auditor. However, old habits die hard. I am convinced by the evidence that is available that much of the money that should have targeted deprivation was spent—with the flimsiest excuses—on closed-circuit television, wheelie bins, wardens, education facilities from Serco, and other beneficiaries as yet undisclosed. This large sum of money represented a nice little earner for some and a pot of gold to be raided by high officials to fill any gaps in mainstream funding—or even worse. NRF money had also been used to support policing of the night-time economy, which seems rather bizarre.

On the malfeasance and crime, I wish to mention an e-mail of 2004; I know the author, but I shall not name him. He said in response to the identification of an £800,000 underspend on the NRF:

“I am getting slightly nervous about the £800k of NRF that wasn’t allocated to projects....What I also need to know is where it is sitting in the accounts at present and how we can ensure that the DA (District Audit/District commission) don’t pick up whatever we decide to do with it.”

In an e-mail of 10 June 2004 regarding the unauthorised transfer of £100,000 to social services he says:

“This e-mail will self destruct if an auditor comes within ten feet of it”.

He may have found that pretty funny, but I find it corrupt.

The council’s self-defence has been miserable; it has lost time and again. It has deceived. It has had spurious inquiries—I could name them all—that came to nothing.

The Mark Kemp case was in many respects the worst of all. He has had no legal representation, although he has received pro bono advice from someone—a heroine, in my view—who was familiar with the other cases. He came to Walsall in 2003 to work for the establishment team of the education department. It was not long before he was introduced to what appears to have been a long-standing, unofficial working practice of bungs between contractors and some employees of the council. He declined to participate, was ostracised, was assaulted five times—once in the council house—and was sent a dead, decaying rat through the post. Someone called at his house and threatened his 75-year-old mother’s life. He was savagely beaten in his garden by two assailants. He was dumped in a pond in the back of his garden and could have drowned. He was then fired on spurious grounds. He did not surface because he was told, “Go to a tribunal and you’re a dead man.”

I am not blaming the council leadership, but corruption took place in the local authority at that time and went either unnoticed or unidentified. The council is in denial despite the regular beatings it has received. I have been told that what has happened is historical, but some of it happened two years ago, so that is nonsense.

The epicentre of all of this was a coterie of senior staff directed by the former chief executive. Many people around the country know exactly where the bodies are buried. Many went along with the tide, feeling the consequences of working within an organisation dominated in part, when threatened, by a culture of fear and intimidation. I hope that the silent ones will have had their consciences pricked by the revelations of what happened and will come forward. Perhaps omelettes cannot be made without breaking eggs, but what happened is a disgrace and should be properly investigated.

The police have made inquiries, but nothing, apparently, has come of them. There have been internal inquiries, and people have been hired to carry out an inquiry. I hope that the Minister does not accept that any of them got anywhere near the truth. I think that a lot of people should be investigated, and I hope that they will be.

I am sure that advisers will say that despite our long experience as MPs we Walsall Members are being paranoid, but the complaints of those who have been appallingly treated and the allegations of serious corruption should be investigated properly, not by friends of anyone, or by an institution that has a vested interest in maintaining that great success has been achieved in the past four or five years—which is a fiction in some cases—since the Government sent in the dogs. It should be seriously investigated, perhaps through more than one inquiry, by an independent person or persons reporting to the Minister. Only then will the allegations of appalling treatment meted out to decent people be dealt with, and only then will we receive the just expression of what should be said: that the council proceeded badly and those responsible should be identified and, if necessary, punished.

I am very pleased that my right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, South (Mr. George) has secured this debate. As he said, I had an Adjournment debate on 26 April last year regarding Peter Francis, in which my right hon. Friend and I dealt with the events that had occurred on the council. What occurred in Mr. Peter Francis’s case was unhappy to say the least. It was shabby, and a discredit to the local authority. It was right that he was awarded some £650,000 by the employment tribunal for unfair dismissal and disability discrimination. There is absolutely no justification whatever for what happened to Mr. Peter Francis. Of course, the council gave in on the very day on which the tribunal was due to meet, as my right hon. Friend said. It is also right that attention should be given to the other people involved, as has happened today.

There was a great deal of controversy—it lay, to a great extent, with the case of Peter Francis—surrounding the way in which the neighbourhood renewal fund was being applied. I know that the fund has now been discontinued, but when it was in operation, it was meant to help the more disadvantaged and deprived parts of the borough. However, in Walsall, it was spread much more widely. It was not used as it should have been used, and that is largely the reason behind the controversy over Peter Francis, and behind the shabby and unacceptable manner in which he was treated and dismissed.

I do not want to deal again with the case of the chief executive. I am sure that my right hon. Friend and I agree that we have every confidence in the new chief executive, and the council is now demonstrating some very welcome new departures. However, it is not only the former chief executive who should be criticised; it is also the political control of the council and the way in which the council operated at that time. There were certain periods during which the council gave the impression of being more like an authoritarian state than an English local authority. Those were very unhappy times, and I hope that they will never be repeated, whoever controls the council.

As I have said, those events were a discredit to the local authority, and they certainly did not reflect well on those who were responsible for running the council. I hope that there will now be new opportunities for the council to act in a very different way. I shall welcome the intervention of the Minister on all these matters, which are causing such concern in the borough.

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, South (Mr. George) on securing this debate, and my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) on his contribution. I thank them for the serious way in which they have pursued what I accept are serious concerns, and I recognise the determination with which they have done so for some time.

As my right hon. Friend will know, the cases of those to whom he referred in his speech as the Walsall four have all been drawn to a conclusion through various processes. In one instance, a case has been withdrawn. There have also been compromise agreements, and settlements in relation to the employment tribunal. I had not heard of Mr. Teesdale before this afternoon, but if my right hon. Friend will give me further details of that case, I should be interested to see them.

I made the point about the four cases because the relationship between a local authority and a member of staff is fundamental a matter relating to that officer’s contract of employment with the authority. Legally speaking, Ministers have no remit to intervene in the day-to-day management responsibilities of a local authority. There is also established provision, which Mr. Francis used, under which individuals whose treatment under contract falls below the level at which it should be can take such cases to an employment tribunal—and, ultimately, perhaps to the courts.

I have pursued these concerns for some time and I have checked back in preparation for this afternoon’s Adjournment debate. Correspondence has been frequent and discussions with Ministers have already taken place. I believe that there was a meeting in November 2006 with my predecessor, now the Minister for the Environment. Furthermore, as the then Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon (Angela E. Smith), said in response to the debate of my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, North on 26 April last year, she was ready to offer another meeting, once the reports discussed during that debate had been received.

At that time, the report of the district auditor was particularly awaited. As the then Under-Secretary said, it was the most appropriate way of uncovering and examining the relevant issues of public concern and then ensuring that the council took any necessary remedial action. Let me say to my right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, South that that report was carried out, as he knows, by the district auditor. That person, as my right hon. Friend acknowledged, does not have a vested interest and has, indeed, a statutory role to play, carrying out his function under part 3 of the code of audit practice. In my experience, our district auditors do their job under statute with great diligence.

The report has now been published—it was issued in September last year—and the main conclusion was that in the particular case of Mr. Francis,

“some of the council’s arrangements for managing its staff and for complying with legislation clearly did not operate effectively. This was because those procedures were not always applied, but there were also weaknesses in the some of the arrangements which were in place.”

The auditor further stated that his

“findings do not, however, mean that there were widespread failures in the Council’s governance arrangements, which were continuing to improve throughout this period”.

A further linked inquiry was being undertaken at the time. It was an independent inquiry, although set up at the instigation of Walsall council. It was designed to complement the district auditor’s work and laid greater emphasis on some of the systems that the council had in place—another area of concern for my right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, South. That inquiry was undertaken by the former chief executive of Shrewsbury and Atcham borough council, Douglas Bradbury. When he had concluded, a decision was taken, because of the linked areas of inquiry with the district auditor’s work, that both reports should be published together, which they were in September.

Given the shortage of time, I will not go into the detail of the issues that Mr. Bradbury’s report covered. Suffice it to say that it concluded that although the council had the necessary disciplinary agreements and whistleblowing procedures in place, they were not always correctly or consistently followed. Both reports highlighted, as did my right hon. Friend, an insufficient awareness across the council of the nature of the Disability Discrimination Act 2005.

Let me try to spell out briefly, in a way that I hope will provide both my right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, South and my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, North some reassurance, the actions that have followed the recommendations of these two reports. Both were sent to all members of the council. Both were made public on 10 September last year and debated in public at a full council meeting. The council also put in place a detailed plan to deal with the concerns that had been identified. That plan was shared with the Audit Commission and approved by the council towards the end of September.

Importantly, the council set out and is now pursuing clear arrangements to ensure that action in the plan becomes action in practice, and so that all the actions for improvement are given priority. Each has a named individual responsible for its implementation, and the relevant cabinet portfolio holder is also identified. Ultimately, the chief executive is the implementation manager responsible for ensuring that the action is pursued, and the council’s audit committee has oversight of it. My right hon. Friend and my hon. Friend can therefore trace it through and be clear about who is accountable for any progress, or lack of progress.

When my right hon. Friend and my hon. Friend raised the matter last year, the district auditor had not reported. My hon. Friend the Member for Basildon, the then Under-Secretary, said that she would meet them once it had been published. I extend them a similar invitation today. I understand that my right hon. Friend has previously met the district auditor, but not since—

I have not.

Then I am misinformed. If he has not, but wishes to do so to discuss the content of the auditor’s report and the weaknesses that he believes it contains, and if he and my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, North, would find it useful, I will facilitate and attend such a meeting. I am also willing to approach Mr. Bradbury, if my right hon. Friend and my hon. Friend wish me to do so. I can ask whether he, too, would be prepared to meet them to explain the work that he undertook in his inquiry and the recommendations and findings in his report, and deal with any questions or concerns that they have about the content and conduct of the inquiry.

I am sorry to intervene, because I have the greatest respect for the Minister, but what he has said—or what his civil servants have said—is a bit like taking a penalty shot and hitting something at a 45° angle. It is all true, but it completely misses the point. I shall willingly accept his invitation, but I would love to bring along Peter Francis, Liz McDonald, Mark Kemp and David Parish. Maybe they could give a version that is markedly different from the reports that were commissioned. I ask my hon. Friend not to simply close his eyes and have a nice little meeting. I hope that he will examine the matter seriously, because it is about the integrity of British local government, which has been gravely damaged by what happened in my constituency and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, North.

The integrity and propriety of British local government is the remit and role of the district auditor; that is an element of what he is meant to consider. My right hon. Friend has a lot of experience in the House, and he will understand that individual employment contract matters are not something that I, as a Minister, can properly look into in detail. I started my contribution by saying that there are established procedures through which that can be done, and all four individuals whom he mentioned have pursued, in different ways, the legal avenues available to them.

Let me finish by saying that in the last debate on the subject, mention was made of an ongoing police investigation and the involvement of the Crown Prosecution Service. I understand that that investigation was concluded shortly after the debate last April, and the police determined that no further action was necessary. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, South said, there have been real achievements in Walsall since 2002. It would be wrong to ignore them, but clearly he and my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, North have questions resulting from the two inquiries and two reports. As I have said, if they wish to pursue those questions with and through me, I am happy for them to do so.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at Three o’clock.