Mayor Lutfur Rahman: again, no case to answer

Hidden away among the news on Budget day was a Metropolitan Police announcement: that there will be no criminal prosecutions arsing out of the Judgement in the Election Court issued in April 2015. Though this was always the most likely outcome, it has startled some local politicians.

The Metropolitan Police press release referred, oddly to a “200 page report published in April 2015 by the High Court following the election petition hearing”. There was no “report”. The only 200 page document issued by the Court that April was the Judgement on the Election Petition – but this is presumably the document the Met refers to.

The Met announced that it and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) had not found, in the Judgement, sufficient evidence to charge anyone with criminal offences. It is not for want of looking. Judges in civil matters can, in the general way of things, refer their Judgements to the police for criminal investigations if they believe that a civil case has brought to light a possible criminal offence. The Election Court Judge did not refer his Judgement to the police – but they looked at it anyway. A set of “specialist detectives” carried out a “full review” into the Judgement.

The Specialist Enquiry Team (SET) found five new allegations. One (of which the police have revealed no details) could not be pursued because it was out of time. The Met has not commented specifically on the other four allegations, beyond that they are covered by the general statement that no one is to be charged with any criminal offence.

The SET also found new material in connection with 47 allegations which had been previously reported to and investigated by the police – within the total of 164 complaints that the Met received and investigated during the 2014 election period. Those 164 complaints of election malpractice resulted in two persons receiving a caution (the Met have not given any information on who these people or the offences were) and in one person being charged with a criminal offence which is due to go to trial (again, no details of the person charged or the crime have been released).

Let’s have a little recap of the story so far.

•Secretary of State Eric Pickles sent Price Waterhouse Cooper into Tower Hamlets and they looked at over 10 million pieces of paper over several months and then produced a report. The Metropolitan Police found no evidence in that report which could lead to criminal charges being laid against Mayor Lutfur Rahman or the councillors who supported him.

•The Election Court spent months looking at a large volume of documents and witness statements and weeks hearing the evidence of some of the witnesses who had provided those statements and then it handed down a Judgement. The Metropolitan Police found no evidence in that Judgement which could lead to criminal charges being laid against Mayor Lutfur Rahman or the councillors who supported him, save in one case which was out of time and which will therefore not be tested in a trial.

•The Metropolitan Police investigated 164 complaints of electoral practice and investigated them and found evidence which led to two cautions and one set of criminal charges (which case is ongoing) – a “success” rate of 1.82%.

The above reports and lack of criminal charges are not new. In one election which took place while Lutfur Rahman was mayor, allegations were bandied about that one of the councillors who supported him had harvested postal votes (that is, taken voters’ postal vote forms away from them in order to fill them in and submit them themselves). When the allegation was investigated, it turned out that a local resident had seen the councillor in the street, holding some sheets of paper. The resident was too far away to see what they were but complained that if the papers had been postal votes, then the councillor would have been in the wrong.

The talk, usually from parties with political axes to grind, that electoral fraud is rife in Tower Hamlets has led to the Council instituting one of the strictest election regimes in the country. The gossip and allegations continue nonetheless, but have very little substance.

As the Met themselves point out, the standard of evidence needed for civil and criminal cases is very different. The Election Court, applying civil law, found that there had been election malpractice and voided the 2014 mayoral election on the basis of very little first hand evidence of wrongdoing. The Metropolitan Police have not been able to find, after two mammoth investigations, enough evidence to lay criminal charges. Putting it bluntly, no party or body has yet found Mayor Lutfur Rahman guilty of fraud or corruption.

Against this background, the comments of Cllr Peter Golds, Leader of the Conservative Group on Tower Hamlets Council, seem very strange. He told the Evening Standard that the police should be “utterly ashamed” over their handling of the case. “For years they [the Metropolitan Police] have ignored or conducted tick box exercise regarding fraud. It took four brave people to risk their all to bring the election petition. It revealed extraordinary levels of corruption, yet the police do nothing – as they have repeatedly done in the past. Londoners who hope for free and fair elections [have been] failed by the MPS.”

Cllr Golds’ views are similar to the views expressed in public on the Labour benches in Tower Hamlets Council over the years. Repeating allegations does not turn those allegations into criminal convictions. Expressing political views does not turn those views into fact – especially when the facts contradict them. There was certainly much energy expended on trying to prove that Mayor Lutfur Rahman was a wrong ’un. Why?

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