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Councillor Paul Buchanan

I am delighted to have the opportunity in an Adjournment debate to talk about Mr. Paul Buchanan. This is a short debate with a short title, but I am here to tell the House of some extraordinary events in the life of an elected councillor for the county of Somerset. Mr. Buchanan is not a constituent of mine; nor, by any stretch of the imagination, is he is a supporter of my party. He is a Liberal Democrat, so we ought to be classified as sworn political enemies. However, sometimes there are bigger things in life than party loyalty, and when a man is made to suffer without good reason and has no right of redress, it matters not a jot what his party loyalties may be. I became interested in the case of Paul Buchanan partly because his own political leadership disowned him. It puzzled me that a man should have a grievance that nobody was prepared to hear. Even his local Member of Parliament refused to take up the case. I am pleased to say that this House has a long and proud tradition of defending the weak and standing up for those who have no voice. Parliament, after all, is supposed to be the highest court in the land. Tonight I bring before the House the strange case of Paul Buchanan. His world has been turned upside down, his career prospects have been badly damaged, his political ambitions in local government have been ruined and his good name has been rubbished, all because of the actions of one highly placed, highly paid and quite unscrupulous public official—the chief executive of Somerset county council, Mr. Alan Jones. This is a true story. Mr. Jones is guilty of deliberate deceit and victimisation. He deliberately set out to destroy Paul Buchanan. The tactics that Jones used make Damian McBride look like an angel. I have the evidence right here. To his credit, Mr. Buchanan has at no time broken any confidences to me. All my information has come from available transcripts which were deemed by the Adjudication Panel for England to be "in the public domain". The documents that I have collected were part of recent hearings against Paul Buchanan. I attended one of the proceedings. The evidence against Alan Jones is damning. On 4 April 2007 Alan Jones composed a six-page letter of complaint about Paul Buchanan and sent it to the Standards Board for England. At that time Mr. Buchanan was deputy leader of his party and hoped to be the new leader. Without the intervention of the chief executive, he would probably have succeeded, but with a very poisoned pen Jones totally undermined him. The letter is a bizarre piece of writing. Jones attempts to play the reasonable father-figure, describing Mr. Buchanan as "young, able and enthusiastic". Then the venom starts to flow. Paul Buchanan is accused of secretiveness, undermining staff, aggression, threatening behaviour, rudeness, intimidation, anger, disrespect, fraud, sexism, racism, homophobia, and abuse of his office as an elected councillor. There is barely concealed hatred of the man in every sentence. It is the ultimate hatchet job. Indeed, if there was a prize for the black arts, Alan Jones would win it, hands down. Jones did not want the Standards Board to investigate. He wanted an instant political execution. He asked for Buchanan to be suspended there and then. I can only hazard a guess at the reaction when his letter was received. The Standards Board would have been forgiven for thinking that Paul Buchanan was an unstable nutcase with homicidal tendencies. In fact, the really unstable character was the one who made the complaint—Somerset county council's most senior officer. Unfortunately, the Standards Board does not investigate complaints against officers; there is a gaping hole in the justice system. It is manifestly unfair that no legal process has yet been created by which officers can be independently investigated—unless, that is, they commit actual crimes. I invite the Minister to comment on that vital general point when he responds, and to see whether he can do anything to help. The Standards Board had very few options. It was obliged to launch a full-blown inquiry into Mr. Buchanan, even if it doubted the wild complaints about him that Alan Jones had brought. The board went about its task relentlessly for two years. It conducted literally hundreds of interviews and produced thousands of pages of transcripts. When it rejected Alan Jones's first batch of complaints, Jones wasted no additional time disputing its findings. I sympathise a little with the Standards Board; it was dealing with a deranged obsessive. The first investigator, or ethical standards officer, as the board calls them, retired halfway through the tortuous process—probably exhausted. Lawyers came and went, and it dragged on. Heaven only knows what it cost—and the result? Eventually, 16 of the original complaints were rejected completely and four others were referred to a higher court—the Adjudication Panel. That meant more delay and more uncertainty for Paul Buchanan. The panel, with a bench of barristers in tow, finally met in Somerset over recent weeks. Key witnesses were called to give evidence again—remarkably few, actually, because most did not want to have anything to do with it. The panel had access to all the original documentation and threw out three more complaints. One tiny charge was upheld. Paul Buchanan had been heard swearing under his breath. He was deemed to have been a little careless and ticked off with a censure—the mildest possible sanction. That is mad. Frankly, after two years in limbo, my language would have been extremely fruity and very loud indeed. My fascination with the case, however, is with what really lies behind it. Why on earth did a chief executive, earning £160,000 a year, with 17,000 staff and huge responsibilities go to so much trouble to make complaints about a young, ambitious councillor? Mr. Jones's explanation was beyond belief. He said that Mr. Buchanan's behaviour was""capable of damaging the council's continued improvement and external reputation."" That statement would stack up only if the charges against him were proved, but they were not. Paul Buchanan has been acquitted of everything serious. Let us remember the allegations: secretiveness, undermining staff, aggression, threatening behaviour, rudeness, intimidation, anger, disrespect, fraud, sexism, racism, homophobia—and, I suspect, leaving the toilet seat up. It is not credible that Alan Jones made an innocent mistake in complaining about Buchanan. Mr. Jones's charges were too specific, and they were backed up with too much detail and too much personal bile. It was a wholly personal vendetta. It is open to anyone—fellow councillors, council employees and ordinary members of the public—to make complaints to the Standards Board, but Jones extracted statements from junior staff who were perhaps too scared to go against the boss. So, why on earth did Jones want to get Buchanan? And, what had Buchanan got on Jones? I am sorry if it sounds conspiratorial, but there is a big hint of conspiracy in all this. Mr Buchanan unfortunately knew too much for his own good. Back in 2005 there was gossip about Alan Jones having an affair with a member of staff called Jenny Hastings. Everybody at county hall knew about it; it was no secret. What Buchanan did not know, however, was that when the affair came to an end, Ms Hastings made very serious allegations of harassment against Alan Jones. Obviously, engaging in such harassment is a sackable offence. The allegations had to be dealt with by a confidential panel of elected members, including Councillor Cathy Bakewell, the lady who led the council at the time. The panel did not reach a quick conclusion; everything was delayed because Mrs. Bakewell was taken seriously ill halfway through. These things happen. Paul Buchanan was then deputised to take on many of her responsibilities, but Cathy Bakewell never told him about the Alan Jones inquiry. Alan Jones, however, did tell him—and in lurid detail. Perhaps he wanted to curry favour with the man most likely to be the next leader of the county council. Until that moment, Paul Buchanan was unaware of any allegations and did not know either about the confidential panel; he was not even on it. Jones pleaded with Buchanan to help. Buchanan rightly told Jones that he could not. Big mistake: Alan Jones has a long memory and, as we will see, bears grudges. By the time Councillor Cathy Bakewell returned to work, it was deemed too dangerous to punish Jones by sacking him. At that time, Jenny Hastings was threatening an industrial tribunal—a very public way of exposing the antics of her erstwhile lover. Meanwhile, the Audit Commission was due to inspect the council. There is nothing like a four-star sex scandal to scupper a council's chances of an "excellent" four-star rating. Behind closed doors and with the help of ACAS, a deal was sealed to buy off Ms Hastings. It cost £140,000 of taxpayers' money—slightly less than Alan Jones's annual salary. Somerset county council thought that it had got everyone involved to sign a confidentiality agreement, but it carelessly left at least one person off the list, which is why I know how much she was paid. There were also some very large extra payments. In the next couple of years, millions of pounds were spent on mysterious "staff restructuring" at Somerset county council. Did any of that money help buy the silence of those on the inside who knew the gory details? Were those in the know given golden goodbyes when they retired? Life at the county council limped on, however. Paul Buchanan continued as deputy leader, taking a particular interest in two projects close to Alan Jones's heart. Both men wanted Somerset to be transformed into a unitary authority, taking responsibility from the five existing district councils. In my opinion, it was a mad idea, but Mr. Buchanan is a Liberal Democrat, so we have to allow for a certain degree of woolly-headed lunacy. Both Buchanan and Jones also wanted to see improvements in how services were delivered. So, in a peculiar fashion, Jones and Buchanan looked like peas in a pod. Jones was the go-getting chief executive, albeit with a weakness for women; Buchanan was business-savvy and energetic. What a team! Except that the go-getting chief executive much preferred compliant pussycat politicians who sit quietly in the corner and purr when officers tell them what to do. Mr. Buchanan had a failing: he was apt to ask too many questions. Furthermore, he came equipped with a brain. The Minister may know of my close interest in the development and malfunction of a joint venture company involving Somerset county council, Avon and Somerset police and IBM.