Sefton’s £4,500 a year “pay for no work” deal with Liverpool’s Mayor Joe Anderson comes under attack

by
25th April 2015

Photo: Joe Anderson

The deal in which Liverpool Labour boss Joe Anderson was paid £4,500 a year by a Sefton school for doing no work came under attack from Lib Dem councillors at Thursday’s meeting of Sefton Council.

When the school, Chesterfield High School in Crosby, ended the arrangement, Mayor Joe Anderson took the case to an Employment Tribunal. When he lost there he appealed and lost again, with the decision of the Employment Appeal Tribunal being widely reported last week:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-32317297

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3046491/Anti-austerity-Labour-mayor-earning-80-000-paid-4-500-secondary-school-used-work-doing-linked-gave-kudos.html

At the Council meeting in Southport Town Hall, Birkdale Lib Dem councillor Simon Shaw led calls for an Inquiry into ‘all aspects of Sefton Council’s involvement in this matter’. However Bootle Labour council leader Peter Dowd turned down the request in what is expected to be his final appearance before being elected MP for Bootle in two week’s time.

In calling for the Inquiry Cllr Shaw quoted directly from the words of Judge Serota who blasted the deal in his written Appeal judgement.

“When you have a judge saying that Liverpool Mayor Joe Anderson was ‘party to a misuse of public funds’ and that ‘this arrangement may strike members of the public as constituting a misapplication of public monies’ then it seems to me that there needs be a thorough Inquiry into Sefton Council’s involvement in this matter,” said Cllr Shaw.

“For Sefton Council’s Labour leader to pass the buck by saying that ‘the matters as affecting Sefton Council were dealt with in accordance with the appropriate legislation by officers’ is simply unacceptable.”

Lib Dem councillors Iain Brodie Browne and Haydn Preece also asked questions about the deal which the judge had condemned as ‘a reverse form of a zero hours contract, whereby the school was bound to make payment of salary but the Claimant (Mayor Anderson) was not bound to provide any services.’ However they also received dismissive replies from Councillor Dowd.

 

Details of the questions and answers given at the Sefton Council meeting are available at: http://modgov.sefton.gov.uk/moderngov/documents/b20999/Supplementary%20Agenda%2023rd-Apr-2015%2018.30%20Council.pdf?T=9

The full judgement from the Employment Appeals Tribunal is available at: http://www.employmentcasesupdate.co.uk/site.aspx?i=ed26506

 

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