Barnet Council Metpro scandal - A Tory backbencher speaks

One of the more friendly and sensible Barnet Tory backbench councillors spoke to me over the weekend about Metpro. They asked not to be named in the blog, but were happy to have their views repeated. They agreed that Metpro was probably one of the biggest cock ups since the Tories took over in 2002. I asked whether they thought an independent public inquiry would be more appropriate than the current audit committee investigation "We had an independent investigation into the Underhill sale. It achieved nothing and cost nearly a million pounds. We didn't want a repeat of that". I asked if councillors should have got a proper grip on the situation "Councillors don't decide who we give contracts to or how they are administered". But Metpro didn't have a contract, I pointed out. "That's why we've got the audit committee checking it out". I asked what he expected the audit committee to find "It is pretty clear that we need better controls in place and we need to ensure that companies are properly accredited. To be honest, you don't need an independent investigator to tell you that, it's stating the obvious". I asked if the way the whole scandal has blow up has made Barnet CEO Nick Walkleys position untenable "He can't afford anything else like this to come up, being fair to Nick he's in a difficult position right now". I asked if he was referring to having to work with the Leader in absense Lynne Hillan "You really don't expect me to answer that question do you". And that was where we left it.

It is quite clear that Metpro is a major watershed. I am calling on Barnet Council to call a moratorium on the Future Shape program until the audit committee report is produced. If the council has inadequate processes in place for administering contractors, this needs to be fixed and to be shown to be fixed before any further contracts are outsourced. We can't afford any more Metpro scandals. From what I was told, the more sensible Conservative Councillors agree with this proposition. I think they are starting to wake up to the fact that they are sleepwalking towards a disaster.