Westminster City Council (No.2)
EDM number 55 in 1993-94, proposed by Jack Straw on 23/11/1993.
That this House is profoundly alarmed by the fact, in respect of his investigation into the City's designated sales policy, the District Auditor of Westminster had to use his formal powers to compel some of the respondents and witnesses to attend for interview, and had to conduct a raid on the offices of Westminster City Council to obtain copies of documents, some of the originals of which had been shredded; believes that a significant cause of the repeated postponements of publication of the Auditor's report has been the result of a deliberate strategy by some of the respondents, including Dame Shirley Porter and Councillor David Weeks, both former leaders of the City Council, to cause as much hindrance to the District Auditor as they can, to force him to use his formal powers, and to make use of other delaying tactics, so as to make it practically impossible for the District Auditor to hold any oral hearing into his provisional views before the London borough elections in May 1994; calls upon the Right honourable Member for the City of London and Westminster South, and the honourable Member for Westminster North, both Ministers of the Crown, to condemn any undue interference in such an important quasi-judicial process; and further believes that unless the District Auditor now sets and announces a firm date for the publication of his provisional findings, and keeps to it, the well-earned reputation for impartiality of the District Auditor Service, and of the Audit Commission, is bound to be brought into question.
This motion has been signed by a total of 51 MPs.
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