A SADDLEWORTH councillor has failed in his bid to force a letter of no confidence in Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham’s handling of Greater Manchester Police.
But Sam Al-Hamdani believes he should be ‘banging at the door’ to find out exactly what officers are accused of.
He also asked people to ‘look him in the eye and tell him it’s good enough’ over the force’s failings.
The Liberal Democrat tabled a motion to Oldham’s full council meeting on Wednesday, November 2 demanding the authority put pressure on the wider area’s leader.
He also highlighted GMP’s apparent lethargy in assisting with a review into child sexual exploitation in the area.
In an impassioned speech, Saddleworth West and Lees representative Cllr Al-Hamdani said: ““It is not good enough.
“This force failed victims of domestic abuse under Andy Burnham’s watch. Look me in the eye and tell me that’s good enough.
“They failed to provide information, repeatedly, to the investigation. Look me in the eye and tell me that’s good enough.”
Cllr Al-Hamdani’s motion stated: “Newsam and Ridgway’s review into CSE in Oldham, commissioned by Andy Burnham, notes the following, ‘The review started in January 2020, yet it took until November 2021 to agree a data processing agreement with GMP (for comparison, a complete data processing agreement with Oldham Council was agreed in April 2020).
“’This data processing agreement with GMP only covered two of the 11 cases investigated – Shabir Ahmed and ‘Sophie.’’
“Newsam and Ridgway further note that the lack of an agreement affected the quality of assurance that they could give about the quality of the conduct of GMP.”
Cllr Al-Hamdani also claimed GMP could not provide the data for allegations against its officers, which the Metropolitan Police had been ‘absolutely carpeted’ for, because ‘our records aren’t kept in a way that allows us to provide that data for anything longer ago than 2020.’
“They don’t know what’s going on,” he added at the meeting. “If I was Andy Burnham, at the time I saw that report about the Met, I’d have been banging in the door demanding to know those figures.
“Maybe he has asked that question but they couldn’t provide that information to me.
“Andy Burnham said the previous Chief Constable was sacked because he wouldn’t provide a data compliance agreement when we were going through the investigation in Oldham.
“We got a new one but he didn’t provide that. Why not?
“If Andy Burnham was in charge and he sacked the first one because he wasn’t doing it, what’s going on? It doesn’t make any sense.”
GMP has been taken out of special measures, which it was placed into in December 2020 following significant concerns raised in His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMICFRS) Victim Service Assessment – particularly that 80,000 crimes had gone unreported – which resulted in the mayor asking Chief Constable Ian Hopkins to step down.
Cllr Al-Hamdani’s motion also highlighted the effect of cuts by the Conservative Government – but is in no doubt about where the responsibility lies.
It added: “HMICFRS reported that GMP was failing victims of domestic abuse in 2017, 2019, 2020 and 2021.
“From 2016, all chief officers at GMP have been replaced. The only two senior posts that have remained unchanged throughout this entire period are the Police and Crime Commissioner and the Deputy Mayor for Policing, Crime, Criminal Justice, and Fire – Andy Burnham and, his appointee, Baroness Beverley Hughes.”
Councillors were asked to decide whether they agree with the notion, ‘victims of crime in the borough of Oldham, and across Greater Manchester, are being failed.
‘Andy Burnham has failed and the Conservative government’s approach to policing and criminal justice has failed.’
They were also asked to instruct chief executive Harry Catherall to, ‘write to the Mayor and Deputy Mayor of Greater Manchester to inform them of council’s lack of confidence in their ability to effectively manage GMP.’
However, councillors voted against the approach, which Cllr Al-Hamdani insisted, ‘was not about the police but about the management and priorities that are set for them.’
I fail to see how you can make Andy Burnham responsible for GMP’s failings. It has been proven that these failings are endemic and over many decades, a greater culprit may be Theresa May, who cuts huge numbers of front line police officers during her time as Home Secretary. Or maybe Priti Patel or Suella Braverman who are actually in charge of the police force in this country. I don’t think its a coincidence that both are completely incompetent and out of their depth.
OK then lets go back t his equally dire record as Labour Health Secretary, Burnham commissioned the Francis report, (The third report int the failings at Mid Staff,) to delay dealing with them so that Labour’s Privatization of the the NHS could continue without interference despite, “The appalling suffering of patients.”
It was reading the Francis Report more than anything else that cured me of ever trusting a Labour politician ever again and especial not Burnham whom I regard as unspeakable.
In fact it’s this quote from The Francis Report copied below that best sums up not jut Burnham’s failing but those of the entire Blair/Brown administration and as country we’re still paying the price of them.
“The NHS system includes many checks and balances that should have prevented serious systemic failures of this sort. There were and are a plethora of agencies, scrutiny groups, commissioners, professional bodies, all of who might have been expected by patients and the public to detect, identify and to to something effective to remedy non compliance with acceptable standards of care.”
“For years that did not happen.”
Several people were responsible for those now well documented failings and Burham was one of them
What mid staffs proved was that Burnham wasn’t fit to approve a hospital’s foundation status, underestimating the scrutiny that was needed. Politicians are constantly put in posts that they aren’t qualified to do – look at every Tory cabinet. But more importantly the mid staffs hospital board and management within it failed on every level and was unfit to oversee and manage such a large operation. This is repeated across the country and mid staffs won’t be the last.
Every new government messes with how the NHS is structured, management levels are changed but they fail to improve the fundamentals – patient care.
That has to be among the most vapid and empty headed pieces of sophistry and utter denial that I’ve ever read and it also sums up perfectly current utterly bankrupt state of the Labour party in a single paragraph what part of, “The appalling suffering of patients,” and for many years are you failing to grasp ?
As the then head of the NHS commented after the Francis Report, (the report third into the abuses at Mid Staff,) was published, “It doesn’t tell us anything we don’t already know.”
Competent or not; Burnham was and still is always both incompetent and far more concerned with his own political career than he ever was with welfare of the patients, (hence the obvious parallels with his recent problems with GMP.)
What you’re really saying is that as long as no one can blame us, (a fanciful notion at best,) even though Labour were the party then in power and were therefor responsible both legally and morally, for “the appalling suffering of patients,” doesn’t matter ?
I beg to differ.
Haha you’re clearly in denial and no doubt think that the economic suffering that the UK is it experiencing has nothing to do with Brexit, and is down to the old Labour government, which was 12 years ago.
The Tories have always wanted to sell the NHS off and they’ve succeeded in destroying it completely – tried to get a hospital referral recently? Good luck. Had a loved one in hospital recently? It’s horrific. The NHS is on its knees and it’s only kept going by the goodwill of the staff who work under the layers of management.
We’ve got a lot worse to come than Mid Staffs and you won’t be able to pin that on Labour or Burnham
In point of fact and despite you rather clumsy and desperate attempts at revisionism it was in fact Labour who sold of the NHS long before the voters finally had the sense to tell them to sling their hook, (although that was certainly one reason for it,) thanks to the Blair/Brown policy of flogging off public assets to the private sector by the back door, Labour’s now infamous PFI initiatives the NHS is now paying half a billion pounds in interest to private companies before there’s any money available to treat patients or pay staff and that’s a perfect snapshot of Labour’s real legacy of mismanagement, incompetence and probably, almost certainly or so many people believe, institutional and endemic malfeasance.
The current state of Liverpool would be yet another such snapshot, endless repeating, “it’s all the fault of the Tories,” ad nausium got tired a long time ago and it simply is supported by the facts.
As for the wretched Andy Burnham, even his own party don’t really seem to have much enthusiasm for him, he’s been rejected as leader twice.
Correction, I posted, “It simply is supported by the facts,” which should of course read, it simply isn’t supported by the facts, but I’ll admit that I struggle to properly edit my comments here sometime and I apologise for a confusing mistake.