It was the first in-person Mayor’s Question Time (MQT) event last Wednesday for Tees Valley Combined Authority (TVCA) Mayor Lord Ben Houchen. The first event in the eight years of his tenure where members of the public could put questions directly to Mayor Houchen was held at Yarm School in the Princess Alexandra Auditorium. The host, Teesside Live and Local Democracy Reporter reporter Daniel Hodgson, questioned the Mayor for half an hour and then the floor was opened up to the public.
Full house?
Curiously I tried to get tickets to the event the night before and it was ‘sold out’. I was therefore quite shocked to see a picture of a sparse audience published in BDaily. Considering the Princess Alexandra Auditorium at Yarm School seats 750 people, it’s strange that this event was sold out at around 50.
Economical with the truth
Houchen started the event by batting off that this was actually his first in-person Mayor’s Question Time stating that Andy Burnham the Greater Manchester Combined Authority Mayor had only been doing this for “a couple of years”. This is incorrect. Andy Burnham has been conducting monthly Mayor’s Questions since his election in 2017. He also holds a weekly radio phone in. Houchen went on to equate going live on Facebook occasionally to holding a formal event.
But there’s a catch
I’m sure plenty of you reading this won’t be able to access his Facebook livestreams due to being blocked. I know I can’t. All because I asked a question. It also seems that Houchen does not like being questioned. He branded public questions at the Tees Valley Combined Authority (TVCA) “insane” and called members of the public “idiots” and then went on to reduce their capacity to actually ask questions which you can read about here. These questions have not and will not ever be put to him or his cabinet directly.
Dragged to the table
A side note. The only reason Houchen is now entertaining these in-person events is because the government has issued guidance that he must. It isn’t out of the goodness of his heart and it won’t be anywhere near the monthly events Andy Burnham hosts. Daniel Hodgson confirmed that these events would be once every six months.
Straw man argument
Houchen was then asked about buses and bringing them back into public control in which he defaulted to his ‘I’ll never raise a penny of public taxes for as long as I’m Mayor’ defence. For some reason he likes to lead the public into believing that if he franchises buses that he’s going to stick a levy on their council tax bill to pay for it. Which he can do. But, on the flip side of that, his Combined Authority can borrow money under the Local Government prudential borrowing scheme to pay for it but he’s not as quick to let the public know this.
Bus franchising – a political decision?
The TVCA has also just been given £978mn from central government as part of the second round of the City Region Sustainable Transport Settlement (CRSTS2). So, why exactly is Mayor Houchen not able to franchise buses with nearly £1bn in funding?
Partisan politics
The next question from Daniel was about child poverty in our region. Newport in Middlesbrough has the highest child poverty rate in the country with 85% of children in the ward living below the poverty line. He asked Houchen how he would remedy this referring to Kim McGuinness, the North-East Combined Authority Mayor, and her child poverty strategy. To which Houchen took a cheap shot and stated “you don’t solve child poverty with one grandiose gesture”. No you don’t.
When is a grandiose gesture not a grandiose gesture?
So, why did he state in Teesside Live in January just that when he said, “how do you improve peoples’ lives? You give them money, what’s the best way to give people money? You create jobs and put money in their pockets. So if you’re creating thousands and thousands of jobs, good well paid jobs, that are significantly above the national average wage, and you’re giving jobs and opportunities to people that haven’t had jobs and opportunities for decades, that’s how you solve poverty.”
Bargain hunt
The first question from the floor came from audience member Scott who went in on the recent revelations in the current edition of Private Eye Magazine. For context, documents uncovered by the Eye from the land registry found that South Tees Developments Limited (STDL), the company which is used as a vehicle to buy and sell real estate for the South Tees Development Corporation (STDC) – a subsidiary of the TVCA to regenerate the old Redcar Steelworks site, has sold 20 electric substations on the site for £10.91 or 55p per substation.
Crony capitalism
That’s public assets being sold to Houchen’s favoured developers at Teesworks, Martin Corney and Chris Musgrave and their newest Joint Venture with North West Electric in the form of Steel River Power Ltd. The public only has a 5% stake in this company. We now know a data centre is planned for the site and these set ups are incredibly power hungry. Corney and Musgrave will be quids in and the public purse will probably be left with dust.
The UK’s first AI mayor?
The question put to Houchen explained this deal and the forthcoming data centre plans and asked him to clarify “what is going on there?”. To which he responded verbatim “yea er, um, sorry, yea, let me break that down.” He goes on to state that AI is the future and that we are the only place in the country that can deliver AI data centre capabilities. Which is all fine and well if the public was making a profit from the electricity supply or indeed it was creating masses of jobs but data centres notoriously only need low staffing levels to run. The one planned for Teesworks will only provide between 30-50 jobs maximum and we now know that STDL on behalf of the STDC sold public assets for a pittance once again.
Shooting the messenger
Houchen retorts, “I’ll be quite frank, Private Eye is just a complete comic, it completely distorts everything, you can shake your head but it distorts everything that has ever been delivered on that site and actually I would encourage you sir as a subscriber to save your money and I would also say go back and read the previous issues and look at the contradictions that has been made in every single article that has ever been written by Private Eye. If you want to get into it, you’re going to ask me more questions so we may as well.”
Houchen does the maths…
“The idea that this has been sold for £10 is I mean, erm, it’s just nonsense right? It’s clearly nonsense and the idea that we’ve sold anything, the private wire network on the site is worth a significant mindless number. Erm, so, when you say something. It’s like saying. Let’s talk about this power company. It’s like saying I’m going to sell you this house and I want that, I want it, to, to buy my house, there’s a liability that comes with it of £300,000.”
…but not very convincingly
“So when you buy my house you have to write out a cheque for £300,000. How much are you paying for my house? You’re not paying anything for it are ya? Because if you’ve got it on the market for £200,000, you’re not paying £200,000 and then paying £300,000 of liability. You say, well hang on, if I’m having to cover the problems with this site, you’re going to have to give me that site for free. So, the idea that we stole something that shouldn’t have been sold for undervalue or a pound or all this nonsense, completely misunderstands the commercial reason of that site.”
Move along, nothing to see here
“And, you know, we’ve had a number of investigations into this, we’ve had a government investigation, we’ve had an independent review, and everything is found that we’ve done nothing wrong. So, I would really encourage you not to read a comic over a serious newspaper.” One thinks the Mayor doth protest too much. Unbelievably he then goes on to say that “that’s why I think if you continue to read things like Private Eye they will purposefully distort something.”
Ad hominem
“Because the person that writes in Private Eye is a self-confessed communist. And so if you’re going to approach something from a communistic point of view then you’re not going to be able to see what happens in daily life. And even this Labour government, even this Labour government, right, have come out since they’ve came into power and they’ve said there’s nothing to see here.”
What Best Value Notice?
“We’ve looked at all the books because they’ve walked in, the government, they’ve asked their questions and all we’re seeing now are people who’ve spent years and years trying to pretend that there’s some sort of conspiracy and they’ve spent too much of their life on it and they can’t afford for it to be wrong because then they have to admit that they’ve wasted three or four years of their life trying to find a conspiracy that doesn’t exist.”
McCarthyism on Teesside
I took this tirade to Richard Brooks, the well respected journalist Lord Houchen is speaking about and asked him if he was indeed a ‘self-confessed communist’, to which he responded, “I hope when he went home he checked there weren’t any more reds under the bed before he turned in”.
Class A dealers near me
Richard has indeed been a thorn in the side for Houchen as he continuously and consistently holds his feet to the fire. His revelations continue to shock and surprise the public and fellow journalists alike. He discovered that the security contract on the Teesworks site had been given to a convicted criminal still serving a prison sentence for drug trafficking through a port and that Houchen the STDC had given him the keys to a customs zone. He went on to reveal that the person who owns the company currently owes the taxman around £1.5mn. The security contract for the STDC was £9mn.
Sore point
A member of the public called Alice raised both of these issues with Houchen and asked him if he was “confident that the site and especially the custom zone are safe from illicit activity?” To which he responded, “Yes 100%. I mean there are half a dozen things wrong with what you just said that are completely untrue. And also, by the way, let’s just be clear, this is also a security company that runs all the security services for Hartlepool council, Darlington council, Blackpool council as well as many other public bodies across this country.”
North East Insecurity
“So again the idea that there is something nefarious going on, again you should probably stop reading Private Eye because it’s not a place for actual facts.” to which she replied that she doesn’t actually read it. She went on to re-read her question slowly and Houchen kept interrupting to shout “THAT’S NOT TRUE”, over and over. Nine times in all.
Always obtain a secondary source
Private Eye isn’t the only news outlet reporting on it. In fact the Daily Mail reported on it here in January this year as did The Northern Echo here.
I won’t see you in court
After Houchen had sufficiently shouted down a story that he apparently doesn’t want the public to get a hold of, a third audience member called John interjected and asked him “if those facts are untrue, why don’t you sue Private Eye?” To which he responded “Because I’m not a security company”.
All the news that’s fit to print
John went on to state that they are “in favour of Teesworks, TVCA, and the vast majority of devolution. I really am. But to describe Private Eye in those terms, when they were the organisation, the printed organisation that uncovered an awful lot of the Royal Mail stuff through to sub-postmasters, an awful lot of the Windrush cover-up as well, I think it’s enormously disrespectful. I think…” and as ever Houchen churlishly interjects with “A broken clock is right twice a day isn’t it, so…”
When in a hole, stop digging
Not deterred, John raised concerns about transparency and perceived conflicts of interest on the Teesworks site. Specifically around a plant hire company allegedly linked to one of the developers’ family members. Despite not alleging illegality, he argued that such associations do not “pass the sniff test” referencing widespread media scrutiny from news outlets like Private Eye, The Independent, and The Financial Times. Houchen was adamant that “everything is public procurement compliant.”
As always, I believe the public can make up their own minds in such matters.
The Ben Houchen Show
For more of this content, tune into the Mayor’s monthly phone in on BBC Tees on the first Wednesday of every month. Lord Houchen also takes an hour-long question and answer session twice a year from members of the TVCA Overview and Scrutiny Committee. These meetings are held at Teesside Airport.
Thank you to Ray Casey for contributing to this article
