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 It has been one of the most perplexing aspects of this long drawn out saga why five lawyers working for one of the leading Human Rights lawyers in the UK, Bindmans LLP, should go to such extraordinary lengths to discourage me from exercising my human right to raise a very legitimate complaint with the Local Government Ombudsman and then be totally unwilling to acknowledge that this is what they have done. I hope I have convinced you that that is what they have done.

Why didn’t they simply write the pre-action protocol letter I had paid them to write? Then they could have urged me not to waste my time using it to initiate judicial review proceedings against the Local Government Ombudsman if they were not very optimistic about my chances. So very much easier than trying to prejudge the decision of a judge and argue at length that the application would be “bound to fail.”

 There has also been this very personal disconcerting aspect as well. It has led me to breach a 60 year friendship, going back to my University days, with Geoffrey Bindman – Sir Geoffrey Bindman QC – who did so much before he retired to give Bindmans the fine reputation that they have, fighting against the racial intolerance of Apartheid, the abomination of Pinochet, and for gender and equality rights in the workplace. Fighting, in short, for the underdog in the world of the Rottweiler. His QC a rare recognition for a solicitor of his eminence.

He introduced me to John Halford, head of Bindmans public law team in the first place. Although I tried very hard to persuade him that his old firm had badly let me down, he kept insisting that their advice was sound.

This may be something more than an illustration of solidarity to colleagues pre-empting integrity as I have generally alleged as an explanation of the conduct of all those working for the Local Government and Legal Ombudsman. I would not like to suggest that Geoffrey is anything other than a man of total integrity.

 But why? And why all the others?

There is something important underlying all this and, in putting forward some relatively small suggestions to right a situation that is very badly wrong, with your help I want to put it to the test,

Human Rights lawyers tend to be Labour lawyers; Geoffrey is one of the most notable. Helena Kennedy QC, author of the Power Report, and a Labour Peer another. You’ve seen her quite often on the Andrew Marr programme.

In their DNA, working in the public sector for the State is good and wholesome, working in the private sector is working where greed and exploitation in the quest for profit is the norm. Left Wing Marx-influenced academics have conditioned generations of students that this is the case to such an extent it gets into their DNA for the rest of their lives.

 But it is a Marxist inspired myth. It is demonology. It is totally belied by history where the abuse of power by the State has far exceeded the abuse of power by private companies.

Liberté égalité fraternité wasn’t, at the time, such a wonderful slogan. The French Revolution was followed by the Terror and Napoleon. Lenin! Stalin! MAO! Hitler! Pol Pot! Franco! Chavez in Venezuela recently! Greed for power is bad enough. Fear of loss of it is even worse; far worse than greed for money!

Also in their DNA, pass a law, create a right and you have corrected a social wrong. If only the world was so simple. It was Geoffrey himself who reminded me of the saying of Kant that the great Isaiah Berlin used to quote when declining to join the Left “Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever cut.” This is what you have to remember.

  The truth is that both the public and the private sector have to serve the public, and in the private sector profit is simply the measure of its efficiency and the guarantor of continuity.

It exploits only when the State does not intervene to stop it, when there is no competition and when it is an uncontrolled multi-national company abusing its power. It has intervened with the Factory Acts, with the minimum wage and with trust busting. It can keep it kosher.

What’s more, when a private sector company stops serving the public, it goes bust and everybody’s job is on the line. That is a real check on incompetence, over-manning, laziness, cupidity, or simply getting out of date.

If you believe that working in the public sector serving the public is intrinsically good and wholesome, instinctively in your DNA, none of those human frailties exist! You preserve the myth that the State can do no wrong,

 But they do exist as my narrative evidences especially in huge State controlled enterprises and in local government authorities. All of them!

If the threat of Government intervention or Knacker’s Yard keeps people on their toes in the private sector – makes sure they continue to serve the public – what keeps people on their toes in the public sector, makes sure that they continue to serve the public? You tell me what can do that today.

 There can be only one thing – public accountability. It is the only thing that can stop it being a mutual protection society. It is the only check on the abuse of power and the waste of taxpayers’ money. Heaven knows that is what is going on here.

As matters stand NOTHING is allowed to destroy the illusion that all those working in the public service are always serving the public good, are competent and without their own personal agenda.

If I am right two very simple remedies:

 1. The Local Government Ombudsman, and the Chief Legal Ombudsman should be required to own the responsibility for the decisions of their subordinates, sign off their reports and place them in the Internet in the public domain. They should be true to their name and work for the citizen against the State not the other way round. All that is needed is a simple change to the rulebook now carefully worded to exclude it. I wonder why!

 2. Programmes on TV like Consumer Watchdog and Rip Off Britain should be freed up to expose naughties wherever they are, not just in the business world. Ever thought why they never deal with the naughties in Whitehall or Local Government? Some good drama like this one.

Like the obscenity that provoked me to all this writing fifteen years ago. Also suppressed at the time like this one, then by the Audit Commission. I shall reveal that next time as I close.

There also the other 30 recommendations of the Power Inquiry they could follow up as well.

So my personal challenge to Helena Kennedy QC. You are in the House of Lords. You are regularly on the Andrew Marr programme, take up these two suggestions or does your DNA continue to get in the way?

 Don’t just talk the talk. Walk the walk. Ask her to.

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