The current government makes much of trying to distance itself from the activities of its supposed predecessors, which in practice means Conservative governments over the last thirteen years comprised of substantially the same people but with a different person having won the Tory membership lottery game to get to Number 10.
Examples of this that everyone will remember are the endless PPE deals for equipment that was substandard at rates that were jaw-dropping. Another telltale sign was that there were often social or family connections with the suppliers who had got such great deals. Readers involved in the management of businesses will recognise all this as classic ‘stuff-that-you-are-not-supposed-to-do’ because of inconvenient things like related party rules and the criminal law of this country.
Nevertheless, this hopeless bunch is still using our money as a sort of remedial learning project to acquire commercial negotiating skills. Presumably so they can say so on their CVs when they have to look for actual jobs after the next election.
As reported in The Times, Suella Braverman’s Home Office is the latest to try its hand at being a deal maker. And unfortunately, it does not look good. In the search to get asylum seekers out of hotels in the home counties (i.e. Tory held seats) the Home Office has been on the search for new accommodation. As an attempt to bring Les Miserables to life by using prison hulks ended badly, they clearly decided that they needed to come up with a bespoke solution and build a prison camp, sorry I meant ‘dedicated secure accommodation facility’ for asylum seekers, for which they needed some suitable land.
Enter stage left Brockwell Group Bexhill LLP, a limited liability partnership controlled by financier Peter Klimt and Nadia Isaacs, a dentist. Note that nothing in this story shows that either did anything wrong. Rather it just shows that they are a bit better than the Home Office at this business of doing deals.
As it turns out the site is essentially ideal: known as HMP Northeye, and a prison until 1994, it has accommodation and other useful infrastructure, is close to the south coast from whence asylum seekers come and has good connections to London for legal advisers and civil servants. And so the Home Office has agreed to buy it. A sensible move, right?
Well, yes. Except for the price. Since 1994 the site had been used as a training facility and was only bought by Brockwell Group Bexhill LLP for £6 million from the then owner, the government of the UAE. One year later the Home Office has paid £15.3 million.
That is 155 per cent profit for buying a property, doing nothing and selling it to the Home Office a year later.
Now there can be arguments in negotiations, and there is always some give and take, but this is verging on the completely ridiculous. There needs to be an investigation into who did this deal and whether they bothered to look into the transaction history of the site. It would be interesting to know how much Suella Braverman knew about this deal and whether she approved it without asking for that transaction history.
And then those people should be banned from ever negotiating a deal on behalf of the government. Unless I am on the other side of the deal of course.
Related: Where did all the money go?
