New Report

Questions the

'no corruption'

Verdict of the

Tees Valley Review

Scott Hunter

18 February 2024

One of the curious things about the Tees Valley Review is that, after the Executive Summary, its analysis of how Teesworks is managed is relentlessly negative, yet the authors claim to have found no evidence of corruption. This, it turns out, has raised a few eyebrows. One of those eyebrows belongs to Professor Robert Barrington of the University of Sussex Centre for the Study of Corruption. His report, The Unsolved Mystery of Corruption in Teesside, is here, and makes interesting reading.

For those who have taken an interest in the inquiry and its outcome, much of what he says is as expected – the terms of reference are skewed, and state that DLUHC has found no evidence of corruption in advacned of the inquiry being carried out; no sign that the panel had any expertise in the investigation of corruption; no discussion of corruption in the body of the text which leads him to question whether they investigated corruption at all, rather than just bad practice; and so on.

One paragraph that particularly caught our attention was where he refers to the way in which Houchen appears to be shielded by government:

“The sense of the government offering a protective veil to the Teesworks project and its controversial Chair, the Tees Valley Mayor Ben Houchen, is strengthened by his own treatment during the review. Many figures in the public and private sector who are under corruption investigations are suspended from their roles pending the outcome. Mr Houchen, by contrast, was awarded a peerage.”

Because this scandal goes beyond Houchen. Above him are his enablers whose motivations deserve better scrutiny. One thing is certain, while Houchen has been exposed by the Review authors for working to benefit of the developers, those in central government who tolerate it, are not doing so out of concern for the welfare of Corney and Musgrave. It seems that if there is conflict between the public interest and the creation of the freeport as a temple to Brexit, then the freeport always takes precedence.

As to the report's limitations, there are two.  One is that it does not observe that the terms of reference of the Tees Valley Review preclude examination of Houchen's dubious management practices elsewhere, the airport in particular, the other is that the author appears to be unaware that this is the second unsatisfactory review to which the people of this region have been subjected in the space of twelve months.  We have to be grateful that the latest one at least did not deliver the same insult to the intelligence as that presented by Defra in January 2023 in response to the crustacean die off in Tees Bay and beyond, and which was an even more egregious example of the 'protective veil' around Houchen and the freeport.

Conclusions of the Report

What is particularly welcome is his discussion of how best to deal with cases such as these in future. Having discussed various possible options he concludes that there should be an independent anti-corruption commissioner. And unusually, while lamenting the abolition of the Audit Commission, he does not discuss referral to the National Audit Office.

“But there is a low-cost and agile alternative, that could play a role in cases like Tees Valley and Covid – an Independent Anti-Corruption Commissioner, based on an existing model like the office of the Modern Slavery Commissioner. Whatever the result of the next general election, the new government will need to consider such an arrangement.”

To which we would add, and if such an office is created, it should return to the issue of Houchen’s regime, and examine it in full. The situation where the funding for regeneration of this region has disappeared into the pockets of developers who have delivered little or nothing of public benefit while Houchen sits in the House of Lords is simply not an outcome that we can just shrug off.

And if an incoming government chooses not to create such an office, it must find another means to properly investigate what has happened here.

Our thanks to Callum Bowler for alerting us to this report