Dodgy Dossier?

Somerset County Council’s contract with business giant IBM has been labelled a Dodgy Dossier by critics.

It has emerged that the Liberal Democrat led council signed the contract in the early hours of a Saturday morning last autumn avoiding any public scrutiny. This is on top of other bizarre aspects of the affair. Conservative Councillors have been calling for more transparency, but so far they have not been allowed to see the details of the contract.

At a fraught Council meeting on 14th May, members of the public turned up to ask why the contract has been so shrouded in mystery. Their demands were echoed by a trade union representative from Unison. And the affair has now been raised in Parliament by local MP Ian Liddell-Grainger.

Leader of the Conservative Group at Somerset County Council, Ken Maddock, said, “There is growing level of concern about the secrecy surrounding this contract. There is a massive amount of taxpayers money at stake here - hundreds of millions of pounds. My job as Leader of the Opposition is to hold the Administration to account in the public interest. Accordingly I have demanded to see a copy of the entire contract. When I receive this I will go through it very thoroughly using my business experience to make sure that taxpayers are not being short-changed. We want no part of any dodgy dossier here in Somerset.”