Shirley Porter
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Dame Shirley Porter DBE (born 29 November, 1930) is a former British Conservative leader of Westminster City Council in London. She is the daughter and heir of Jack Cohen, the founder of Tesco supermarkets.
Porter was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1991.
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Origins and political career
She was born in Clapton, London, and married Leslie Porter in 1949. In 1974, she was elected to Westminster City Council as a Conservative councillor for Hyde Park Ward. In the early 1980s, she chaired the Environment Committee, calling for strict enforcement of litter laws. In 1983, she was elected as Leader of the Council.
Housing policy
The Conservatives were narrowly re-elected in Westminster in the 1986 local council elections. Fearing that they would eventually lose control unless there was a permanent change in the social composition of the borough, Porter instituted a secret policy known as Building Stable Communities. An important part of this policy was the designation of much of Westminster's welfare housing (council housing) for commercial sale, rather than re-letting when the properties became vacant. The designated housing was concentrated in those wards most likely to change hands to Labour in the elections.
Labour councillors and members of the public referred this policy to the District Auditor to check on its legality, and as a result it was ordered to be halted in 1989 whilst investigations continued. Nevetheless the plan had already done its work and, in 1990, the Conservatives were re-elected in Westminster in a landslide election victory in which they won all but one of the wards targeted by Building Stable Communities.
Porter stood down as Leader of the Council in 1991, and served as Lord Mayor of Westminster in 1991-2. She resigned from the council in 1993, and retired to live in Israel with her husband.
Court cases
In 1996, after much complicated legal investigation work, the District Auditor finally concluded that the Building Stable Communities policy had been illegal, and ordered Porter and five others to pay the cost of the illegal policy, which were calculated as £27,000,000. This judgement was upheld by the High Court in 1997 with liability reduced solely to Porter and her Deputy Leader, David Weeks.
The Court of Appeal overturned the judgement in 1999, but the House of Lords reinstated it in 2001. In Israel, Porter transferred substantial parts of her great wealth to other members of her family and into secret trusts in an effort to avoid the charge, and subsequently claimed assets of only £300,000.
Final agreement
On 24 April, 2004, Westminster City Council and the Audit Commission announced that an agreement had been reached for a payment of £12.3 million in settlement of the debt. The Council declared that the cost of legal action would be far greater than the amount to be recovered, while Porter still maintained her innocence. The decision has since been appealed by Labour members on the Council and the District Auditor is currently revisiting the issue.
Miscellaneous
In the early 1990s, Porter was chairman of Chelverton Investments, which owned London radio station LBC. In 1993 the station was unsuccessful in renewing its licences and Chelverton Investments went bankrupt in 1994.
Further reading
- Hosken, Andrew. Nothing Like a Dame: The Scandals of Lady Porter. ISBN 1862078092