During the election Boris Johnson vowed to “make City Hall more accountable” promising that “Information about Mayoral advisors will be available on the web with their contact details and their register of interests will also be available online.”
Last Monday the Mayor announced Ray Lewis as so-called Deputy Mayor for Young People (see here for an explanation on why Mr Lewis isn’t Deputy Mayor) yet as of 9am this morning there seemed no way to view contact details for Mr Lewis on the london.gov.uk website or any of the Mayor’s other newly-appointed advisors or to view their entries in the register of interests.
From a technical point of view it’s not hard to place this information on the web and it must already be known to the Mayor and his staff so why wasn’t it – as an absolute minimum – included in the original press releases?
Also missing from press releases announcing appointments is any indication of remuneration. Of course it may be that everyone the Mayor has appointed is working for free but in that case why not just say so?
It’s almost a week since these issues were first raised including (to their credit) by the Evening Standard and it’s a worrying sign that those around the Mayor have allowed them to go unanswered for so long.
When campaigning for the job Johnson said “Londoners should have a greater say on how their city is run, more information on how decisions are made and details on how City Hall money is spent”.
Hopefully this week he’ll start living up to those ideals.
