North Yorkshire crime commissioner in row with campaign group over '˜false' Tweet

A Yorkshire Police and Crime Commissioner has been embroiled in a war of words with campaign group the TaxPayers' Alliance over the running costs of her office.
Julia Mulligan, police and crime commissioner for North YorkshireJulia Mulligan, police and crime commissioner for North Yorkshire
Julia Mulligan, police and crime commissioner for North Yorkshire

Julia Mulligan has been accused of making a “demonstrably false” claim about research published last summer by the group into the annual budget of crime commissioners.

According to the campaign group, the North Yorkshire police and crime commissioner’s office 2013/14 budget was £412,000 higher than that of its predecessor, the North Yorkshire Police Authority, in 2010/11.

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Mrs Mulligan denied the claim, saying the report was two years out of date and that the budget referred to included £300,000 from the Ministry of Justice for the implementation of victims’ services.

And in a message posted on Twitter this month, she claimed she had met the researcher “who did it”, who said he had now left the TPA, and that he “admitted [it was a] poor report.”

A statement on the TaxPayers’ Alliance website said: “The researcher who produced the report, Harry Fairhead, is still employed by the TaxPayers’ Alliance and has never met Mrs Mulligan.

“We have requested that Mrs Mulligan delete her demonstrably false tweet but she has refused to do so.”

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In response to the TPA’s claim, Mrs Mulligan said: “I genuinely did meet somebody, I am not going to mention any names because it would not be appropriate.

“He told me he was involved in the report and it was not as thorough as it could have been. He had left the Taxpayers Alliance.

“It may be that there are other people involved in the report other than the person they are talking about.”

She added: “We went back to the TaxPayers’ Alliance when they did the report, because we challenged the methodology and the way they had done it. It was not a good piece of research.

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“Of course they will stand by what they have done, I wouldn’t expect them to do anything else. Generally they do quite good work, but it was not a very thorough piece of research.”

Despite the findings of the report, Mrs Mulligan said the annual budget of her office was now just over £900,000, compared to £1.2 million for the old police authority, and that she had saved £500,000 during her time in office.