The Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham has revealed that his wife has been targeted by “disgraceful” abuse in the row over the introduction of a clean air zone but also acknowledged his own failures in the setting up and communication of the scheme
In a personal statement on his blog released this afternoon, Burnham said that number of serious allegations have been made in relation to his wife’s financial affairs.
@Marie-France is employed by Heavenly, a small marketing and brand agency. She works with a number of their clients, including Iduna Infrastructure Limited. Iduna owns Amey MAP Services Limited, which has a contract with TfGM to operate the public EV network under the brand name Be.EV. Marie-France has no direct financial relationship with Iduna. She does not own any shares in them and does not receive any bonus nor incentive payments from them.
“Even though this is a minor private interest in relation to EV charging – and not directly related to the CAZ – I still chose to declare it, and remove myself from any decision-making, so that there could be no perception of a conflict of interest nor any suggestion of privileged information being misused. More broadly, we do not own any shares in any company and receive no income other than our salaries.”
Secondly the Mayor pointed out that allegations that he was the main architect of Greater Manchester’s Clean Air Xone plan or that was “Andy Burnham’s plan” or the “Burnham Tax” was narrative has been mainly promoted by the Conservative Party, its MPs and councillors
He said that it suits their political purposes to distract people from their Government’s primary role in this policy.
The Mayor also though apologised for the way the scheme was introduced
@With hindsight, it is obvious that a scheme designed in pre-pandemic times was not going to work in the post-pandemic era. Whilst I was distracted by the need to respond to the pandemic, I accept that I should have woken up earlier to the coming problems. I also believe the communications about the CAZ have not been good enough throughout and I take responsibility for that”
