Mansfield Labour leader: 'We live in a democracy where misinformation needs challenging'

His exact words, which can be listened to on the last five minutes of the programme on BBC iPlayer, were: “Again in my area in Mansfield, the Labour council has spent £20m from its housing budget buying properties in Edinburgh, buying properties in London, instead of investing in building homes in Mansfield.”

Well, he must have been living under a rock for the last two years and be the most ill-informed politician in Nottinghamshire. The facts, that have been reported by the Chad and in multiple media channels across Nottinghamshire on numerous occasions are:

1) The London property was officially bought under Mansfield Independent Forum administration, led by former elected mayor Kate Allsop, who was in charge from 2015-19. The initial decisions to purchase the property were made under the previous Independent Mayor Tony Egginton in 2014-15, nine years ago;

2) My election pledge in 2019 before I was elected the first Labour mayor of Mansfield was to ‘stop investing money outside our area’. As soon as I was elected, I carried out my promise and have since attracted £150m of investment into Mansfield;

3) This Labour administration has been a leader in designing affordable low carbon council homes to the most advanced environmental standards that will save our residents thousands of pounds in energy bills;

Although there have been delays in programme as a result of Covid, skill shortages and 25 per cent plus construction inflation, we will start construction work on between 180 to 220 homes at Bellamy, Centenary Road and White Hart Development this year.

Our positive approach has made Mansfield one of the biggest areas for private investment and house building in the East Midlands......so Ben – I think there is substantial evidence the Labour administration are delivering on housing which you should be praising and promoting Mansfield as its MP, not dragging it down and falsely criticising the district for not performing!

Before anyone accuses me of electioneering, it is not me who has a FB strategy of misinterpreting the facts hidden away from proper scrutiny and then goes on regional television with the same ‘make it up as you go along attitude’, speaking of falsehoods, never mind the facts. Don’t know where he gets his training from?

I will be contacting East Midlands Politics to contact Coun Bradley to request him to retract his statements and for this to be reported on their next programme. People believe what they hear on the BBC, so this kind of misinformation could affect the outcome of a local election.

Response

Coun Bradley, Conservative MP for Mansfield, Nottinghamshire Council leader and member for Mansfield North, responded on his Facebook page.

He said: “After I appeared on Sunday politics this weekend, our super useful Labour mayor at Mansfield Council has written to all the local media outlets accusing me of lying about his record on housing.

“We were talking about social housing, and the presenter commented that Nottingham is failing to meet its housing need (Labour Council). I said we've got a Labour Council in Mansfield too, and that Council has spent more than £20 million from its housing budgets on buying property in London and Edinburgh.

Let’s fact check that shall we?

Do we have a Labour Council? Has that Council spent over £20m on property in London and Edinburgh

All true, all a matter of public record. Glad to have cleared that up.

Now the mayor has accused me of all sorts, including wrongly calling me a liar. I don't want to confuse anyone though, so I'm more than happy to add some colour to the single sentence response from the TV.

The actual waste on out-of-town property is not £20m, it's actually well north of £26m. It's fair to say that only £20m or so of the cash wasted on out-of-town investments was wasted by this Labour mayor. If that's the clarification he's seeking, there you go. You've got it. The other £6m or so was wasted by previous mayors.

Only too pleased to get all of that out on the record and ensure everyone is totally clear about things... Though I’m not at all clear why the mayor would want me to talk about it more. Not a glowing record, is it?”