By this chain of thought it is unlawful if, in obeying the law, someone like the auditor believes that you are doing so for an improper reason. It's like being fined for doing 30mph in a built-up area because a policeman thinks you don't want to be caught speeding. At a stroke the auditor has stripped every councillor, not only me, of the vital protection they need if they are to make any controversial decisions.The auditor, an accountant by profession, also claims that the policy cost many millions of pounds and that I and a few others should repay just over pounds 31m. But more distinguished accountants have looked at the same evidence and concluded that we made a profit for the city, not a loss. Indeed, Mr Magill concedes that I, and others, always believed we were acting lawfully.He seems to be saying it is not what we did that was wrong but why we did it This is bizarre. He says Westminster council acted unlawfully, even though it did so for what it thought were legal reasons, because I had secret motives, deep-down thoughts about electoral advantage. Like most councils, we took legal advice before reaching decisions and we always followed the advice that we were given.

Now the auditor says that party politics must play no part in council decision-making The repercussions are staggering. But which politician doesn't hope their policies will be popular with the voters? What's more, until yesterday, to plan policies according to how they will be received electorally had never been unlawful. Every week, council groups whip their members to vote, minorities toe the party line, councillors discuss how to win elections. He thinks council houses shouldn't be sold if homeless families want them. But last year the House of Lords said differently.No one has ever explained how the alleged gerrymandering was actually supposed to work.

Did Tory councillors knock on doors, offering tenants cut-price homes for their votes? Did we follow them into the polling booths, checking how they voted? The idea is absurd, yet unless something like that happened, how was the designated sales policy supposed actually to help the Tories?The auditor says we "thought" it might. We decided to increase home ownership and extend council house sales as a way to reverse decline Mr Magill says this was a smokescreen for gerrymandering He's talking nonsense.Naturally, Labour hated our plans. They feared it would encourage former Labour voters to support the Tories. They wanted the homeless to be given vacant flats, even if that meant them queue-jumping local families who had been on the council waiting list for years.Mr Magill says we failed in our obligations to the homeless. But at the same time as we were selling council houses, we were also housing nearly 2,000 homeless families The auditor is wrong in law and fact about the homeless. But as we never gerrymandered, it's not surprising that we didn't receive any advice that we could!In the 1980s it was government policy to sell council houses At the same time Westminster had a growing social problem Population in the central areas was falling.