Ken Livingstone refuses to appear before LDA audit panel

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The Forensic Audit Panel was created in May by newly elected Conservative Mayor Boris Johnson to investigate financial management at the London Development Agency and Greater London Authority.

The investigation was launched after revelations in the Evening Standard over how cash was given to friends and allies of Mr Livingstone's adviser Lee Jasper with little or no results to show for it. A series of projects are also being investigated by police.

Mr Livingstone yesterday turned down a formal request to appear before the Forensic Audit Panel from its chairwoman, former Sunday Telegraph editor-Patience Wheatcroft. The former mayor replied that while he was happy to work with any "genuinely independent body", he considered Mrs Wheatcroft's audit panel neither objective nor independent.

"To cooperate in any way with your purely Conservative Party dominated body would be to lend it a facade of independence and objectivity which it clearly does not possess," he wrote. Mrs Wheatcroft, a former editor of the Sunday Telegraph, declared she is a member of the Conservative Party on City Hall's register of interests.

Two other members of the fivestrong panel are Stephen Greenhalgh, Conservative leader of Hammersmith and Fulham Council, and Edward Lister, Conservative leader of Wandsworth Council. A fourth member, Patrick Frederick, declares on his register of interests that he is chairman of Conservative Business Relations for South East England and southern London.

Mr Livingstone also said in his reply that there was a conflict of interest with the panel's fifth member Andrew Grove, a partner at accountancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, which has been awarded work by the panel.

In the panel's interim report, released last month, Mrs Wheatcroft said there had been a culture where spending was encouraged and political interference common but with few checks on whether taxpayers got value for money.

Her full report is expected to be released tomorrow.

A spokesman for Mr Johnson said: "We are disappointed that the former Mayor chose not to appear before the Forensic Audit Panel."