Inconsistent doesn’t get close, and the dangerous implications of the different treatment meted out to Edinburgh East MSP Ash Regan and Justice secretary Angela Constance this week were clear immediately.
It doesn’t take professor of jurisprudence to work out that suspending an MSP for simply communicating their intention to lodge a complaint about a colleague, while a tut-tut is all a cabinet secretary receives for two breaches of the ministerial code, runs a coach and horses through any notion of fair accountability that godforsaken architectural and political pile-up at the foot of the Royal Mile ever possessed.
Sometimes, as with Michael Matheson and his attempt to hand taxpayers his £11,000 holiday football streaming bill, the sinews are stretched beyond breaking point. But as with ex-First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s brush with the Ministerial Code, for Ms Constance bending over backwards wasn’t impossible.
To get in a muddle about what Professor Alexis Jay did or didn’t say about the need for a Scottish grooming gang inquiry might be deemed inadvertent if it wasn’t for the lack of immediate contrition and open correction. But for a second blunder on the same issue, of not following the process for having official communications witnessed, should the principle of strict liability not apply, as it does to every junior reporter sent out to cover the comings and goings at their local sheriff court?
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Ok, so it’s all small beer compared to snatching a corrupt South American dictator without a warrant, but either processes matter or they don’t, and it is Ms Constance’s good fortune that on this case it mattered but, as the late Paul Daniels used to say, not a lot. As if by magic, her problem has evaporated.
I wrote here last week about the Scottish fish rotting from the head, and an Edinburgh Labour friend was in touch after the article appeared, and after this week’s events at Holyrood his comments were prescient. “We’ve a real problem in this country regards accountability,” he wrote.
“The lack of effective scrutiny is appalling. Political accountability and effective scrutiny is what keeps public bodies in check. When that fails we’ve got a problem,” he added. “Public bodies aren’t subject to the same disciplinary influences that ‘in the main’ businesses are exposed to. Healthy and truly competitive businesses have effective scrutiny and accountability regimes. Those that don’t suffer in the marketplace.”
While business scrutiny can take a considerable time to become effective and have disastrous consequences for hundreds, if not thousands of people – think RBS/ABN Amro, Barings, and Robert Maxwell and Mirror Group pensioners – ineffectiveness in the public sector can become a virtue in itself.
Looking at a workforce report to next week’s meeting of Edinburgh Council’s finance and resources committee, there are seven individuals who have been in the authority’s “redeployment pool” for over two years. Now euphemistically known as “redeployees” these are people whose jobs no longer exist but because of a no compulsory redundancy agreement with the unions they cannot be paid off and can reject other roles. So to honour the deal they can carry on, fully paid by taxpayers, playing golf, tending their gardens or anything they like except a decent day’s work.
At least there is a certain honesty about this flagrant waste of public money – redeployees cost Edinburgh Council over £700,000 a year − but the Constance business exposes a serious weakness across public administration of scrutiny appearing to be effective when it is anything but.
The most effective, and usually damning, examinations of public policy come with alarming regularity from Audit Scotland, yet meaningful impact is negligible. Taken from the Audit Scotland website, here is just a selection of its headlines since October: Unacceptable governance at Historic Environment Scotland, NHS reform plans must be delivered, Lower growth reduces impact of devolved taxes, Care system reform lacks clarity and accountability, Colleges feeling impact of funding cuts. Yet look at any opinion poll over the same period, and John Swinney will stroll back to power in May.
A lack of faith in accountability produces a sense of hopelessness for those directly affected, and the ongoing whistleblowers’ petition to the Scottish Parliament is a product of a determination not to be ground down by a system desperate to paper over yawning cracks,
Apart from the many who have contacted the whistleblowing group, and continue to do so, two affected people contacted me as a result of my recent Herald columns, one an ex-teacher worn out by the reluctance to take the complaints seriously and the use of disciplinary action as a counter measure. The sort of thing the review of Edinburgh Council’s management culture led by Susanne Tanner KC in 2021 concluded there was no evidence. Affected by serious ill-health, a severance deal with a non-disclosure agreement was accepted, and the complaint simply disappeared without anything like a proper investigation.
The second came after the recent cryptic Care Inspectorate report, from a parent whose child had been in the system. “In my mind, they know the service currently being provided to children and young people is neither robust nor safe, that sustained improvement is needed, and they can’t currently show that they have the capacity to make this improvement, let alone actually do it,” it said.
But what came next was chilling. “There was a local network near each “home” that would prey on the kids. The local drug dealer was known to the kids and local pub-goers were delighted to ply them with drink. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if there’s collusion between some staff and local people. It certainly wasn’t just “one bad apple” as we keep being told.” We only hear about this kind of thing when it’s too late.
Angela Constance would be the first to say there is a gulf between her tap on the wrist and this level of alleged criminality, but the link is systemic failure, laxity and loss of faith. Yes of course mistakes are made, but what matters is that consequences are real.
John McLellan is a former Edinburgh Evening News and Scotsman editor, now director of the Scottish news publishing trade association, Newsbrands Scotland. Brought up in Glasgow, McLellan has lived and worked in Edinburgh for over 30 years, and was a City of Edinburgh councillor for the Scottish Conservatives from 2017-22.