[Robin McAlpine Blog] Is a change in the air on how Scotland is run?

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Is a change in the air on how Scotland is run?

I don’t know if I’m imagining it but there feels like there is some change in the air in Scotland. It’s not a revolution but it is perhaps the start of the road to something a bit better. There is an increasing awareness that there is a crisis of governance in Scotland, and admitting that this crisis is real is the first step to doing something about it.

Let me give you three events from the last couple of days to show you what I mean, and let me start with the Herald’s coverage of a new book out by a Scottish financier. By chance I knew Euan Brown a tiny bit in previous life, but while I’ve certainly differed with him in the past, the extracts from this book are spot on.

It examines the state of public sector governance in Scotland and finds it sorely wanting. Health Boards who seem to think their job is to launder the reputation of government ministers, university courts swept away by vanity projects without suitable scepticism, quangos that seem to have gone rogue…

What I have seen of this so far is a sharp and telling indictment of something I’ve been writing about for a long time – the purpose of governance in Scotland has been distorted. Rather than it being a process of managing public services and controlling public spending, it is now treated as something between a get-rich-quick scheme and a PR department.

The outwards face is one of reputation management. It does not appear that governors see their role as to run institutions well so much as to maintain the reputation of Scotland’s ruling classes. I simply don’t believe that all those lessons being learned were learned at all. I don’t think they’re trying to improve. I think they’re trying not to get caught.

It is even more concerning when linked to the other issue – generous self-dealing. Quango bosses sometimes get paid eye-watering sums; a couple of years ago two quango bosses between them took home more than a million pounds. They (and their pay) is governed by the Board appointed by the Scottish Government. Members of those Boards get to pay themselves up to £1,000 for a day’s ‘public service’.

It’s lucrative and you can see why they see pleasing those who put them on this particular gravy train as their priority. There are about a hundred of these people sitting on multiple public boards each. You can make a good living out of this.

Quangos have been a problem since I was a kid but they develop a different sort of problem according to the vanity of their paymasters

There really isn’t too much more to it than that. Quangos have been a problem since I was a kid but they develop a different sort of problem according to the vanity of their paymasters. When I was starting out in politics the problem was bias (all those corporate interests on the Sepa board…) and lack of accountability. A handful of people could impose their will and so long as the politicians consented, they were pretty untouchable.

The problem with patronage rises and falls according to how needy the patron is – and make no mistake, in politics, every patron is needy. But there are degrees, and from the very early stages in the Sturgeon era it became clear that ‘presentational dominance’ was the key part of her strategy. She saturation-bombed the media with content featuring her and was ruthless at trying to close down bad news.

When you create a quango class that answers to that kind of regime, their income becomes contingent in protecting the regime, so that’s what they do. I mean, that’s by no means the only problem in the quangoes and the whole ‘New Public Management’ and neoliberal ethos of how you’re meant to manage has done lots of damage too.

But this suggestion that quangos are there to stop you finding out what is being done with your money is a patronage problem and it is a serious issue in Scotland and one that is responsible for serious failure. (Not a global financial crisis, a rupture in western politics and the rise of the far right, which is what happened when Sir Euan’s pals in finance were mis-governing, the private sector comparison being one slant in his take I did not agree with.)

The second story is the reliable encouraging Information Commissioner David Hamilton asking some pertinent questions about what information we are getting. This might not sound surprising from the Information Commissioner but in this instance he is questioning not the government but other of Scotland’s institutions – and it is the police and the prosecution service.

One of the doctrines of recent Scottish commentary has been that you can question and criticise the politicians all you want, but not senior police or prosecutors fiscal or judges. This was also part of the culture around the time of the Salmond case – that politics may be dirty but justice is pure. Which I thought was weird given that this coincided with an actual Crown Office malicious prosecution.

Now the Information Commissioner is suggesting we haven’t really had sufficient or satisfying information explaining the outcomes of Branchform and the Murrell affair – and that is because we clearly haven’t. The mindset has been ‘just because, pleb, now go away’, and now a senior and respected figure is willing actually to say ‘I don’t think we’ve had sufficient explanation’.

I’d like to hope people in officialdom now look over their shoulders when they try to stonewall people like they often do.

Again, to be clear, I have real concerns that we’ve seen a sequence of decisions from the prosecution service every one of which appears to have gone in one particular direction and the outcome is a lot of murk and a lot that seems inexplicable and hasn’t been explained. For the most part when I raise things like this more establishment-minded people call it a ‘conspiracy theory’.

Then again, about six or seven years ago when I started raising the issues Euan Brown does in his book I was a pretty lonely voice, and five years ago when I said I had a lack of confidence in the prosecution service over the Salmon trial I was monstered on social media. That both of these things are now sayable by ‘respectable types’ is why I feel some hope things may be changing.

But my biggest hope comes simply from the third story, from the fact that the redoubtable Fiona Higgins won her case against the Standards Commissioner. I was pretty sure that she’d ‘win’ because the abuse here was pretty egregious, but I wasn’t sure how comprehensive or overwhelming the ruling would be. The answer is ‘really pretty overwhelming’.

A judge has now officially concluded what has been clear to many of us for a while – the Scottish public sector often runs according to rules which bare little resemblance to natural justice but which instead act to protect those who create the rules, senior bureaucrats.

I think Fiona’s victory has a legal effect but also a psychological one. I’d like to hope people in officialdom now look over their shoulders when they try to stonewall people like they often do. I’d like to think that ordinary people engaged in dispute with power in Scotland feel more emboldened. I even hope that one day it prompts a politician to set aside their own interests and do something really bold – fix this who situation properly.

I am not being unrealistic. Not everyone has the determination and moral outrage channelled by Fiona, how many people will read Sir Euan’s book?, the outcome I fear from having a fearless Information Commissioner this time is that the Scottish Government will make sure it doesn’t happen again (Mike Russell for Information Commissioner anyone?).

But compared to the monolithic refusal to ask whether our ruling classes are really the best of the best we were expected to believe they were, it is suddenly possible to ask some difficult questions. Tiny steps perhaps, but that’s how it starts…

Source: Is a change in the air on how Scotland is run?