tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17692203494174024092024-03-13T17:39:39.991+00:00@ScottishPolA personal blog by Tom Gordon, Scottish Political Editor of the Sunday HeraldScottishPolhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16120223053156815765noreply@blogger.comBlogger100125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1769220349417402409.post-89386287705926110952015-09-13T13:33:00.001+01:002015-09-13T13:33:17.977+01:00Darker TogetherToday's Sunday Herald carries a series of interviews around the first anniversary of the referendum.<br />
This is a longer, darker version of my interview with LibDem leader Willie Rennie.<br />
I like it when politicians are honest for a change, and Rennie was brutally honest in his recollections of the Better Together campaign. It also shows the extraordinary emotional rollercoaster experienced by people in both sides in that period.<br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tom Gordon</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">LISTENING to Willie Rennie recall the Better Together campaign is like eavesdropping on a therapy session as he wrestles with a half-buried trauma. The misery simply pours out of him. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6666666666667px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">The No side was “shambolic in its development”, groans the Scottish LibDem leader, its output “dark”, its operations “secretive”, people’s confidence was “crushed” by a lack of information. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yes, they won in the end, but how they won “didn’t make us feel very good about it”. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And as for the aftermath, David Cameron was “despicable,” he spits. “He did more damage in the general election campaign to the Union than the SNP had done for years.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So not a barrel of laughs, then. Indeed, while the Yes side now boasts thousands of upbeat losers, Rennie seems the embodiment of that other Scottish tribe, the joyless Unionist victor. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Perhaps he should have anticipated a rough ride when Better Together’s launch went awry.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Although he grinned dutifully for the cameras that day, Rennie reveals he couldn’t properly focus because the late Charles Kennedy had failed to show up.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“We suspect it was another one of his episodes. That’s what my mind was flooded with.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After that, it was mostly downhill all the way for the Labour-Libdem-Tory alliance.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Because the only thing the parties shared was a dislike of independence, the campaign became overwhelmingly negative by default, Rennie explains. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“It was a clash of three different political parties. We all had very different visions for the union, so inevitably the common element was what we were against, which was independence. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6666666666667px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">So to get a consensus, you were focusing on the negative. You couldn’t do a positive vision.” </span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rennie: "I was in a very dark place."</td></tr>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Then there were the bad habits of those at the top of the organisation and the Labour party. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Labour had a dark campaigning style. It was very secretive. Everything would be last minute. You would never be told much about what was going on until it happened. We all suffered. The Tories and ourselves suffered more, but some in Labour were out the loop as well.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">You mean an inner circle did everything? “Yes. It was Blair [McDougall, campaign director] and Rob [Shorthouse, communications director]. People like that were making decisions and had this addiction to secrecy that meant we found it difficult to get answers. It was a fear of the other side finding out what we were planning.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Because the bulk of people swinging towards independence were in the Labour camp, we knew the campaign had to be Labour-facing. What we didn’t expect was that secret element. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6666666666667px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">It was quite shambolic in its development. Internal comms was poor. You just weren’t told about plans. Things were kept back. The board were frustrated at times as well.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Tories were also trouble, Rennie says, and in the early days had to be talked out of trying to dictate the referendum process from Westminster, instead of devolving control to Holyrood. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6666666666667px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">“We had to try and control the Conservatives as much as we could. They had a very gung-ho approach to things, very aggressive, very direct. We in government had to pull them back quite a bit and say, ‘Look, just take it easy.’ Mike Moore [former Scottish Secretary] was a master.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What about George Osborne coming to Edinburgh and saying Thou shalt not have the pound? </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6666666666667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“His style of delivery, yes, that was poor,” he says. Putting up George Galloway to defend the union in a debate for schoolchildren at Glasgow’s Hydro was another tin-eared error, he adds. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6666666666667px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">I don’t think he really connected with that many people. He was just a monster maverick. You want to give people confidence about the United Kingdom, you don’t want mavericks.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The “top-down, politically led” nature of Better Together meant it missed a huge opportunity to foster a community-led campaign of the kind Yes Scotland encouraged, says Rennie.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“We were talking a different language. We were making a case - they had a cause. That changed the whole nature of it. And when they [Yes] started occupying the squares and towns and it had that East European feel, it made us gulp. You could feel it moving.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">His lowest ebb came on September 7, when a Sunday Times YouGov poll put Yes side ahead for the first time, on 51 per cent - a month earlier No had been 22 points in front.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rennie, Tory leader Ruth Davidson and Labour’s Johann Lamont had a conference call that afternoon. The two women were relatively optimistic, but Rennie saw disaster at hand.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Ruth was very firm. She said we’ll win 55-45 and she was right. But I don’t think it was 55-45 at that stage. I was in a very dark place. My feeling was that things had moved away from us, and we’d been behind for not just one poll, but for 10 days.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“You could feel in every street that the people moving towards Yes. To generalise, it was educated middle-class, sensible opinion-leaders in communities…. and everybody in the street was looking to them. That worried me greatly. I was very pessimistic, very dark, and they [Davidson and Lamont] were worried about me at that stage, because I was so dark about it.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Worried that you were cracking up? “They might have thought that,” he says wryly. “They did phone and text later in the way and say, ‘Are you ok?’ because I was so worried about it.” </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He felt things turn around when big businesses such as RBS issued “very stark” warnings about the financial consequences of independence. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6666666666667px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">Better Together benefited from solid logistics as well, targeting its messages at key voters. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6666666666667px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">“The emotional side was poor, but the mechanical bit was there,” he says with faint praise.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jim Murphy’s road trips also lifted Unionist morale, he says, as did the Yes camp’s mistakes. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“They certainly fell down on the currency,” he says. “The lack of economic plans was pretty firmly a mistake. People were worried on the door about currency. They also fell down on the slightly overbearing, aggressive nature of the campaign. That created an atmosphere.” </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He thinks another referendum “could well happen”, but also believes people aren’t in any hurry to return to the “conflict between neighbours, friends and relatives” of last year.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“People would like to move on from that, even Yes people,” he says. “My feeling is that they [the SNP] will wait till people are begging for it” before they try another referendum.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If there is another referendum, what what you do differently? "Make</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6666666666667px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;"> sure it was led by non-political, non-partisan people. More of an inclusive arrangement. There would be a common purpose .. an organic campaign. More colourful, more joyful, more positive about the benefits of the United Kingdom.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It wasn’t all hell on a stick. There were sides to Better Together he looks back on fondly.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He got on well with Davidson and Lamont, admired campaign chair Alistair Darling and Labour’s Douglas Alexander, and appreciated Gordon Brown’s rousing late interventions.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But he is blistering about the other big name in the Unionist corner, David Cameron.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The way the Prime Minister used the result to advance English Votes for English Laws, and then exploited English-Scottish division in the general election, was appalling, he says.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Like Brown, he thinks Cameron’s stoking of English nationalism has imperilled the Union.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I thought Cameron was despicable. The way that, within a matter of months of having helped us save the United Kingdom, he was prepared to put his party before his country.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“From the morning after [the referendum] all the way through the general election campaign. Within minutes he was out there making the case for the Conservatives, putting the United Kingdom in jeopardy doing so. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“The Alex Salmond pickpocket [election ad] was despicable, just despicable. For somebody who calls himself first and foremost a Unionist, you don’t behave like that. I thought he did more damage in that general election campaign to the Union than the SNP had done for years before that. He’s certainly a threat [to the union]. He needs to wake up and realise that sometimes you just need to put your country first and not your party. I was furious during the campaign the way they were behaving, just furious.” </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So if there was another referendum would you throw yourself into it the fray again or pass? Surprisingly perhaps, given the trail of tears he tramped in 2012-14, he’d jump at the chance. "</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6666666666667px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’d definitely do it. But we need to get better next time. More open, more trusting, more positive about the country, and present a bright vision for where we want to be. To be fair, that’s what the SNP managed to sell quite effectively. It was all hogwash. But they sold it quite well, and that’s to their credit. I just wish we could do a bit of that ourselves.”</span></div>
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<br />ScottishPolhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16120223053156815765noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1769220349417402409.post-44365485279637752312015-04-26T07:00:00.000+01:002015-04-26T07:00:03.176+01:00Company Man<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white;">
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Tom Gordon and </b></span><b style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">Paul Hutcheon</b></div>
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<b style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">ALEX Salmond is to use a private company to receive his outside earnings from publishing, potentially cutting his tax bill.</b><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>The former First Minister is the sole shareholder in a new firm, The Chronicles of Deer, it has emerged.</b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>The company will be the vehicle for Salmond’s flourishing career a writer, which includes newspaper columns and his best-selling referendum diary The Dream Shall Never Die.</b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It already holds the copyright on <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Dream-Shall-Never-Die/dp/0008139768">The Dream Shall Never Die</a>.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The arrangement, which is not unusual for authors, could potentially reduce Salmond’s tax liabilities.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Instead of being subject to higher rate income tax of 40% or 45%, money going to a company can be subject to corporation tax at just 20%.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Money can then be withdrawn gradually as salary and dividends, reducing income tax and national insurance.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Salmond's outside earnings are expected to run into tens of thousands of pounds.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One of the two directors of Salmond's company is an accountant who specialises in “tax efficient investments”.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">However, any benefits derived from using a company may be offset by operating costs, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">and authors are advised to take professional advice on the matter.</span><br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-IzM9MdTL3nk/VTwFrUQEMeI/AAAAAAAAAbU/Gr8IxR35zHE/s1600/Deer%2Bcopyright.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-IzM9MdTL3nk/VTwFrUQEMeI/AAAAAAAAAbU/Gr8IxR35zHE/s1600/Deer%2Bcopyright.jpg" height="640" width="259" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">Despite Salmond starting his newspaper columns in February and his book coming out in March, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">the firm has yet to receive any money, raising questions at Holyrood about whether Salmond has arranged his affairs to avoid publicity before the general election.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sources close to Salmond, who is standing in Gordon on May 7, deny this.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">Scottish LibDem leader Willie Rennie said: “</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">Why is Alex Salmond being so coy? </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"Surely it would be best to simply declare what he has earned from his book sales and newspaper columns now? What has he got to hide?”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Salmond, who is also MSP for Aberdeenshire East, declared the new arrangement in his Scottish Parliament register of interests earlier this month - it was published on Friday.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It states: “From 2 March 2015 I have owned an ordinary shareholding worth £1 in Chronicles of Deer, a company for publishing books and writings. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“This constitutes 100% of the issued share capital. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"As at the end of financial year 2014/15 (6 April 2015) no monies have been paid into the Chronicles of Deer company account from any source and it has a zero balance.” </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Chronicles of Deer was incorporated as a private unlimited company on February 13.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Its directors are solicitor Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh and accountant John Cairns.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ahmed-Sheikh, the SNP’s candidate in Ochil & South Perthshire, is Salmond’s lawyer, while Cairns is Salmond’s accountant.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">Salmond thanks them both in the acknowledgements of The Dream Shall Never Die. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Because the new company is unlimited rather than limited - meaning Salmond has unlimited liability for any debts - it is not required to file annual accounts at Companies House.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">However Salmond has told the parliament he will voluntarily update his register of interests to declare all income as it arrives.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cairns is a partner at chartered accountants French Duncan.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">According to his <a href="http://www.frenchduncan.co.uk/our-people/partners/john-cairns/">profile on the firm’s website</a>, he specialises in "advising owner-managed businesses and their owners on a wide range of tax matters, including: acquisitions and sales; reorganisations; share valuations; succession planning; shares schemes; tax efficient investments and inheritance tax planning".</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The name of the company is a play on The Book of Deer, the first book to use both Scots and Irish Gaelic, which was produced in the tenth century by the monks of Deer Abbey near Salmond’s home in the Aberdeenshire village of Strichen. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Salmond’s spokesman said: “Mr Salmond has updated his entry in the register of interests according to the rules. The entry notes that as at the end of the financial year 2014/15, the company account had a zero balance with no moneys received, either from book sales or journalism.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“It is common practice, indeed the norm, for writers to establish companies to separate earnings from journalism and books from other income and the fact that the company is unlimited merely reflects that it carries no risk of default and that Mr Salmond as the 100% shareholder is willing to meet all company obligations in all circumstances.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Clearly given Mr Salmond’s willingness, in the interests of transparency, to declare all company earnings within the relevant timescale, this goes far beyond the declarations that would be made in company accounts the following year making the claim of lack of disclosure simply absurd, indeed it is the complete reverse of the truth.”</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The spokesman also pointed out that Salmond had made a large number of charitable donations from other income, including giving his First Minister’s monthly pension of £2598 to the Mary Salmond Trust for community and youth causes in the North East of Scotland, dividing a £12,500 speaking fee from Bank of America between four Scottish charities, and distributing £39,750 raised from the auction of First Ministerial gifts.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It is understood The Chronicles of Deer may also make charitable donations.</span></div>
ScottishPolhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16120223053156815765noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1769220349417402409.post-78752789178494995662015-03-15T09:41:00.000+00:002015-03-15T09:41:13.078+00:00Healthy Choices<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">LANARKSHIRE has long been a byword for political backscratching, from Monklands to property deals, virtually all of it involving the Labour Party. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">But today the boot is on the other foot, with Cabinet Secretary Alex Neil, the SNP MSP for Airdrie & Shotts, caught up in a cronyism row. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Last autumn, while serving as health secretary, he appointed the secretary of his local SNP branch to a £12,000 NHS post instead of a veteran social work professional.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Neil staunchly defends Phil Campbell as simply the best person for the job.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">However voters might perceive it as all rather cosy.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Neil also seems to have left himself vulnerable to a complaint under the Scottish Ministerial Code. </span><span style="font-size: small;">Section 5.9 of the Code says ministers "must" consult the First Minister before making "<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">any appointment which is likely to have political significance".</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Neil knew from the outset that there would be a political row about Campbell's appointment.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">"<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Obviously, before I had decided to appoint him, I knew that the Labour party would try to cause a stink about it," he said yesterday.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Yet Neil didn't consult the First Minister (then Alex Salmond), as the Code commands.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Here's a longer version of the story in today's Sunday Herald.</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">EXCLUSIVE</span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Tom Gordon</span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Scottish Political Editor</span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">ALEX NEIL is embroiled in a cronyism row after promoting an official from his local party to a £12,000-a-year post on an NHS board instead of a senior health professional.</span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In his previous cabinet role as Health Secretary, Neil appointed railway manager Phil Campbell as vice-chair of NHS Lanarkshire instead of respected social work expert Dr Avril Osborne.</span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Campbell, a full-time First Group worker, is secretary of the SNP in Neil’s Airdrie & Shotts seat.</span></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Dr Osborne, the loser in the two-horse race, is a former inspector of social work at the Scottish Office with 40 years experience in her field and a Masters degree in management. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">After the Orkney child abuse scandal in the early 1990s, when officials wrongly removed children from their families, <a href="http://www.heraldscotland.com/sport/spl/aberdeen/trust-rebuilds-step-by-step-in-orkney-after-dawn-raids-to-take-children-into-care-abuse-wounds-slowly-heal-1.421278">she was sent in to fix the department as its new director</a>.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">One of the biggest issues currently facing Lanarkshire and other NHS boards is the integration of health and social work services.</span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-f-nUQEFhuec/VQVQ-nAFG9I/AAAAAAAAAZs/ICeTA0MP18Y/s1600/AN%2BMonklands.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-f-nUQEFhuec/VQVQ-nAFG9I/AAAAAAAAAZs/ICeTA0MP18Y/s1600/AN%2BMonklands.jpg" height="212" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Alex Neil</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Neil, now Secretary for Social Justice, Communities and Pensioners’ Rights, personally made the decision to appoint Campbell over Osborne last November.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Labour said the appointment “stinks of cronyism”.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Neil first appointed Campbell, 40, <a href="http://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/political-news/health-secretary-in-cronyism-row-about-quango-position.21308879">to the board of NHS Lanarkshire in May 2013</a>, on a four-year term paying £8008 a year for a commitment of eight hours a week.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">After the previous vice chair stood down last summer, board chair Neena Mahal asked its non-executive members to apply for the position, and it came down to a straight fight between Campbell and Osborne.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">At the end of October, Mahal put the pair forward to Neil for a decision, saying both were “strong nominees” but had “different skillsets and expertise”.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Mahal said that since 70-year-old Osborne joined the board in March 2014, she had made “a significant leadership contribution” and “quickly gained credibility and respect as a valued member of the Board... [and] is committed to an ethos of quality and improvement”.</span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-y6c9XncxStI/VQVN522l4aI/AAAAAAAAAZQ/7-Y2Vjfrw1I/s1600/Osborne.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-y6c9XncxStI/VQVN522l4aI/AAAAAAAAAZQ/7-Y2Vjfrw1I/s1600/Osborne.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dr Avril Osborne</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">While Campbell brought “a fresh perspective from the corporate sector”, had demonstrated “a robust and rigorous approach to governance”, and “gained credibility as a Board member who endeavours to be fully involved... in spite of being in full-time employment”.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Mahal said she would welcome a chance to discuss both nominations with Neil “to determine the most suitable person”, however four days later Neil chose Campbell without further ado.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The promotion gave Campbell a £4004-a-year pay bump for four extra hours work per week. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Section 5.9 of the <a href="http://www.gov.scot/Publications/2011/12/01141452/6">Scottish Ministerial Code</a> says ministers "must" consult the First Minister about “any appointment which is likely to have political significance”, but Neil did not do so, despite anticipating a row with Labour.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.38;">A fortnight after the decision, Neil was moved out the health brief in a reshuffle and is now the Secretary for Social Justice, Communities and Pensioners' Rights. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Pamela Nash, Labour MP for Airdrie and Shotts, said: “Alex Neil picked a man who knocked doors and delivered leaflets for him, rather than a woman with senior management experience in social work. </span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-imi7juVaRd0/VQVPZeZPlHI/AAAAAAAAAZg/TzCIjm24PKA/s1600/NHS%2BLan%2BRoI.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-imi7juVaRd0/VQVPZeZPlHI/AAAAAAAAAZg/TzCIjm24PKA/s1600/NHS%2BLan%2BRoI.jpg" height="56" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From NHS Lanarkshire Annual Accounts 2013-14</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.38;">“At a time when our NHS is under huge strain this stinks of cronyism and jobs for the boys.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“NHS Lanarkshire is facing huge challenges because the SNP Government aren’t giving our NHS the support it needs. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“People will find it very hard to believe that an SNP official was the best man to stand up for the NHS in Lanarkshire.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Neil vigorously defended the appointment, saying Campbell was simply the best person for the job and it would have been wrong to reject him in case his SNP ties led to controversy.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.38;">He told the Sunday Herald: “The reason I picked Phil Campbell, number one, he was the most experienced member of the NHS Lanarkshire board.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“Obviously, before I had decided to appoint him, I knew that the Labour party would try to cause a stink about it. </span></span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Neil's PS tells health officials he has appointed Campbell</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“It’s a bit of a cheek from Pamela Nash and the Labour Party to accuse anyone else of cronyism when Lanarkshire Labour and the Mafia that runs it have lived off cronyism for 50 years.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“This was not cronyism, this was me picking the person who was the best person for the job and who had been nominated by the chair of the board.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“I don’t think there’s anything unreasonable about that whatsoever, and he is a first class vice chair in NHS Lanarkshire, and he got it on merit, almost despite the fact he was politically active, because I knew it would be controversial because the Labour Party would kick up a stink.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Neil said of Campbell: “He’s a very senior guy in the railway industry and it’s another reason why I picked him, because of his experience in business.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“I think we need, in terms of improving procedures and processes in the Health Service, we need outside business expertise and Phil can provide that as well.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“So he ticked every box that was conceivable in terms of competence and capability.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“I adhered entirely to the code of practice in all of these things.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-4TQpbpDUQww/VQVSuCXapbI/AAAAAAAAAaA/hcJbkQ_5qSk/s1600/SMC%2B5.9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-4TQpbpDUQww/VQVSuCXapbI/AAAAAAAAAaA/hcJbkQ_5qSk/s1600/SMC%2B5.9.jpg" height="101" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Scottish Ministerial Code</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.38;">“Labour’s looking for a scandal where there isn’t one.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“What Pamela Nash knows about the health service you could write on the back of a postage stamp.”</span></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-1ed08415-1ca0-a473-5b80-a5fab86f7a63" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Campbell did not respond to email requests for comment.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">NHS Lanarkshire said: “We are delighted with the appointment of Phil Campbell to the role of vice-chair and with the skill and expertise he brings to the Board.”</span></span></div>
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ScottishPolhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16120223053156815765noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1769220349417402409.post-52356089978743239682015-03-08T09:32:00.002+00:002015-03-08T09:32:31.414+00:00Prosecutors consider Wings over Scotland's referendum spending<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Tom Gordon </b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>ONE of the loudest and most controversial Yes supporters in the referendum could be charged with a criminal offence over missing financial papers, the Electoral Commission has said.</b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>The watchdog said that, alongside prosecutors, it was now considering whether to take enforcement action against the <a href="http://wingsoverscotland.com/">Wings Over Scotland website</a> run from Bath by Scots-born Stuart Campbell. </b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>It emerged last month that <a href="http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/i-am-a/journalist/electoral-commission-media-centre/news-releases-donations/electoral-commission-publishes-first-details-of-spending-by-campaigners-at-the-scottish-independence-referendum">Wings Over Scotland and four smaller campaigners</a> had failed to report their spending during the referendum.</b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Using Freedom of Information law, the Sunday Herald asked the Commission for the material it held on Wings Over Scotland and another high-profile campaigner, Labour for Independence (LFI), not filing spending returns.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In both instances, the Commission refused to release its files in case it prejudiced “the prevention or detection of crime” and “the apprehension or prosecution of offenders”.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">With respect to Wings over Scotland, it said: “The Commission has commenced its inquiries and is currently considering, in conjunction with the Crown Office, what, if any, action is appropriate in relation to this organisation’s failure to deliver a campaign expenditure return with the required timescale.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“In this case it is necessary to consider the failure to comply in order to reach a decision whether a person or person should be charged with a criminal offence.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Commission used the same form of words about LFI, but added that in regard to Wings Over Scotland it might also consider civil breaches. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Both Wings over Scotland and LFI are being probed in relation to Paragraph 21 of Schedule 4 of the <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/asp/2013/14/pdfs/asp_20130014_en.pdf">Scottish Independence Referendum Act 2013</a>.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This states that official campaigners - those who registered with the Commission as permitted participants as they expected to spend more than £10,000 - must file a return detailing all their payments, loans, receipts and invoices.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The responsible person commits an offence punishable by a fine of up to £5000 if they fail to comply with the law on filing a return.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A person who “knowingly or recklessly makes a false declaration” commits an offence punishable by up to a year in prison.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.heraldscotland.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/400xY/2014/7/24810284.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.heraldscotland.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/400xY/2014/7/24810284.jpg" height="212" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Stuart Campbell</td></tr>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The <a href="http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/169483/Response-for-web-68-14.pdf">responsible person for Wings Over Scotland is Campbell</a>, 47, a former computer games journalist who styles himself as a Reverend but refuses to say for which church or faith. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For LFI it is <a href="http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/170928/FOI-86-14.pdf">Deborah Waters</a>, 42, from Barrhead, the wife of East Renfrewshire SNP councillor Vincent Waters. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Campbell said Wings Over Scotland spent around £75,000 during the referendum on campaigning, including production of the popular <a href="http://theweebluebook.com/">Wee Blue Book</a>, but was unable to complete the spending return form as it does not have full invoices and receipts.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Asked about a possible criminal charge, he said: “</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We've heard nothing from the Electoral Commission since they published details of participants' spending. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“We did everything in our power, both before and after the deadline, to communicate with them and provide evidence to back up the full account of our spending that we submitted, and we continue to do so. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“All of our expenditure is fully verifiable, and we remain willing to verify it to the Commission by any means possible within the laws of science."</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Waters could not be contacted.</span></div>
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ScottishPolhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16120223053156815765noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1769220349417402409.post-52063057039191585552015-03-08T09:11:00.000+00:002015-03-08T09:11:03.820+00:00Some MPs are more equal than others<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />NICOLA Sturgeon has been talking a lot about "equality and fairness" recently.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It will be at the heart of the <a href="http://www.snp.org/media-centre/news/2015/feb/snp-will-support-equality-lock-out-austerity">SNP's economic plan</a>, for instance.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">There is also the First Minister's ongoing effort to bring gender equality to the boardroom.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But there is a glaring example of inequality taking place under her nose which even some in her own party are now finding hard to bear.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Later this month, the SNP conference will be asked to vote on new rules for its MPs designed to <a href="http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/leaked-snp-plan-gag-nationalist-5260840">bring extra discipline</a> to the Westminster group.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This is essential for life in a hung parliament, when the whips need to track every single vote.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It's also vital to any power sharing deal with Labour.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">If the SNP have, say, 40 MPs their allies need to know that means 40 votes, not 30 votes and some rebels and abstentions.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">So all SNP MPs elected in May must "treat the position as a full-time commitment".</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">All MPs except one, that is.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Not for the first time, it seems different rules will apply to Alex Salmond.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">If all goes to plan, on May 8 he will both an MP and an MSP, not to mention a newspaper columnist and author.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Besides being a presentational problem, it's also an arithmetical one.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">As he'll have to be in Westminster far more, it leaves the SNP outnumbered at Holyrood for the first time since they won their majority in 2011.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And as last week's vote on the NHS super-database showed, things can get pretty squeaky in such situations. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Here's the full story:</span></span><br />
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<b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Tom Gordon</span></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">ALEX Salmond is under pressure to stand down as an MSP if elected to Westminster in light of new SNP rules and comments by senior members of the party.</span></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The former First Minister, currently MSP for Aberdeenshire East, is standing in the LibDem-held seat of Gordon in May’s election.</span></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">If he wins he is expected to play a major role in the SNP group at Westminster, possibly as its leader or a key negotiator in power-sharing talks with Labour.</span></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">However a motion to the SNP’s conference later this month says incoming SNP MPs must “treat the position as a full-time commitment with an attendance and work rate commensurate with that status”, an obvious problem for Salmond if he has two jobs.</span></span></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The rule has been proposed by Westminster leader Angus Robertson and MP Pete Wishart.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In a <a href="http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201415/cmhansrd/cm150225/debtext/150225-0003.htm">Commons debate last month</a> on MPs with two jobs, Wishart also said being MP was “a full-time job”, adding: “No SNP Member has a second job, a directorship or a place on a company. Our responsibilities here are our sole concern and our only responsibility.”</span></span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-1-mOtmsYxF8/VPwQGdnd_2I/AAAAAAAAAY4/PWxn5l73rxg/s1600/Wishart.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-1-mOtmsYxF8/VPwQGdnd_2I/AAAAAAAAAY4/PWxn5l73rxg/s1600/Wishart.jpg" height="484" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pete Wishart on Commons duties being the "sole concern" for SNP MPs</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Besides bringing Salmond into conflict with SNP rules, a second job would mean him missing votes in Holyrood and Westminster, as he could not vote in both parliaments at once.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Although Salmond has been both an MP and MSP before, it was during a Labour majority at Westminster, when his vote carried little weight in the parliamentary arithmetic.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">After he was elected First Minister in 2007, he had one of the worst attendance records of any MP – voting in the Commons on just 16 days in his last three years there.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">However with polls predicting a hung parliament, SNP votes would carry more weight, and Salmond would have to be in Westminster far more often.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The “pairing” system which lets government and opposition MPs miss votes in equal numbers also tends to break down in hung parliaments and is not used in votes of confidence. </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Salmond’s need to be at Westminster could also cause the SNP trouble at Holyrood, as his absence would leave the party outnumbered for the first time since 2011 - by 64 votes to 63.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In addition, although Gordon partially overlaps Aberdeenshire East, representing both would mean Salmond’s potential workload would grow from 58,000 constituents to over 80,000.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">One senior party insider said: “There would be a twin-track problem. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“We might not be able to rely on his [Salmond’s] vote in the Scottish Parliament, and we couldn’t rely on it at Westminster. Why doesn’t he just retire gracefully?”</span></span></span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Alex Salmond: looking to wear two hats</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 1.38;">Christine Jardine, LibDem candidate in Gordon, said: “The people of Gordon will take into account that the last time Alex Salmond was both an MP and MSP, his attendance record at Westminster was atrocious. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 1.38;">"It’s not possible to represent people in two places at once .</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“It’s underlines that for him this is not about representing people, it’s about what he wants.”</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">A Scottish Labour spokesman added: “Once again, Mr Salmond finds himself in the enviable position of looking at two jobs, two salaries and two ways to fill his time.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“But his bluff has been called by his own party and he will have to make up his mind whether to be a full-time MP and part-time columnist, author and MSP, or do what people pay him for.” </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">A spokesperson for Salmond said: “Alex has always fulfilled any election period for which he has been voted and will continue to do so. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“We are not generally in a position of knife edge votes at Holyrood, and of course don't know what the position will be at Westminster, but any situation will be easily addressed.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">"He is and will remain a full time parliamentarian if elected in Gordon in May, and the full time commitment refers to parliamentary duties.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">"He would only benefit from one parliamentary salary, donating the other to support youth causes in North East Scotland.”</span></span></span></div>
ScottishPolhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16120223053156815765noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1769220349417402409.post-5057319366247427792015-02-02T09:12:00.000+00:002015-02-04T14:58:07.595+00:00Yes & Friends<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">FROM the 'Where are they now?' file comes news of Susan Stewart.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The former Director of Communications at Yes Scotland, founder of Women for Indy, and prominent all-round Yes campaigner has just been hired as a consultant to the SNP government.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The government denies any suggestion of cronyism, but opposition eyebrows remain raised.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Here's a longer version of the story in today's Herald.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>EXCLUSIVE</b></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Tom Gordon</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>A LEADING member of the Yes campaign has been hired as a consultant
to the SNP Government, prompting opposition questions about cronyism.</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Susan Stewart, who was director of communications at Yes Scotland
during the referendum and a founder member of the Women for Independence
group, has become the government's new £330-a-day International
Engagement Manager.</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>She will work in the External Affairs Directorate in Edinburgh on a
temporary contract of up to 12 months, the government confirmed last
night. </b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Her job specification includes reviewing and improving "diaspora
management" to help promote Scotland overseas through networks of
ex-pats.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">She will also examine how best to deploy "cultural diplomacy and soft
power" for Scotland, and make "practical recommendations to Ministers".</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Her bosses in the department are Fiona Hyslop, the Cabinet Secretary
for Culture, Europe & External Affairs, and Humza Yousaf, the
Minister for Europe and International Development, who last year helped
launch a <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/scottishgovernment/14325656303/">"Scottish Diaspora Tapestry"</a>.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Yousaf's wife, Gail Lythgoe, was one of Stewart's colleagues at Yes Scotland in 2012 and 2013.</span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-T_JH3NBYRwI/VM884zOalAI/AAAAAAAAAYI/amyMf2NzbnE/s1600/Susan%2BStewart%2BYes2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-T_JH3NBYRwI/VM884zOalAI/AAAAAAAAAYI/amyMf2NzbnE/s1600/Susan%2BStewart%2BYes2.jpg" height="468" width="640" /></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Back in the day at Yes Scotland: Susan Stewart front row, second from R</span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Opposition parties expressed surprise that people were given j<a href="http://jobs.dailymail.co.uk/job/international-engagement-manager-952123599">ust four days to apply when the new job was briefly advertised online in October</a>, and noted the Scottish Government published a <a href="http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2010/09/14081131/0">Diaspora Engagement Plan more than four years ago</a>.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Scottish LibDem leader Willie Rennie said: "This may raise questions
about the SNP's sway over recruitment in the Scottish Government. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">"They should provide assurances that every step has been taken to
hold a fair recruitment process in order to avoid accusations of
cronyism."</span></span><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://stratagem-ni.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Susan-Stewart2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://stratagem-ni.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Susan-Stewart2.jpg" height="320" width="298" /></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Out on the indyref stump</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Tory MSP Alex Johnstone added: "The Scottish Government needs to be
entirely open about the process of appointing or else face inevitable
accusations of cronyism."</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Stewart, 49, was Scotland's first dedicated diplomat in the USA,
promoting the country in Washington DC from 2001 to 2005, before heading
press operations at Glasgow University.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">She was employed at Yes Scotland from September 2012
until June 2013 before being axed in a "streamlining" operation.</span></span><br />
<br />
She was hired for her new post via an outside agency, as a contractor rather than staff.<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="en-GB">
</span></span></span>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;">The position was advertised as having a “maximum pay rate [of] up to £330 a day”.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
<div style="margin: 0px;">
Bizarrely, Stewart’s partner, Jeane Freeman, was at the centre of <a href="http://www.heraldscotland.com/sport/spl/aberdeen/scottish-labour-cronyism-row-as-ex-aide-handed-second-contract-politics-nepotism-claim-first-minister-s-former-adviser-awarded-consultancy-work-while-no-other-agencies-allowed-to-bid-1.29933">a similar <span class="highlight" id="0.06912469829673162" name="searchHitInReadingPane">cronyism</span> row under Labour</a>.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
A
former special adviser to Labour First Minister Jack McConnell, Freeman
quit in 2005 after Stewart was recalled from her plum job in
Washington.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
Freeman
then set up a consultancy which was later handed a £5000 Scottish
Executive education contract without it going out to tender.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
Stewart denied any impropriety in her new appointment.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
"I was at Yes for eight months. Does that cancel out a 20-plus year career?" she said. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
“This
is a temporary post for up to 12 months. “The contract was awarded
based on an open and competitive procurement route under the Interim
Manager Framework. </div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
The
Scottish Government said: “The International Engagement Manager role is
focused on reviewing how the government engages with the Scottish
diaspora community, as
part of our work to refresh the Government’s International Framework.</div>
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="en-GB">
</span></span></span>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="en-GB">“Individuals
procured through the interim frameworks are employees of the relevant
supplier – they are not employed by the government. </span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="en-GB">
<div style="margin: 0px;">
“The rate of pay is a matter for the supplier.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
“Ministers had no involvement in interviewing or approving this appointment.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
“Any such suggestion [of <span class="highlight" id="0.41872244061204555" name="searchHitInReadingPane">cronyism</span>] is unfounded – people are deployed in such posts on the basis of proven ability and experience.”</div>
</span></span></span></div>
</div>
ScottishPolhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16120223053156815765noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1769220349417402409.post-72667713146320933662015-01-28T10:33:00.000+00:002015-01-28T10:34:29.538+00:00Frack thatThere's been <a href="http://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/scottish-politics/ewing-under-pressure-to-rule-out-fracking.117113295">quite a build-up</a> to this afternoon's Scottish Government statement on fracking.<br />
<br />
Both the SNP and Labour have been trying to sound tough, with talk of a moratorium, while quietly leaving the door open to fracking in the future - there's money in them thar shale beds after all.<br />
<br />
And let's not forget riveting row between SNP MSP Joan McAlpine and energy minister Fergus Ewing on the subject, <a href="http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/environment/msps-clash-over-shale-gas-sparks-complaint-to-sturgeon.116871742">as lovingly reported by Rob Edwards in the Sunday Herald</a>.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<a href="http://www.heraldscotland.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/400xY/salmondhardhat.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.heraldscotland.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/400xY/salmondhardhat.jpg" height="212" width="320" /></a></div>
It reminded me of an interview I had with Alex Salmond just before the referendum.<br />
<br />
Despite being typically gung-ho about extracting oil and gas from the North Sea, the then First Minister opposed onshore fracking on health grounds, in case it contaminated the water table.<br />
<br />
When even a life-long hydrocarbon junkie like Salmond is against fracking, the SNP would be wise to walk away sharpish.<br />
<br />
<br />
Here's the exchange from 11 September 2014:<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Q: Is there a place for fracking in the energy mix of an independent Scotland?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Salmond: “Not onshore, I don’t think. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"The basic problem with fracking onshore is this: although the seismic stuff [earth tremor risk] doesn’t look to be substantial in its impact, the water table stuff has a lot of questions to be answered.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"I don’t think that’s a good idea in a relatively unpopulated area. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"But in a densely populated area you’ve got to be able to answer the water table situation. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"The central North Sea is a different matter. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"The central North Sea is a great possibility, but at this stage it’s no more than a possibility, but there’s substantial work up the clay basins of the central North Sea." </span>ScottishPolhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16120223053156815765noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1769220349417402409.post-10443023250765408242015-01-07T12:20:00.000+00:002015-01-07T13:00:05.114+00:00Stash in the attic<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
The unofficial launch of the general election campaign this week brought a flurry of Labour and Tory stats with it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But one intriguing figure which hasn't had much publicity yet belongs to the SNP.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is the annual underspend on the Scottish Government accounts.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Naturally, overspends are a bad thing, but big underspends can be viewed that way too.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They suggest inefficiency and public services unnecessarily going short.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Here's the funny thing - after moaning all through the referendum about Westminster austerity, it turns out the SNP recorded its largest ever underspend last year, almost £450m.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If that comes as a surprise, perhaps it's because ministers only issued the final total in an obscure report laid at parliament just after it rose for the Christmas recess.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The government press office then refused to send me a copy, saying their lawyers had ruled it had to be cleared by parliament first, which sounds like complete cobblers.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However, I got hold of it in the end. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Readers can judge whether it was genuine inefficiency behind the underspend, or perhaps ministers squirreling cash for bumpy times after a Yes vote, or largesse before the election?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Here's the story</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
<b id="docs-internal-guid-152ac2a5-c410-0880-d40b-8c798203f8d2">EXCLUSIVE</b></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Tom Gordon</b></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b> </b></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>THE SNP Goverment ended last year with a record underspend, despite repeated complaints about Westminster austerity cuts squeezing its budget.</b></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><br /></b>
</span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Ministers underspent by almost half a billion pounds in 2013-14, according to a <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxhlO2qUM88wOGJfa3Q5NHB1U1k/view?usp=sharing">final outturn report</a> lodged at Holyrood the day after MSPs left for the Christmas recess.</b></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><br /></b>
</span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>The government had £444m left over from its £34.5bn budget last year, or 1.3% of the total, the first time an underspend has exceeded £350m since the SNP came to power in 2007.</b></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
</span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The underspend is usually less than 1%.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Scottish Government has not published the report on its own website.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">Although the £444m will still be available for use this year, a large underspend is often seen as undesirable, as it means public services missed out unnecessarily on better funding.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">The biggest factors in the last financial year were a £165m underspend in the £3bn education and lifelong learning portfolio, or 5.5% of the budget, and a £102m, or 4%, underspend in the £2.6bn infrastructure portfolio, then being overseen by Nicola Sturgeon.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">At a time when sheriff courts were being close to save money, the justice portfolio was underspent by £92m, or 3.6% of its £2.5bn budget.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yVr7FKmd6oI/VK0ZzpYyHII/AAAAAAAAAXw/JJrvx65xqIQ/s1600/Outturn%2B2013-14.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yVr7FKmd6oI/VK0ZzpYyHII/AAAAAAAAAXw/JJrvx65xqIQ/s1600/Outturn%2B2013-14.jpg" height="384" width="640" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">From the Scottish Government's final outturn report - note that £444m total in the bottom right corner</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">The underspend in the government’s own accounts came to £413m, but additional underspends in NHS and teacher pensions, over which ministers have less control, made the grand total £444m.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">In a statement to parliament in June, Finance Secretary John Swinney gave a provisional estimate for the underspend of less than £300m.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tory finance spokesman Gavin Brown MSP said it was rich for the SNP to complain about cuts while sitting on funds of nearly half a billion.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
</span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.scottishenergynews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/John-Swinney.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="http://www.scottishenergynews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/John-Swinney.jpg" height="179" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Och, it's only half a billion quid</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Last year, they moaned in every speech about not having enough money and how austerity was holding them back, yet they didn’t spend what they had.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“No wonder this report was released at the quietest time of the year.”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b style="font-weight: normal;">Although elements of the </b>underspend were previously reported in assorted government accounts, it was not until they were brought together in December's report that the full total was made explicit.</span><br />
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></b>
<span style="line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A Government spokesperson said: “This report contains no new information. </span></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"It simply brings together budget and outturn information already laid before the Scottish Parliament and published in the audited accounts of the bodies that make-up the Scottish Administration.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“The report records an overall underspend of less than 1.3 per cent.”</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
<br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
ScottishPolhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16120223053156815765noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1769220349417402409.post-57852065047796336372014-12-28T10:56:00.000+00:002014-12-28T11:01:35.721+00:00Oh, you're embarrassing us, Mister Ambassador!Those who believe the hogwash about Scottish politics changing "utterly" and a warm and fuzzy Yes alliance being born after the referendum should follow today's news about Craig Murray.<br />
A high-profile Yes campaigner, the former British diplomat hoped to become an SNP candidate in either Falkirk or Airdrie & Shotts.<br />
But with a seismic general election around the corner and the whiff or real power at Westminster, the party machine froze him out, while letting through a crowd of the usual suspects - former SpAds, party officers, friends of Alex Salmond and the SNP President's son.<br />
It was, Murray claimed, a classic case of Labour-style political management.<br />
It certainly looks that way.<br />
<br />
Here's a longer version of the story in today's Sunday Herald.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Tom Gordon<br />Scottish Political Editor</b><br />
<br />
<b>A FORMER British ambassador famous for whistle-blowing on human rights abuses in Uzbekistan has accused the SNP hierarchy of “bullying” and a Labour-style “stitch-up” after he was blocked from becoming a general election candidate. </b><br />
<br />
<b>Craig Murray, who was a high-profile independence campaigner, had been asked by SNP activists in Airdrie & Shotts and Falkirk to stand next May. <br /> </b><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<b>However, despite his prominence in the Yes campaign, he unexpectedly failed the SNP’s internal vetting process just before Christmas. </b><br />
<br />
He said he was failed for lacking “commitment on group discipline” after being asked if he would vote for the bedroom tax if told to by the SNP leadership as part of a Westminster deal with another party - he said No.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.heraldscotland.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/400xY/2014/12/26167912.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.heraldscotland.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/400xY/2014/12/26167912.jpg" height="212" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Craig Murray: blocked</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Murray, 56, said the question was bizarre given it is firm SNP policy to oppose the tax, and seemed designed to eliminate him as a possible candidate.<br />
<br />
Murray, who unsuccessfully appealed the decision, called it “classic Labour.. political management”.<br />
<br />
The SNP has yet to select candidates in Airdrie & Shotts or Falkirk, but in both seats the SNP hierarchy already has favourite applicants. <br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.facebook.com/NeilGraySNP">In Airdrie & Shotts it is Neil Gray</a>, who has been the office manager for the local MSP, Social Justice Secretary Alex Neil, since 2008.<br />
<br />
While in Falkirk, party bosses are behind SNP Women’s Officer Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh, a former Tory and Glasgow lawyer who failed to became an MEP last May.<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://cdn-7.electricscotland.com/lifestyle/tasmina/images/Nicolas%20and%20Tasmina.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://cdn-7.electricscotland.com/lifestyle/tasmina/images/Nicolas%20and%20Tasmina.jpg" height="249" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tasmina Ahmed Sheikh and supporter</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
In a <a href="https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/">blog post yesterday</a>, Murray said he had been “astonished by the hostility of the appeals board”, which was chaired by Ian Hudghton MEP, the SNP President, and two MSPs.<br />
<br />
He wrote: “They could not have been more personally unfriendly towards me if I were Jim Murphy: their demeanour was bullying.<br />
<br />
“I found it a truly unpleasant experience.”<br />
<br />
Murray, an SNP member for three years, is now barred from standing anywhere as an SNP candidate.<br />
<br />
<i>He told the Sunday Herald: “I’m absolutely shocked. I’m very, very depressed. I think in both Airdrie & Shotts and in Falkirk it’s evident who the party hierarchy wants to be the candidate.</i><br />
<i><br />“My own view is the [bedroom tax] question was asked to eliminate me. I’m really gutted.” </i><br />
<br />
The list of would-be SNP candidates who passed vetting includes two former special advisers to Alex Salmond - Jennifer Dempsie and Stephen Gethins - and Ian Hudghton’s son Fraser. <br />
<br />
Others include Salmond’s ex-office manager Hannah Bardell, former BBC journalist John Nicolson, who introduced First Minister Nicola Sturgeon at the Glasgow Hydro last month, former Yes Scotland manager Sarah Jane Walls, and Business for Scotland boss Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp.<br />
<br />
Burdz Eye View blogger Kate Higgins and comedy club owner Tommy Sheppard also made the cut. <br />
<br />
Murray, who was the UK’s ambassador to Uzbekistan between 2002 and 2004, said that by choosing party darlings as candidates, the SNP hierarchy was guilty of Labour-style control-freakery. <br />
<br />
<i>“There’s a conflict between the existing party hierarchy and the energy of the Yes campaign. </i><br />
<i><br />“I’m really sad, because like many people from the Yes movement I believed we were building a new kind of politics in Scotland. </i><br />
<i><br />“Instead, the SNP just seems to be trying to replicate classic Labour Party Tammany Hall political management.”</i><br />
<br />
He also wrote in his blog: “My analysis is that those in the SNP who make a fat living out of it are terrified the energy of the Yes campaign may come to threaten their comfy position.”<br />
<br />
Murray was sacked as ambassador to Uzbekistan after questioning US and UK support for the ruling dictatorship, the resigned from the Foreign Office shortly afterwards in protest at that policy.<br />
<br />
He once described No supporters as “either evil or quite extraordinarily thick”.<br />
<br />
Falkirk is a top target seat for the SNP.<br />
<br />
It was won by Labour’s Eric Joyce in 2010 with a majority of 7,843, but he resigned from Labour i in 2012 after a drunken Commons brawl.<br />
<br />
Labour’s new Falkirk candidate is former MSP Karen Whitefield, who lost her seat to the SNP in 2011.<br />
<br />
In Airdrie & Shotts, Labour MP Pamela Nash is defending a 12,408-vote majority.<br />
<br />
The SNP refused to discuss Murray’s criticisms.<br />
<br />
A spokeswoman said: “This is an internal party matter. The SNP is and remains completely opposed to the Tories’ hated Bedroom Tax and it is a matter of record that our MPs voted against it at Westminster - most recently on 17 December.”<br />
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<br />
<br />ScottishPolhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16120223053156815765noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1769220349417402409.post-41835280270253765032014-12-11T07:00:00.000+00:002014-12-11T07:54:52.461+00:00Let it go, let it go..<br>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>EXCLUSIVE</b></span><br>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Tom Gordon</b></span><br>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><br></b></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>THE council tax freeze will deprive public services of an eyewatering £2.5billion by the end of the current parliament, according to new official figures. </b></span><br>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><br></b></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>The scale of the cost, revealed in <a href="http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefingsAndFactsheets/S4/SB_14-85_Local_Government_Funding-Draft_Budget_2015-16_and_provisional_allocations_to_local_authorities.pdf">a briefing published by Holyrood’s financial scrutiny unit</a>, has brought renewed calls for the freeze to end.</b></span><br>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><br></b></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>The freeze works by ministers giving councils around £70m to offset each year's inflation - with tough penalties threatened against any council which refuses. </b></span><br>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The result is that the average bill for a Band D home has remained £1149 since 2007-08, but hundreds of millions of pounds have been diverted from public services to pay for it. </span></span><br>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><br>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The cost to the public purse in year one was £70m, then £140m in year two, £210m in year three and so on, resulting in a rapidly spiralling bill.</span><br>
<br>
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The Scottish Parliament paper looks ahead to next year's budget for 2015-16, and the amount of money being allocated to Scotland’s 32 councils.</span><br>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It states: “The total cost of the council tax freeze in 2015-16 is £560m, and the total cumulative cost from 2008-08 is 2015-16 is £2,520m.” </span><br>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A senior local government source said: “This is both a huge and more importantly a legitimate figure from the Parliament which shows that we in local government have not been fully funded for a number of years in relation to the exorbitant cost of the council tax freeze. </span><br>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“The freeze puts a massive hole in our ability to deliver services and is a prime example of the gradual erosion of local democratic accountability and responsibility.”</span><br>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GEU_uZdwIVU/VIjP-PDaUHI/AAAAAAAAAXM/i3YUR2KPrII/s1600/Ctax.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GEU_uZdwIVU/VIjP-PDaUHI/AAAAAAAAAXM/i3YUR2KPrII/s1600/Ctax.jpg" height="120" width="640"></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From the Scottish Parliament's Financial Scrutiny Unit Briefing</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Holyrood research paper also shows revenue funding for every council falling this year, with an average drop of 1.3% across Scotland.</span><br>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Critics say that by subsidizing councils to keep the tax frozen, the Scottish Government removes cash from other public services and denies councils the chance to raise even more money by setting tax rates themselves. </span><br>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The freeze is also attacked for saving those in the largest houses the most money, with the very poorest seeing no gain at all, as their council tax is met through benefit. </span><br>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">According to the <a href="http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx?SearchType=Simple&Keyword=%C2%A31,535&ExactPhrase=True&DateChoice=0&SortBy=DateSubmitted&ResultsPerPage=10">Scottish Government’s own figures</a>, between 2008-09 and 2013-14, the freeze saved the average Band A household paying the tax a total of £258.</span><br>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But the average Band D household saved £678 and the average Band H house £1,535.</span><br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bo8y_x8UYx0/VIjaj-wpeHI/AAAAAAAAAXg/LXMEFUdeDto/s1600/Frozenheartanna.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bo8y_x8UYx0/VIjaj-wpeHI/AAAAAAAAAXg/LXMEFUdeDto/s1600/Frozenheartanna.jpg" height="178" width="400"></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Unfrozen: even Princess Anna was thawed in a day</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Supporters say the freeze is backed by voters, has eased the burden on households since the 2008 crash, and sees the poor receive the most help as a percentage of household income. </span><br>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One of the SNP’s most popular policies since it was introduced in 2008, the freeze is an accidental byproduct of a failed attempt to abolish council tax.</span><br>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Nationalists only planned to freeze the levy short-term before replacing it with a local income tax (LIT) of 3p in the pound.</span><br>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However in early 2009, <a href="http://www.heraldscotland.com/snp-ditches-pledge-to-scrap-council-tax-1.902524">the SNP government scrapped the plan</a>, ostensibly on the grounds that it did not command enough support in parliament.</span><br>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It later emerged that LIT would not have raised enough cash in the recession, a fact ministers<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scotland/8646148/Alex-Salmond-accused-of-cynical-election-ploy-after-dropping-legal-block-on-local-income-tax-plans.html"> tried to stop coming out with a legal challenge</a> to a freedom of information request. </span><br>
<br>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Last month, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon announced a cross-party commission to come up with a "fairer" alternative to the current council tax system.</span><br>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.heraldscotland.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/400xY/2013/9/22133987.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.heraldscotland.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/400xY/2013/9/22133987.jpg"></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Council tax freeze: it was only meant to go on this long</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">STUC deputy general secretary Dave Moxham said the freeze should end immediately, with council tax rebanded to make it fairer pending a full review of local government funding.</span><br>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Enough is enough," he said.</span><br>
<br>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This year alone the freeze is worth as much as free person care. It’s a massive amount as we debate whether we can afford universal benefits.</span><br>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“The Scottish Government says it’s fully funded, but there must be other areas of public sector not getting funded as a consequence, and councils are raising charges for services.” </span><br>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Council umbrella group Cosla, which wants council tax made more progressive by adding to the current eight bands, said: “We welcome this figure being outed. We have always said that the cost of this policy was enormous. </span><br>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“However the truth is that in all reality there is not a great deal councils can do in relation to the council tax freeze as the penalties for breaking it are so severe.” </span><br>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A Scottish Government spokesman said: “As the council tax freeze has been fully funded, it has not had an impact on the funding of essential services. This freeze is helping taxpayers and providing much needed financial relief to vulnerable groups, including pensioners.” </span>ScottishPolhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16120223053156815765noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1769220349417402409.post-68295779269074337012014-12-09T07:00:00.000+00:002014-12-09T07:00:03.201+00:00Save Our Swinson<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The LibDems are <a href="http://www.libdemvoice.org/game-on-in-gordon-liberal-democrat-christine-jardine-has-to-defend-seat-against-former-first-minister-salmond-43671.html">putting a brave face</a> on Alex Salmond's tilt at the Gordon seat in the general election. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The former FM is a shoo-in and all concerned know it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">LibDem candidate Christine Jardine will undoubtedly put up a spirited fight, but the truth is the party is not about to divert cash and manpower to a long-shot like Gordon next May.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you follow the money, it's clear the LibDems are focusing elsewhere.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As you might expect, Danny Alexander's Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey seat is attracting a lot of big donations (mostly from Ministry of Sound founder James Palumbo).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But the sleeper story is how much cash is being poured into Jo Swinson's East Dunbartonshire constituency by friends of Nick Clegg who've never shown much interest in Scotland until now.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Swinson's seat is the most marginal of the 11 held by the LibDems in Scotland.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Swinson is also the party's only female MP north of the border.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This week, the Scottish LibDems <a href="http://www.libdemvoice.org/scottish-liberal-democrats-announce-their-list-selections-and-for-the-second-time-in-a-row-manage-to-put-one-of-their-best-msps-in-a-more-challenging-position-43667.html">announced seven of their eight regional list rankings</a> for Holyrood in 2016</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In terms of gender balance, they're appalling.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Not only are men ranked first in six of the seven, but in the North East, the party's only female MSP, the </span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">admirable Alison McInnes, is ranked second behind deserving 2011 loser Mike Rumbles.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Saving Swinson now looks more important than ever to the party of fairness and equality. </span><br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>EXCLUSIVE</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Tom Gordon</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>THOUSANDS of pounds from English donors and Nick Clegg’s inner circle are being used to rescue a Scottish LibDem MP at the general election, according to official records.</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Electoral Commission files show that in recent months unprecedented sums of cash have been pumped into the LibDem branch in East Dunbartonshire, near Glasgow, the seat of employment and equalities minister Jo Swinson.</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Swinson, 34, a Clegg ally and MP since 2005, narrowly held the constituency in 2010 with a majority of 2,184 over Labour.</b></span><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.heraldscotland.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/400xY/Jo-Swinson-(conf).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.heraldscotland.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/400xY/Jo-Swinson-(conf).jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Swinson: holds most marginal LibDem seat in Scotland</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The seat is the most marginal of the 11 held by LibDems in Scotland, and would fall next May on a swing to Labour of just 2.3%.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The SNP, who came fourth in the seat in 2010, would need a swing of 14.1% to win it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To help avert defeat, the party has hired a full-time campaign manager for the seat, which is now being flooded with out-of-town cash.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Over the last decade, cash donations to the East Dunbartonshire branch recorded by the Electoral Commission averaged around £2000 a year.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However between April and August, donations hit £46,365, with three-quarters of the money coming from donors based in England.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Local businessman and previous donor Jacob Aagard, a Danish-born Scottish chess grand master and chess publisher, gave £10,000.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But the rest came from two high-power fundraising dinners for Swinson’s re-election.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The first, which raised £24,500 in June, was arranged by London-based Brompton Capital Ltd.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The company, which has no other declared donations in Scotland, is the largest corporate donor to the LibDems, giving £1.4m since 2010.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Its boss, <a href="http://www.libdems.org.uk/rumi_verjee">Rumi Verjee, the founder of Domino’s Pizza in the UK</a>, was made a LibDem peer in </span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2013. Brompton, which put £3,350 into arranging the dinner, also chipped in £5000 cash.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Giving £3,750 at the dinner was Neil Sherlock, a former KPMG partner married to a LibDem peer, <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/nick-clegg/8919507/Donor-who-paid-straight-into-Nick-Cleggs-account-becomes-his-adviser.html">who was made Clegg’s special adviser in 2011</a> after giving the LibDems £88,000.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His donation to Swinson’s branch is a sure sign the highest eschelons of the party are mobilising to save her career.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sherlock had never previously given a recorded donation to a Scottish LibDem branch.</span><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XwrrEZX0cAU/VIYdV0TEDwI/AAAAAAAAAW8/4S7Wn0Pfc94/s1600/hqdefault.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XwrrEZX0cAU/VIYdV0TEDwI/AAAAAAAAAW8/4S7Wn0Pfc94/s1600/hqdefault.jpg" height="300" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Neil Sherlock: gave £3,750 at fundraising dinner for Swinson</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Another £3,750 came from Alistair Barr, chair of the Cities of London and Westminster LibDems Executive, whose previous £12,000 to the party went mostly to Westminster and Haringey.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He also gave £2000 to Swinson’s branch in April.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Long-term LibDem donor Duncan Greenland, who has given the party more than £200,000 since 2004, gave £5000 at the dinner.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A former French vineyeard owner and ex-LibDem councillor in Camden in London, Greenland appears never to have donated previously to a Scottish branch. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Michelle Quest, a donor to the Yeovil branch, also gave £2000 at the shindig.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And another £2000 came from ex-LibDem councillor Jane MacTaggart, another rookie time Scottish donor, who usually donates to her local Oxford West and Abingdon branch.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A second dinner hosted by former party leader Paddy Ashdown at the LibDems’ UK conference in Glasgow in October raised a further £11,865.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The £45-a-head affair “in support of Jo Swinson’s re-election campaign” included a £2111 wedge from <a href="http://www.libdems.org.uk/sal_brinton">LibDem peer Baroness Brinton</a>. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A Scottish Labour spokesman said: “No amount of money can help Jo Swinson escape from the fact that she is part of a government which has left families in her constituency £1600 a year worse off, seen energy prices soar and inequality widen. In May the people of East Dunbartonshire face a a clear choice, a vote for Scottish Labour’s Amandjit Jhund or Jo Swinson and the coalition government.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A LibDem spokeswoman said: “If Labour are complaining that people are donating money to us to beat them then that’s Labour’s problem. Labour are obviously in a state of blind panic as they’re about to lose grip of their heartlands because they ruined the economy, destroyed jobs and slashed incomes.” </span><br />
<br />ScottishPolhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16120223053156815765noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1769220349417402409.post-62796776021022275682014-12-08T20:58:00.001+00:002014-12-08T20:58:42.063+00:00Self Assessment<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There's a lot of cynicism about politics and government. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So how refreshing to hear a senior official being brutally honest recently. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Eleanor Emberson, head of Revenue Scotland, admitted her estimates for the cost of the new tax collection service had proved inaccurate and she needed lots more staff than planned.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hence the bill jumping twice in recent months.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Not a great sign for a service where money and maths are supposed to be central.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But certainly refreshing - if not reassuring.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Here's the story</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>EXCLUSIVE </b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Tom Gordon</b></span><br />
<br />
<b>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">THE bill for Scotland’s fledgling tax collection system has risen yet again - with managers forced to recruit a third more staff than planned.</span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Originally priced at £16.7m, the cost of Revenue Scotland is now more than £21m.</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>The running cost of the quango, which will initially collect two devolved taxes from April, w</b></span><b style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">as included in the SNP’s independence White Paper in November last year.</b><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However within a month it had to be revised upwards by £3.5m, or 21%, to £20.2m in order to take account of extra activity and investment.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">According to evidence presented to Holyrood’s finance committee recently, that figure was later adjusted to remove the cost of a new tax tribunal system, taking it down to £19.5m.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But <a href="http://www.scottishparliament.tv/category.aspx?id=18">in her six-monthly update to MSPs</a>, Eleanor Emberson, the head of Revenue Scotland, said the cost had risen again by 9%, to £21.2m.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The bill covers the running costs from April next year to March 2020, and is on top of one-off start-up costs of £4.5m.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Kenneth Gibson, the SNP convener of the Finance Committee, described the latest price hike as “quite significant”, while grilling Emberson.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">She said the extra was “almost exclusively staff costs”, as Revenue Scotland had raised its staffing from 30 to 41 in order to ensure the new system runs smoothly.</span><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ADdvhSJz5Ww/VIYMFPdESSI/AAAAAAAAAWs/AvzGUXr4MeI/s1600/maxresdefault.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ADdvhSJz5Ww/VIYMFPdESSI/AAAAAAAAAWs/AvzGUXr4MeI/s1600/maxresdefault.jpg" height="360" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Eleanor Emberson: told Finance Committee her estimates had proved wrong</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>“My estimates have not turned out to be completely accurate,” Emberson admitted. </b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>“I am being honest about that. </b></span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>We have had to put in additional resource to deliver. </b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“However, the bulk of the difference between £16.7m and £21.2m is to do with ensuring that the design of the systems matches the aspiration for Scotland.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Emberson also stressed the running cost was less than the £22.3m Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs (HMRC) would have charged to collect the new devolved taxes, the Land and Buildings Transaction Tax and the Scottish Landfill Tax.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Tory MSP Gavin Brown, who sits on the Finance Committee, said: “I’m concerned we have had cost increases several times and would like a guarantee from the government that it’s not going to increase further as we get closer to the launch date. The bill is now roughly similar to what HMRC would have charged. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Given one of the reasons for creating Revenue Scotland was that it would be cheaper than </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">HMRC, it raises questions about the Scottish Government’s initial decision.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A Government spokesman said: “Costs for setting up and running Revenue Scotland demonstrate good value for money and remain below the original estimate provided by HMRC.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“These costs include additional plans to enhance Revenue Scotland’s tax collection capacity, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">over and above that currently provided by HMRC. These include an IT system to support additional work on tax compliance, and new measures to address illegal landfill dumping.”</span>ScottishPolhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16120223053156815765noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1769220349417402409.post-85699465004727238672014-11-26T11:16:00.002+00:002014-11-26T11:16:46.937+00:0050p or not 50p? That is the question<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.jimmurphymp.com/upload/images/General/IMG_4314_597.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.jimmurphymp.com/upload/images/General/IMG_4314_597.jpg" height="320" width="208" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Murphy: I'll have half of that thanks</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Tax is in the air.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">George Osborne's autumn statement is just around the corner, and born-again devolutionist Jim Murphy is suddenly in favour of Holyrood controlling income tax.</span><br />
<br />
Murphy is equally enthusiastic about restoring the 50p top rate of income tax for those earning £150,000 and above, thereby reversing the cut to 45p made by Osborne in April last year.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
The chatter about the 50p rate reminded me of a protracted exchange I had with Nicola Sturgeon on the subject during the referendum campaign.<br />
<br />
It was probably the stickiest moment in an interview for the Sunday Herald, with the future First Minister repeatedly ducking questions on whether to bring back the 50p rate.<br />
<br />
Here's the transcript from the first week of September<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Sunday Herald</b>: Do you not want a more progressive tax system?<br />
<br />
<b>Nicola Sturgeon</b>: Parties will take decisions in budgets about taxation. What I want to do is see a situation where we are lifting people at the bottom, being able to determine what the minimum wage is, being able to determine what I hope and lift the minimum wage to the level of the minimum wage, childcare. Being in charge of both sides of your balance sheet so that socially progressive policies -<br />
<br />
<b>SH</b>: You’re not talking about both sides, just spending-<br />
<br />
<b>NS</b>: -socially progressive policies that you invest in have a positive impact on the other side of your balance sheet. We have a debate in this country about taxation that assumes the only way you can increase a government’s tax take is to raise the rates of tax that people pay. That’s not the only way. You increase a government’s tax take if you get more folk in work paying tax, if you get more folk in work earning more and paying more tax. It doesn’t happen instantaneously, but that’s what you’ve got the ability to do if you are in control.<br />
<br />
<b>SH</b>: But there’s an argument about fairness, that says those who earn most should pay more<br />
<br />
<b>NS</b>: If we’d have been in control we wouldn’t have reduced the 50p top rate of tax<br />
<br />
<b>SH</b>: Would you reintroduce it as Labour would?<br />
<br />
<b>NS</b>: I know why people want answers but...<br />
<br />
<b>SH</b>: If you can give a commitment on [a 3p cut in] corporation tax why can’t you make one on income tax?<br />
<br />
<b>NS</b>: We’ve set out our position on income tax. That decision will be taken on prevailing circumstances<br />
<br />
<b>SH</b>: And the corporation tax decision?<br />
<br />
<b>NS</b>: Corporation tax is a deliberately targeted policy to try to create more jobs through having more companies based in Scotland. On income tax, if there was an SNP government in an independent Scotland setting that first budget, if the circumstances were the same as they are now, we wouldn’t have reduced the 50p top rate of tax<br />
<br />
<b>SH</b>: But would you have a 50p top rate of tax?<br />
<br />
<b>NS</b>: I’m not going to set income tax rates for 2016 sitting in September 2014<br />
<br />
<b>SH</b>: Do you think it’s a good idea for fairness?<br />
<br />
<b>NS</b>: Right now we wouldn’t have voted, we didn’t vote, to reduce it. So, then, right now, we think there should still be a 50p top rate of tax<br />
<br />
<b>SH</b>: There will still be people earning over 150 grand in 2016. Do you think they ought to pay 50p on their income tax?<br />
<br />
<b>NS</b>: You set income tax rates based on the judgments you take about your budget when you set those budgets. I’m not going to sit here..<br />
<br />
<b>SH</b>: You also take a judgment on whether those people ought to pay more. Would they deserve to pay more?<br />
<br />
<b>NS</b>: I’m not going to.. You can spend the rest of the interview..<br />
<br />
<b>SH</b>: You talk about social justice but you won’t..<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/79204000/jpg/_79204227_sturgeon_big.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/79204000/jpg/_79204227_sturgeon_big.jpg" height="223" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sturgeon: I'll tell you when I'm ready</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<b>NS</b>: You can spend the rest of this interview if you want asking me to tell you what an SNP government’s budget would be in an independent Scotland in 2016<br />
<br />
<b>SH</b>: No, I’m asking you about one rate of one tax<br />
<br />
<b>NS</b>: I’m giving you an answer. If I was making that decision right now there would be a 50p top rate of tax. I’m not going to tell you what the decision will be two years from now because that decision will be taken based on the prevailing circumstances. If we were in that position right now of making that decision then there would still be a 50p top rate of tax, because we think that would be correction the circumstances that we’re in just now.<br />
<br />
<b>SH</b>: But the same basic question still exists in 2016 - should the rich pay more?<br />
<br />
<b>NS</b>: There will be a whole variety of circumstances by the time we’re setting that first budget<br />
<br />
<b>SH</b>: That’s a fundamental question for taxation. Should the rich people pay more money?<br />
<br />
<b>NS</b>: I believe in progressive taxation. I believe that people should pay according to their means. But the specific rates of tax will be decided in budgets. I’m telling you now that if that decision was ours to make right now what that decision would be.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
ScottishPolhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16120223053156815765noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1769220349417402409.post-60782620966759119902014-11-02T14:24:00.001+00:002014-11-02T14:28:53.134+00:00Blair TransplantThe Sunday Herald <a href="http://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/scottish-politics/suspicions-deepen-as-better-together-team-members-back-murphy.25752863">carries a piece today</a> about the extraordinary number of Better Together personnel now working for Jim Murphy in the Scottish Labour leadership contest.<br />
<br />
Murphy's campaign launch in Edinburgh yesterday felt like a Blythswood Square re-union, with Alistair Darling leading the applause in the audience, and a throng of former Better Together press officers running errands and liaising with the media.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/528225270163984384/o2FHghrT.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="318" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/528225270163984384/o2FHghrT.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Blair McDougall's new Twitter picture</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Blair McDougall, Better Together's former campaign director and Murphy's old friend, pictured left, even booked the venue. <br />
<br />
McDougall, whose employment contract with Better Together ran to the end of the year, has also left the organisation early <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/jamieross/jim-murphys-campaign-team-looks-a-lot-like-the-better-togeth">to help run Murphy's campaign</a>.<br />
<br />
One of those concerned says it's simple enough - lots of BT staffers admire Murphy because of the shift he put in during the referendum with his 100 towns in 100 days tour (which was a Better Together rather than a Labour event), and now want to return the favour and help.<br />
<br />
But others in the party smell a rat.<br />
<br />
<br />
Some of those close to fallen leader Johann Lamont reckon Better Together morphed into a leadership vehicle for Murphy a long time ago, and that McDougall and others blatantly promoted the East Renfrewshire MP with an eye to replacing Lamont.<br />
<br />
If that's true, it would be the kind of classic New Labour stitch-up that Murphy has been acused of ever since he helped run the notorious Network that picked 'acceptable' Labour candidates in the 1990s.<br />
<br />
An associated rumour is that McDougall's reward is to be the post of Scottish Labour general secretary, the party's most powerful official, and a real power behind the throne.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.heraldscotland.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/400xY/2014/11/25764482.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.heraldscotland.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/400xY/2014/11/25764482.jpg" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jim Murphy launches his leadership campaign</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
So in the press huddle after his launch speech, I asked Murphy who he wanted as general secretary.<br />
<br />
A simple enough question, you'd think, given Murphy has stressed that under him there would be no repeat of the sacking of the Scottish general secretary by London, <a href="http://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/scottish-politics/labour-in-turmoil-as-lamont-resigns.25688772">the event which precipitated Lamont's stormy resignation</a>.<br />
<br />
Murphy has also emphasised that <a href="http://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/scottish-politics/murphy-i-will-not-be-pushed-around-if-i-am-leader.25745344?utm_source=www.heraldscotland.comutm_medium=RSS%20Feedutm_campaign=Scottish%20News">he'll be doing the hiring and firing</a>.<br />
<br />
Yet for a simple question, it yielded a very odd and evasive answer, the kind of answer that usually means a raw nerve has been touched.<br />
<br />
You'd almost think McDougall's job had already been neatly stitched up alongside Jim's.<br />
<br />
But, then, that would be a very New Labour thing to do, and Jim says those misleading labels are all in the past, so I must be mistaken.<br />
<br />
Here's the transcript of the exchange so you can judge for yourself (spot the Freudian slip):<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="x_MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Sunday Herald: Who’s your pick for gen sec?</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Jim Murphy: You make it sound like a football team. [Turning to other reporters] Who’s next? I don’t know who the candidates are, mate.</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>SH: Well Blair McDougall is at a loose end...</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>JM: Is he? Mmm. Ok. You’re quite fixated by him. It’s quite unnatural. Have you got pictures of him all over your room?</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>
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<div class="x_MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>SH: Blair McDougall for general secretary, is that credible?</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>
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<div class="x_MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>JM: I’m not getting involved in all that, mate. Now you’re going to write...</b></span></span></div>
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<div class="x_MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>SH: You told everybody that you were going to be doing the hiring and firing. So is he going to be a hire for general secretary?</b></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>
</b></span></span>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>
</b></span></span>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>JM: I’m not the Scottish Labour Party leader yet.
If I win... if I’m fortunate enough to win this contest, I’ll make those
decisions, ok?</b></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>
</b></span></span>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>
</b></span></span>
<br />
<div class="x_MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>SH: Would you like him to be general secretary?</b></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>
</b></span></span>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>
</b></span></span>
<br />
<div class="x_MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>JM: Oh my gosh. I mean, is this my first day in
politics that I fall for that sort of question, Tom? It’s not your first
day in journalism, so you ought to come up with a better question than
that.</b></span></span></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />ScottishPolhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16120223053156815765noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1769220349417402409.post-45008699904368514532014-10-22T10:31:00.000+01:002014-10-22T10:31:11.679+01:00The only way is ethics<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I reported in <a href="http://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/wider-political-news/legal-affairs-minister-vows-to-act-after-failing-to-declare-shares.24868956">July in the Sunday Herald</a> that Roseanna Cunningham had failed to declare a shareholding in a small publishing company in her parliamentary register of interests.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">As the shares represented more than 1% of the firm concerned, that suggested a breach of not only MSP rules, but the law, as it is technically an offence to participate in parliamentary business while failing to declare a registrable financial interest.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Not too clever looking for the minister for legal affairs.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">To her credit, Ms Cunningham <a href="http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/msps/currentmsps/27460.aspx">promptly held up her hand</a>, and admitted she should have registered the shares, and got rid of them sharpish.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">However the matter is not yet at an end, I can reveal.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Following a complaint from a member of the public, the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland has become involved.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Here's the story:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-size: 15px; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>EXCLUSIVE</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-size: 15px; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Tom Gordon</b></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 15px; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #212121;"><span style="background-color: white;"><b>ROSEANNA Cunningham, the SNP minister for legal affairs, is being investigated by the country’s ethics watchdog over an undisclosed shareholding exposed by the Sunday Herald.</b></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-size: 15px; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-size: 15px; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Bill Thomson, the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland, recently confirmed he had started inquiries in response to a complaint from a member of the public.</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-size: 15px; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-size: 15px; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>It is understood Mr Thomson ruled the complaint into the secret shares was “admissible” and said he would “continue consideration of the matter”.</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-size: 15px; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-size: 15px; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>He also informed Ms Cunningham of his decision.</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-size: 15px; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The Sunday Herald first revealed in July that Ms Cunningham, who is also minister for community safety, failed to declare shares she had held since 2000 in a left-wing publishing company.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-size: 15px; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The holding was 50 of the 750 issued shares in Left Review Scotland Ltd, which publishes the <a href="http://www.scottishleftreview.org/">Scottish Left Review</a> magazine six times a year.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-size: 15px; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Since 2006, MSPs have been obliged to declare any shareholding greater than 1% in a company.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-size: 15px; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">However Ms Cunningham failed to declare her 6.7% stake in Holyrood’s register of interests.</span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/53637000/jpg/_53637286_53637285.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/53637000/jpg/_53637286_53637285.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Roseanna Cunningham</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Although nominally worth £1 each, Scottish Left Review’s 2013 accounts valued the shareholders’ funds at more than £13,000, suggesting Ms Cunningham’s stake was worth almost £900.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-size: 15px; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Under <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/46/section/39">Section 39 of the 1998 Scotland Act</a> failure to register such a financial interest and then take part in parliamentary proceedings is a criminal offence, punishable on summary conviction to a fine of up to £5000.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-size: 15px; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The new probe is a blow to the Perthshire MSP as a minister with a legal portfolio, especially given she was an advocate in her past career.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-size: 15px; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">When the Sunday Herald first revealed the share holding, Ms Cunningham, 64, said she had “no recollection” of the shares, but has since admitted she should have registered them.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-size: 15px; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">She has now recorded them in her register of interests saying she bought them for £1 each in 2000 but was “not been actively involved in the company for over 12 years”.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-size: 15px; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">However “on realising these shares constituted a registrable interest I provided the necessary information to the [parliamentary] Clerk”. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-size: 15px; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Paul Martin, Labour’s business manager at Holyrood, said: “It is clear that this is viewed as a serious matter. Government ministers need to be held to the highest possible standard and it is correct that this is properly investigated and acted on if there is wrongdoing.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-size: 15px; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“It would not be good for this government if the minister in charge of legal affairs had failed on basic compliance.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-size: 15px; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Ms Cunningham founded Left Review Scotland Ltd with a group of fellow left-wingers including ex-Labour treasurer Bob Thomson and Clydeside trade unionist Jimmy Reid.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-size: 15px; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Its aim was “to promote and reflect the principles and values of democratic socialism within the Scottish nation through the publishing of a magazine and organisation of discussion groups”.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-size: 15px; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">A spokesman for Ms Cunningham said she had replied to the Commissioner and her letter “set out the circumstances of the situation and the fact that as she did not recall she owned these shares, they went unregistered with Parliament.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-size: 15px; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Once they were brought to her attention and she realised they should have been registered, she immediately notified the relevant bodies.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-size: 15px; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“She has since divested herself of the £50 in shares for nil consideration.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-size: 15px; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The office of the Commissioner for Ethical Standards said: “We have received a complaint against Roseanna Cunningham.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #212121; font-size: 15px; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“We cannot comment further on this matter as the Commissioner is legally obliged (Section 16 of the Scottish Parliamentary Standards Commissioner Act 2002) not to disclose information about the terms of the complaint.”</span></div>
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<br />ScottishPolhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16120223053156815765noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1769220349417402409.post-78599704198173902122014-08-26T13:50:00.001+01:002014-08-26T13:54:28.299+01:00Confident no more?<h3>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">First Minister's economic advisers continued to discuss currency Plan Bs months after Salmond declared Unionist veto on pound was "bluff", new minutes show</span></h3>
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Unnoticed amid the recent rows over a potential currency "Plan B" was the publication last week of <a href="http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/0045/00458457.pdf">the latest minutes</a> from Alex Salmond's Fiscal Commission Working Group (FCWG).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">These date from 26 May 2014, but are nevertheless intriguing.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">They show that, long after the First Minister had dismissed the Unionist threat to veto a currency union as mere bluff and bluster, his advisers remained busy discussing alternatives.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The minutes state (my emphasis in bold): </span><br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Working Group discussed and reviewed the evidence underpinning their recommendations for a formal monetary union in their First Report.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Following on from their last meeting, <strong>there was a continued discussion of currency options in the context of the stated position of UK Ministers and the advice of HMT</strong>.<br /> <br />The Working Group also considered the economic assessment of currency unions set out by the Governor of the Bank of England.<br /> <strong><br /></strong><strong>Members discussed the options available to Scotland post-independence and the importance of a stable transition.</strong></span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The opinion of the Working Group remains that retaining Sterling as part of a formal monetary union is the best option for both the UK and Scotland. </span></blockquote>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">The reference to "transition" was pounced on by Better Together when Salmond used the same phrase last week. Transition to what? they asked.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">May's meeting seems to differ from the one which preceeded it on 6 March. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Back in March, three weeks after George Osborne came to Edinburgh to announce his veto plan, the minutes recorded a confidence that it simply wouldn't happen.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">They said: </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Members discussed the currency options outlined in the first report given recent developments and concluded that their economic assessment and central recommendation still held. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They also discussed the other viable currency and monetary models available for Scotland post-independence.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Members emphasised how they believe that it would be in the interests of the rest of the UK for Scotland to retain stability as part of a formal monetary union. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the event of a vote for independence, agreements will be reached which are in the best interests of both Scotland and the rest of the UK. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Other currency options would be less advantageous for the rest of the UK but viable for Scotland and <b>Members</b> <b>concluded that they are confident that </b><b>this will ensure an agreement on a shared currency</b>.<br /><b></b></span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>As part of their discussions the Working Group covered the potential role of a Scottish </b><b>Monetary Institute in a formal monetary union.</b> </span></blockquote>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">But there was no reference to continued confidence in May's minutes, just a repeat of the FCWG's position that a formal currency union would be the best option.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">(</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">"The opinion of the Working Group remains that retaining Sterling as part of a formal monetary union is the best option for both the UK and Scotland.")</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Then again, if they were just as confident, why would they still be discussing Plan Bs?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
ScottishPolhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16120223053156815765noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1769220349417402409.post-91024923881822572602014-07-21T23:50:00.001+01:002014-07-21T23:50:13.021+01:00A few rivets short of a flagshipIt may be the recess at Holyrood, but questions about the SNP government's promise to "transform" <a href="http://scottishpol.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/kindergarten-logic-5.html">childcare policy</a> under independence rumble on.<br />
<br />
A few months ago ministers refused a freedom of information request I had lodged about the basic arithmetic behind their headline-grabbing plan.<br />
<br />
You might remember that back in January, ministers published an <a href="http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/0044/00441783.pdf">economic analysis</a>
of the impact of a theoretical 6% rise in the female workforce, which
they said could eventually raise £700m in extra taxes to help pay for
childcare.<br />
<br />
Strikingly, the analysis failed to spell out <b>how many years</b> it would take before a 6%
rise would yield £700m extra in tax (assuming it ever happened), and hence
how much the policy would cost to deliver.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-drIP5hptsJs/U2lffJKruuI/AAAAAAAAARA/uo-LoZuuKuM/s1600/Paper.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-drIP5hptsJs/U2lffJKruuI/AAAAAAAAARA/uo-LoZuuKuM/s1600/Paper.jpg" height="248" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Some top vagueness from the SG analysis (my emphasis)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Instead, there were vague descriptions of output and tax revenue rising "in the long run" and "over a number of years".<br />
<br />
Holyrood's impartial information centre later pointed out that when the SNP government talks about "the
long-term", it can mean 20 years or more.<br />
<br />
So under FoI, I asked to see the full, unedited
results of the modelling exercise, in the hope of seeing the short- and medium-term numbers. <br />
<br />
Ministers refused, <a href="http://scottishpol.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/secrecy-is-good-for-you-2.html">saying it would be "premature" to disclose it</a>, and so I appealed to the Scottish Information Commissioner, Rosemary Agnew.<br />
<br />
Ministers made their submissions to the Commissioner on June 16.<br />
<br />
Agnew has now ruled on the matter.<br />
<br />
Sadly
from my perspective, she has sided with the government, and said that
ministers were entitled to withhold the modelling work I was after.<br />
<br />
The main thrust of it is that, although the SNP's White Paper set out the "high level" direction on childcare, the nuts and bolts of the policy remain "in development", and so material which "relates" to it can be withheld.<br />
<br />
However, the Commissioner's decision also contains some fascinating insights.<br />
<br />
For a start, it confirms that ministers have modelled far more on childcare than they have been willing to share with voters, and that the policy is still only part-cooked.<br />
<br />
"The Ministers stated that the withheld information comprised the modelled impact of changes in economic output and tax revenues under <b>different scenarios</b> of increased female participation in the labour market," the Commissioner's decision says (my emphasis in bold).<br />
<br />
"The Ministers argued that the withheld information comprised <b>part of the evidence base</b> provided to assist them in developing their policy on childcare in the event of independence.<br />
<br />
"They argued that although the strategic policy direction had been set out in Scotland’s Future, <b>detailed policy design work continued and the details of the policy were yet to be set out</b>.<br />
<br />
"The Ministers submitted that the information was created as part of an <b>ongoing process</b> of developing their position on childcare and that the <b>formulation of the policy remains in development</b>."<br />
<br />
And here's where it gets really interesting.<br />
<br />
Ministers admit they have modelled but have also withheld the short- and medium-term numbers. <br />
<br />
In other words, they have withheld modelling on the crucial period covering the introduction of the policy, perhaps the first 10 or 15 years, when it would not yet be self-financing, and when the net burden on taxpayers could be hundreds of millions of pounds a year. <br />
<br />
Informative material, surely? I'd say so. But ministers say it would only confuse the poor punters.<br />
<br />
"The Ministers stated that the modelling results presented in the published report Childcare and Labour Market Participation – Economic Analysis provide a high-level summary of the impact of increases in labour market participation on economic output and tax revenues in the long-term.<br />
<br />
<b>"The results for individual years which detail the short and medium-term impacts have been withheld. </b><br />
<br />
<b>"The Ministers considered that disclosure of the annual short- and medium-term results could be misleading. </b><br />
<br />
"They stated that the short- and medium-term results reflect a very specific labour market response, from which the long-term results are independent."<br />
<br />
And my favourite phrase...<br />
<br />
"The Ministers considered that disclosure of the information would give <b>an unjustifiable impression that there is a level of certainty in the information.</b>" <br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Y6rnwm7roSA/U82TNJ3eKeI/AAAAAAAAAV0/sVbM5Ymni1U/s1600/FoIedit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Y6rnwm7roSA/U82TNJ3eKeI/AAAAAAAAAV0/sVbM5Ymni1U/s1600/FoIedit.jpg" height="413" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A few rivets short of a flagship: ministers on withholding childcare information</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
The long and the short of it is that my FoI pursuit of this information has now hit a dead end.<br />
<br />
Others may yet be more successful.<br />
<br />
In the meantime, I leave you with this recent press release from the SNP demanding full disclosure and clarity from the UK government on another aspect of the referendum debate.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.snp.org/media-centre/news/2014/jul/snp-write-information-commissioners-polls">http://www.snp.org/media-centre/news/2014/jul/snp-write-information-commissioners-polls</a><br />
<br />
SNP MSP Bruce Crawford said: "People in Scotland paid for these polls and they
have a right to see the results in full.”<br />
<br />
<br />
ScottishPolhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16120223053156815765noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1769220349417402409.post-49787235091489129032014-06-05T10:18:00.000+01:002014-06-05T10:18:24.818+01:00Bonus balls?<br />
THE £1000-a-scalp “independence bonus” touted by the Yes camp is under fresh scrutiny today.<br />
It was calculated on the basis that by year 15 of independence, Scottish tax revenue would have risen by £5bn, or roughly £1000 per person.<br />
Leaving aside the fact that that’s your money going to the government not the other way round, the bonus is predicated on a steady rise in workplace productivity.<br />
A 0.3% annual rise for 15 years should yield £2.4bn, or almost half the bonus pot, according to the Scottish Government.<br />
But the First Minister’s Council of Economic Advisers has just reported that productivity trends are “an area of uncertainty”.<br />
So should Alex Salmond be so confident of a productivity rise?<br />
The Scottish Government says only short-term productivity is uncertain and that independence would produce permanent long-term change.<br />
But if it’s not possible to forecast short-term productivity change with certainty, how much reliance can you put on 15-year forecast, especially as long-term forecasts are notoriously harder to get right than short-term ones?<br />
The opposition parties say something's amiss.<br />
Here’s a longer version of the story in today’s Herald<br />
<br />
<b>EXCLUSIVE</b><br />
<b>Tom Gordon</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>THE workplace productivity behind Alex Salmond’s promise of a £1000 independence bonus for every Scot remains “an area of uncertainty”, his own economic experts have warned.</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>The assessment is contained in the latest annual report by the chair of the First Minister’s Council of Economic Advisers (CEA).</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>The Government last night said only short-term productivity was uncertain, whereas independence could produce permanent change, but opposition parties said Mr Salmond had been caught peddling “fantasy”. </b><br />
<b><br /></b>
The First Minister said last week that higher productivity, higher employment and higher immigration after a Yes vote would result in an extra £5billion in tax revenues after 15 years, an “independence bonus” worth £1000 per person.<br />
Almost half the £5bn increase was attributed to a 0.3% rise in annual productivity growth.<br />
The <a href="http://scottishgovernment.presscentre.com/News/-5-billion-increase-in-revenues-by-2029-ce5.aspx">SNP government stated</a>: “A 0.3 percentage point increase in our long run productivity growth rate, which will narrow some of the gap with our competitors, could see tax revenues increase by £2.4bn a year by 2029-30.”<br />
The government suggested productivity could be raised using “an industrial strategy to rebalance the economy and diversify Scotland’s industrial base”, better infrastructure, and a more efficient tax regime which helped Scottish businesses invest and innovate.<br />
However the <a href="http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/0045/00451593.pdf">CEA chair’s repor</a>t indicated productivity trends could not be taken for granted.<br />
It said: “Looking ahead, in the short term, even as the recovery develops at an aggregate<br />
level, specific or localised issues may still appear. Moreover, the outlook for the labour market and earnings, both in Scotland and the UK, depends on future productivity trends, which remain an area of uncertainty.”<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9qLKI6koYJ8/U5A0VpE3ZqI/AAAAAAAAAVY/Q1VdQBVJ9No/s1600/CEA+report.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9qLKI6koYJ8/U5A0VpE3ZqI/AAAAAAAAAVY/Q1VdQBVJ9No/s1600/CEA+report.jpg" height="202" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From p43 of the CEA chair's second annual report</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
However it added the economic outlook was stronger than in early 2013, and the Scottish economy was expected to move beyond 2008 pre-recession levels of output during 2014.<br />
The prospect of greater productivity was also cited defensively by SNP ministers this week when the Institute for Fiscal Studies said costly policies on childcare and pensions would require tax hikes or cuts under independence.<br />
Labour finance spokesman Iain Gray said: “The SNP’s prospectus for a separate Scotland depends on a sudden, magical, and inexplicable increase in productivity following a yes vote. <br />
“Every day we see independent analysts telling us these figures do not add up. Now even the First Minister’s own advisers are telling him a sudden leap in productivity is just fantasy.<br />
“This report shows the scale of the challenge a separate Scotland would face in helping to bridge the gulf between SNP spending promises and revenue.<br />
“There is no plan, no strategy, no vision and no idea about how to close the productivity gap.”<br />
Conservative finance spokesman Gavin Brown added: “This is yet more evidence that the Scottish Government’s fiscal paper last week was based on extremely optimistic assumptions, vain hope and the crossing of fingers.<br />
“What is particularly damaging about this conclusion is that it comes from the Scottish Government’s own trusted advisers.<br />
“There can be no claims of a conspiracy here - when even they are telling the SNP to be more cautious, it’s time for the Yes camp to listen.”<br />
A Scottish Government spokeswoman said: “The two references to productivity are different. The text quoted from the Chair’s Report relates to short-term changes in the Scottish and UK labour markets and its links to how productivity is adjusting in the light of the recession and recovery. The First Minister was referring to permanent improvements in Scotland’s productivity growth rate, which can be supported by access to the economic levers available under independence.<br />
“With independence we will be able to take control of economic levers and have the powers to grow our own economy, including supporting increases in productivity rates. With the powers of independence we could generate over £5 billion a year of extra revenues within 15 years, without increasing taxes.”<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
ScottishPolhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16120223053156815765noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1769220349417402409.post-87014785787572588632014-06-01T09:26:00.000+01:002014-06-01T14:16:08.907+01:00Trust me, I'm a perjurer<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0);">Disgraced former MSP Tommy Sheridan is back on the road again, advocating a Yes to independence.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0);">He's still got the power to whip up a crowd, but the official Yes camp is far from happy at being linked to a convicted perjury.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0);">Here's the story. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b><span style="background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0);">EXCLUSIVE</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<b><span style="background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0);">Tom Gordon</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0);">Paul Hutcheon</span></b></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b><span style="background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0);">TENSIONS
have erupted inside the pro-independence campaign over Tommy
Sheridan, after it emerged the convicted perjurer spoke at a
meeting under the offical Yes banner.</span></b></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b><span style="background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0);">The
former jailbird shared a stage last week with SNP MSP Christina
McKelvie at an event organised by Yes Hamilton, a semi-autonomous
offshoot of the Yes Scotland movement.</span></b></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b><span style="background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0);">Yes
Scotland board member Colin Fox, whose testimony helped send Sheridan
to prison for lying on oath, reacted furiously to the news.</span></b></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0);"><b>He said: “The guy is a convicted perjurer. He’s a liability to Yes. We don’t want him.</b>”</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0);">Sheridan,
who was jailed for three years in 2011 for perjury during his 2006
defamation action against the News of the World, recently embarked on a
one-man speaking tour to promote a Yes vote called “Hope over Fear”, but
has been shunned by the official Yes camp.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0);">In
2012, SNP Finance Secretary <a href="http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/snp-rebuffs-sheridans-bid-to-work-for-independence.19197582">John Swinney said the disgraced former Glasgow MSP</a> was “a man who has no political credibility whatsoever –
none whatsoever. Not even political credibility, no credibility in terms
of the judgments made by the courts of the land.”</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0);">Organisers of the Yes Scotland group in Glasgow later cold-shouldered Sheridan when he tried to become part of the organisation.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0);">Despite
the clear signal from Swinney, McKelvie, convener of Holyrood’s
European and External Affairs committee, spoke along with the
former leader of the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) at a miner’s welfare
club in Hamilton on Tuesday before an audience of around 200.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0);">Despite
repeated calls and emails to her publicly-funded media adviser,
McKelvie, the MSP for Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse, did not respond
to requests for comment.</span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WlElFWi6zSk/U4rgqwrhipI/AAAAAAAAAU8/wRt_It4qIjo/s1600/McKelvie-Sheridan+edit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WlElFWi6zSk/U4rgqwrhipI/AAAAAAAAAU8/wRt_It4qIjo/s1600/McKelvie-Sheridan+edit.jpg" height="336" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Christina McKelvie MSP and Tommy Sheridan last Tuesday</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0);">Sheridan,
50, was a list MSP from 1999 to 2007 and a one-time convener of the SSP
before forming the breakaway Solidarity Party in 2006. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0);">He launched
Solidarity a few weeks after winning a £200,000 defamation action
against the now-defunct News of the World, which had claimed he was an
adulterer and a swinger who had visited Cupid’s sex club in Manchester.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0);">During
the civil case, Sheridan accused some of his old colleagues in the
Scottish Socialists of conspiring against him and said they had
engineered “the mother of all stitch-ups”.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0);">Conflicting testimony during the case prompted a police investigation into possible perjury.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0);">In 2010, Sheridan was found guilty of lying under oath and sentenced to three years.</span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xWdOXlLuspc/U4rh3Aoc42I/AAAAAAAAAVE/ALu-4ezpGm8/s1600/Yes+flyer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xWdOXlLuspc/U4rh3Aoc42I/AAAAAAAAAVE/ALu-4ezpGm8/s1600/Yes+flyer.jpg" height="400" width="280" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The flyer for Tuesday's event</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0);">He was released after a year in prison.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0);"></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0);">Colin
Fox, a Yes Scotland board member, a current SSP co-convener and one of
those who testified against Sheridan at his trial, said: “I don’t want
anything to do with him.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0);">“I think he helps the No campaign.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0);">“Last
time last year he was leader of the anti-bedroom tax campaign. This
year he wants to be part of the yes campaign. He’s got an addiction to
limelight.”</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0);">The pro-Union Better Together campaign seized on Sheridan’s appearance under the Yes banner.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0);">A spokesman said: “With Tommy Sheridan now joining the official Yes campaign, we can expect to see a swing to us.”</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0);">Yes Scotland stressed Sheridan was not part of its operation, and said local groups were free to arrange their own speakers.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0);">A spokesman said: “Any individual’s involvement in Yes Scotland community activities is entirely a matter for the local groups.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0);">Sheridan could not be contacted for comment.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
ScottishPolhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16120223053156815765noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1769220349417402409.post-83114669210332451432014-05-18T07:00:00.000+01:002014-05-18T07:00:02.054+01:00Ambulance for Neil?THE controversy over Health Secretary Alex Neil intervening in the shake-up of mental health services at his local health board has been a slow-burn one.<br />
The Sunday Herald broke the story <a href="http://scottishpol.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/war-of-wards.html">as far back as November 2012</a>.<br />
Since then, the First Minister and the Permament Secretary have said Neil did nothing wrong in upending his predecessor's decision to remove acute beds from Monklands Hospital in his Airdrie & Shotts seat.<br />
But last week the story came back to bite Neil after new FoI material obtained by Labour proved he ordered the U-turn <i>before</i> stepping back from the issue to avoid a conflict of interest.<br />
Compounding Neil's offence in Labour eyes is the way he later said he'd delegated the matter to a junior minister because Monklands was in his constituency, when he had already taken the crucial decision himself.<br />
That, Johann Lamont claimed, was deceiving parliament.<br />
The FM has refused to sack Neil, but Labour smell blood and won't let go.<br />
The Sunday Herald has now obtained a new email suggesting Neil's primary motivation was his own political backyard, rather the wider health board concerns cited by Alex Salmond at FMQs.<br />
Here's a longer version of today's story.<br />
<br />
<br />
<span lang="en-GB"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0;">
<b><span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">EXCLUSIVE</span></span></b></div>
<b>
</b><div style="margin: 0;">
<b><span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Tom Gordon </span></span></b></div>
<b>
</b><div style="margin: 0;">
<b><span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Scottish Political Editor</span></span></b></div>
<b>
</b><div style="margin: 0;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></span></div>
<b>
</b><div style="margin: 0;">
<b><span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">ALEX
Neil was last night under growing pressure to resign after an email
emerged showing his ferocious opposition to a health shake-up in his
constituency that he
controverisally reversed within days of becoming Health Secretary. </span></span></b></div>
<div style="margin: 0;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></span></div>
<b>
</b><div style="margin: 0;">
<b><span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">The
email, obtained by the Sunday Herald despite an attempt to censor its
contents, shows Neil was vehemently against removing acute mental health
services from Monklands
Hospital because of the impact on his Airdrie & Shotts seat.</span></span></b></div>
<b>
</b><div style="margin: 0;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><b>He
later ordered NHS Lanarkshire to rewrite its plans and retain beds at
Monklands, despite official warnings it would mean a “less than optimal
service” in “inferior
accommodation” at the hospital, where asbestos is <a href="http://www.nhslanarkshire.org.uk/boards/Archive/2009BoardPapers/Documents/March%202009/Property%20Strategy%20April%202009%20to%20March%202013%20-%2025%20March%202009%20Board.pdf">officially described as “ubiquitous”</a>.</b></span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><b> </b> </span></span></div>
<b>
</b><div style="margin: 0;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Despite
his critical intervention, Neil subsequently told the Scottish
Parliament he had delegated decisions on Monklands to a deputy minister
“because it lies in
my constituency”.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">The <a href="http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2011/12/01141452/8">Ministerial Code</a> says ministers must avoid conflicts of interests when taking decisions affecting their constituencies.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/--FIqj6NHJAk/U3fRiCVyHQI/AAAAAAAAAUs/62qb67CvMFs/s1600/Asb.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/--FIqj6NHJAk/U3fRiCVyHQI/AAAAAAAAAUs/62qb67CvMFs/s1600/Asb.jpg" height="262" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From NHS Lanarkshire Property Strategy April 2009 to March 2013</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Labour claim Neil “deceived” the parliament and have urged Alex Salmond to sack him.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"></span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">The
First Minister, who previously cleared Neil of breaching the Ministerial Code over the affair, last week refused to dismiss him, and
said the Monklands decision
was part of wider changes affecting the whole health board.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">“To
define it purely as a constitutency issue ignores the fact that the
health service affects and serves all of the population,” he said.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">However an email written by Neil to NHS Lanarkshire on 9 August 2012 suggests that constituency issues were paramount to the future Health Secretary.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">At
the time, the then Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon had just agreed to
concentrate mental health beds at Wishaw and Hairmyres, outside Neil’s
seat, and remove them
from Monklands.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">With
NHS Lanarkshire due to finalise the plan on 23 August, Neil was asked
if he would endorse the board’s decision in a press release.</span></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-B1K7373dyhY/U3fNpc86wgI/AAAAAAAAAUg/lGr6biI7KdU/s1600/AN.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-B1K7373dyhY/U3fNpc86wgI/AAAAAAAAAUg/lGr6biI7KdU/s1600/AN.jpg" height="320" width="284" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Neil's unredacted email of 9-8-12</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Although
NHS Lanarkshire blacked out Neil’s reply, the Sunday Herald has seen
the contents. After asking the board to delay a decision until after
his holiday, Neil
declined to contribute. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="margin: 0;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">“While
I support the overall strategic approach, I don’t agree with your
recommendations in relation to not locating one of the new units in
Monklands, which covers
a much more deprived catchment area than East Kilbride,” he said.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">“The proposals are not consistent with an anti-poverty strategy.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">“My
reading of the analysis of why Monkalnds shouldn’t retain a mental
health unit is that it is essentially prejudiced on the economics of the
PFIs [private finance
initiatives] at both Wishaw and Hairmyres.”</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">He
said it would be “extremely rash” to announce the change without laying
on free hospital transport for patients’ friends and families.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"></span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">“Given
the level of poverty and deprivation in Airdrie this will just not be
possible if people on low incomes have to pay to get to Wishaw or
Hairmyres. I strongly
suggest that this release includes the details of planned investment at
Monklands Hospital, otherwise local people will be even further incensed
yet again by the actions of NHS Lanarkshire.”</span></span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-IcpJfwPqthA/U3fNq9unm6I/AAAAAAAAAUo/-o3DaQ2ZBD4/s1600/AN+redacted.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-IcpJfwPqthA/U3fNq9unm6I/AAAAAAAAAUo/-o3DaQ2ZBD4/s1600/AN+redacted.jpg" height="232" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Neil's email after NHS Lanarkshire's redactions</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="margin: 0px; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"></span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"></span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"></span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">To allow Neil to stay involved, the board agreed to delay its decision until 26 September.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">However on 5 September, a reshuffle saw Neil promoted to the position of Health Secretary.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Within
days he undertook a “review” of the mental health plans, and on
26 September his private secretary told fellow government officials
Neil’s “clear view” was
to keep beds at Monklands and NHS Lanarkshire was to be asked to “reconfigure
their plans accordingly”.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">It
was not until later that day that Neil stepped aside because of “a
perception of a conflict of interest” and passed responsibility for
mental health services at
Monklands to public health minister Michael Matheson. </span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Labour
argue that by then Neil had already taken the key decision on
Monklands, leaving Matheson to merely rubberstamp the board’s revised
plan.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"></span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Labour
health spokesman Neil Findlay said: “This is another deeply damaging
revelation. It makes clear that Alex Neil was going to oppose the
decision, approved by
Nicola Sturgeon, to close mental health beds at Monklands, because of
the impact it would have on his constituency. </span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">“Alex Neil said he
wouldn’t handle the decision because it was a constituency matter. </span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">“Alex
Salmond this week said it wasn’t a constituency matter. The SNP’s
defence is all over the place as they scrabble to defend a minister
interfering in NHS decisions.
Alex Neil’s position is untenable. He must resign.”</span></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RhoRlNww_Vo/U3fNl1ZxO3I/AAAAAAAAAUY/KwnEA7IWfng/s1600/AN+Monklands.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RhoRlNww_Vo/U3fNl1ZxO3I/AAAAAAAAAUY/KwnEA7IWfng/s1600/AN+Monklands.jpg" height="425" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Neil campaigning about Monklands services before the 2011 election, when he took Airdrie & Shotts from Labour</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="margin: 0;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">A
Scottish Government spokeswoman said: “On his appointment as Health
Secretary, Mr Neil wished to review a number of key decisions, including
the proposals about
to be put forward by the board of NHS Lanarkshire on mental health
services. With over 500,000 people resident in NHS Lanarkshire’s area,
Mr Neil addressed his concerns on the service change to the region as a
whole. He was clear in his view that acute mental
health facilities would be best retained at Wishaw General Hospital,
Monklands Hospital, and with a unit at Hairmyres Hospital.”</span></span>
</div>
<div style="margin: 0;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Regarding
asbestos at Monklands, the government added: “Asbestos is only
dangerous when disturbed. NHS boards have a responsibility to ensure
asbestos is safely managed
and contained. It should not be removed unnecessarily.”</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></span></div>
ScottishPolhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16120223053156815765noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1769220349417402409.post-40960166972587011932014-05-11T15:35:00.002+01:002014-05-11T15:56:18.974+01:00McCrone 2<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Today's Sunday Herald <a href="http://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/referendum-news/the-secret-oil-report-we-find-the-crucial-report-advising-westminster-not-t.24189400">carries a story</a> about a newly unearthed government file on North Sea Oil.<br />
Written by former chief economist Professor Gavin McCrone in 1976, it sets out the case for an oil fund.<br />
The plan had a clear political dimension - to suppress support for independence - but there was also a genuine desire to invest in depressed areas of the country such as West Central Scotland.<br />
The then Labour Scottish Secretary Bruce Millan and Energy Secretary Tony Benn argued for it in cabinet, but the economic crisis in the late 1970s was so acute, the government rejected it, spending the oil revenues and saving nothing.<br />
McCrone now reckons Callaghan's government had little choice given the circumstances.<br />
But the Tory goverments of the 1980s... well, they had a golden opportunity to set up an oil fund when the revenues were "colossal", but they didn't take it.<br />
Regular readers will now how much I moan about government secrecy.<br />
So here, after 38 years, and for the first time, is the McCrone 2 report of July 1976 in full.<br />
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ScottishPolhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16120223053156815765noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1769220349417402409.post-57085060958171291292014-05-07T07:40:00.000+01:002014-05-07T07:40:02.786+01:00Secrecy is Good for You 2Another day, another post about the Scottish Government's "transformational" <a href="http://scottishpol.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/kindergarten-logic-5.html">childcare policy</a> to double free nursery hours after independence.<br />
<br />
On Monday, I <a href="http://scottishpol.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/secrecy-is-good-for-you.html">revealed the government's admission</a> that - despite previous denials - it does indeed hold direct modelling of this policy, which is a cornerstone of the referendum White Paper.<br />
<br />
So will the policy work? I'm afraid I can't say, as the government has refused to publish the modelling work, arguing disclosure would be "premature" and against "the public interest".<br />
<br />
Now, following another freedom of information request, I can share a further example of the government's secrecy mindset on this issue.<br />
<br />
Back in January, ministers published an <a href="http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/0044/00441783.pdf">economic analysis</a> of the impact of a theoretical 6% rise in the female workforce, which said this would raise £700m in extra taxes to help pay for more childcare.<br />
<br />
But as I've <a href="http://scottishpol.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/kindergarten-logic.html">blogged before</a>, the fine print contained a disclaimer - the analysis didn't actually model the SNP's childcare policy, just an "illustrative" rise in women in work. There was no proof the policy would ever yield a 6% rise.<br />
<br />
Nevertheless, Alex Salmond appeared on BBC Sunday Politics Scotland to hail it as a "very important paper", saying the government had published it "so that everybody can read and understand these things".<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/h1-UM2b5BPk?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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But even on its own terms, the analysis left a lot to be desired.<br />
<br />
In particular, it failed to say how many years it would take before a 6% rise (assuming it happened) would yield £700m extra in tax, and hence how much the policy would cost to deliver.<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Some top vagueness from the SG analysis (my emphasis)</td></tr>
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Instead, there were vague descriptions of output and tax revenue rising "in the long run" and "over a number of years".<br />
<br />
Considering this work was supposed to be result of the government's all singing, all dancing "Computable Equilibrium Model", that didn't seem very satisfactory. <br />
<br />
A <a href="http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefingsAndFactsheets/S4/SB_14-26.pdf">great recent paper</a> from the Scottish Parliament's impartial information centre on childcare also reported that when the SNP govenment talks about "the long-term", it can mean 20 years or more. "This may have implications for the funding of the [childcare] policy, particularly over the short-term," it noted drily.<br />
<br />
So under freedom of information, I asked to see the full, unedited results of the "really important" modelling exercise the First Minister had discussed on TV.<br />
<br />
The Scottish Government refused to release them. I asked them to reconsider.<br />
<br />
They have now refused again, arguing it would be "premature" and against "the public interest", because the "design work" on the childcare policy is still not finished. <br />
<br />
Colin MacBean, of the Chief Economist Directorate, said there was a need to "protect the public interest in ensuring ministers and officials have the ability to consider relevant data and evidence, debate findings, and explore all available options before reaching settled policy".<br />
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The "premature release of long-term strategic modelling results could be to the detriment of full consideration of the entirety of the evidence and the options which underpin development of childcare policy," he added.<br />
<br />
Disclosure could lead to an unhelpful "narrowly focused debate".<br />
<div>
<br />
Remember: the First Minister himself went on television to talk about the same piece of work, and said ministers had published data "so that everybody can read and understand these things".<br />
<br />
<b>So publishing some results from the modelling exercise was timely and a good thing, but publishing all the results would be premature and a bad thing. Publishing partial data widens the debate, but publishing full data narrows it. Work that out if you can.</b><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-omd2_UMuiFM/U2lksSRHabI/AAAAAAAAARQ/1wO55XGTIAQ/s1600/FoI+Full+Edit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-omd2_UMuiFM/U2lksSRHabI/AAAAAAAAARQ/1wO55XGTIAQ/s1600/FoI+Full+Edit.jpg" height="640" width="459" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Look familiar? Highlighted text also appeared in another FoI review response</td></tr>
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<br />
As a footnote, regular readers may have experienced a sense of deja vu while reading Mr MacBean's reasoning.<br />
<br />
That's because his letter used the same justifications used by Dr Louise Scott of the Education Analytical Services Directorate to withhold the other childcare modelling work I mentioned at the start of this blog.<br />
<br />
Mr MacBean works in the Energy and Climate Change Analytical Unit, while Dr Scott works in a completely different directorate, in the Children and Families Analytical Unit.<br />
<br />
Yet somehow they ended up using the same words - often long verbatim sentences - to justify withholding different sets of data, after conducting FoI reviews of different FoI requests, each of which was to be assessed on its particular merits. Uncanny. <br />
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ScottishPolhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16120223053156815765noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1769220349417402409.post-37335015958363374082014-05-05T07:00:00.000+01:002014-05-05T07:33:30.829+01:00Secrecy is Good for You<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">It's back to one of my regular bugbears today - the sketchy background to the Scottish Government's flagship policy on expanding childcare under independence.</span><br>
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">New readers can get the background in <a href="http://scottishpol.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/kindergarten-logic-5.html">my last post</a>.</span><br>
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Today's post is about something new that's come out through FoI.</span><br>
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Although official spokespeople - including the education secretary's special adviser - said on the record that it didn't exist, it turns out ministers <i>do</i> have specific modelling of how the policy would work (or not) after all.</span><br>
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">But guess what? You and me can't see it.</span><br>
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Apparently it's in the public interest for the public to remain ignorant of the detail.</span><br>
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Here's the story</span><br>
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br></span>
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Tom Gordon</b></span><br>
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b><br></b></span>
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>SNP ministers have finally admitted carrying out research into their flagship childcare policy - but say it would be against “the public interest” to publish it.</b></span><br>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>The confirmation, after months of official denials, was secured through a freedom of information (FoI) enquiry.</b></span><br>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>The policy, which would see free nursery hours for three- and four-year-olds rise from 600 to 1140 a year after a Yes, is a cornerstone of the government’s White Paper on Independence and a key part of the Yes campaign’s offer to voters on September 18.</b></span><br>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Besides improving the lives of children, the plan is intended to allow more women to enter the workforce, generating more taxes to help pay for a “transformation” in childcare.</span><br>
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">But in spite of the policy’s importance, the government claimed it had not conducted any computer modelling to see how it would work - an omission strongly criticised by other parties.</span><br>
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Instead, ministers published limited results from a computer modelling exercise about a theoretical rise in female employment, which suggested a 6% uplift could yield £700m a year in extra taxes - the same cost as the policy.</span><br>
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">However this work <a href="http://scottishpol.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/kindergarten-logic-part-2.html">never looked at whether the specific childcare policy in the White Paper</a> would actually produce such a 6% rise.</span><br>
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The government has never said how many years it believes achieving a 6% rise might take, and hence the net cost of the policy is unclear.</span><br>
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The government also refuses to put a price on the second phase of the childcare policy - extending free hours to one- and two-year-olds - although the Scottish Parliament has estimated this could cost around £1.2bn a year.</span><br>
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Ministers were asked in January if they held any unpublished modelling on the White Paper’s specific childcare plans.</span><br>
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The initial response was to cite more research about female employment.</span><br>
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Pressed to clarify whether it held any research or not, the Government made a “modification” of its original response by admitting it did hold information after all.</span><br>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-bf0JAQSJb7E/U2axOLiwZjI/AAAAAAAAAQs/FVKDFrz7z5g/s1600/FoI+Letter+edit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-bf0JAQSJb7E/U2axOLiwZjI/AAAAAAAAAQs/FVKDFrz7z5g/s1600/FoI+Letter+edit.jpg" height="640" width="457"></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Yes, we've got it. No, you can't see it</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Dr Louise Scott of the Children and Families Analytical Unit said: “The Scottish Government does hold other information on the specific childcare proposals which falls within the scope of your request.”</span><br>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">However she refused to release it, arguing “the public interest” was best served by keeping it a secret, as the policy was still being designed and disclosure would be “premature”.</span><br>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">She said: “I recognise that there is some public interest in release as part of open, transparent government and to inform public debate.</span><br>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">“However, this is outweighed by the public interest in ensuring ministers and officials have the ability to consider relevant data and evidence, debate findings, and explore all available options before reaching a complete settled policy.</span><br>
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span><br>
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">“While the strategic policy direction has been set out in the White Paper, detailed policy design work is continuing.</span><br>
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">“The premature release of this detailed modelling-type work could be to the detriment of full consideration of the entirety of the evidence and the options which underpin development of childcare policy.”</span><br>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Labour said it was scandalous that the SNP government was refusing to share what it knew about the </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">efficacy of the childcare policy with voters before the referendum.</span><br>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Education spokeswoman Kezia Dugdale said: “How can it not be in the public interest to know whether a key aspect of the government’s plan for independence is credible or not?</span><br>
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">“We’ve believed for a long time that the numbers don’t stack up. It’s really disappointing that the government are trying to appeal for women’s votes but hiding the details.”</span><br>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The government blamed “confusion” for the contradictory initial and final positions.</span><br>
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">He said: “Some analytical work on the policy was identified... as it could be considered to be modelling, albeit of a different nature to that macro-economic modelling undertaken around female participation rates.</span><br>
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">“We apologise for any confusion.”</span>ScottishPolhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16120223053156815765noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1769220349417402409.post-44256455022906924602014-04-15T15:24:00.000+01:002014-04-15T15:28:33.751+01:00Kindergarten Logic 5How much does Alex Salmond actually know about his own flagship childcare policy?<br />
The answer, obviously, should be "Everything. Inside-out".<br />
But I pose the question because the First Minister keeps making a basic error in his defence of it.<br />
He did it again at the weekend when he was interviewed in the wake of the SNP conference.<br />
Let me explain.<br />
<br />
Regular readers (who can skip the next bit) will know I've blogged ad nauseam on the "transformational" childcare pledge in the Scottish Government's White Paper on independence.<br />
I pointed out the Government <a href="http://scottishpol.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/kindergarten-logic.html"><span style="color: #3d85c6;">hasn't actually modelled its own policy</span></a>, which is to nearly double free nursery hours for three- and four-year-olds in the first parliament after a Yes vote.<br />
The initial cost for this is estimated at £700m, rising to perhaps c.£1.2bn in the following parliament, as one- and two-year-olds become entitled to their 1140 hours a year.<br />
The aim is to allow more women to enter employment, which, inter alia, would help raise more taxes to pay for the policy.<br />
Although the Scottish Government published research on the impact of a 6% rise in female workforce participation - it would handily raise the £700m price of phase one of the policy - this is only an "illustrative" figure.<br />
There is <a href="http://scottishpol.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/kindergarten-logic-part-2.html">nothing to show that the SNP's childcare policy</a> would actually deliver that 6% rise.<br />
It might deliver it, but there is nothing from the Government demonstrating it, or saying how long it would take to achieve.<br />
So the net cost of this policy remains a mystery. Hundreds of millions? Billions? We don't know.<br />
A pity considering how much a billion pounds costs these days.<br />
Perhaps it's not surprising the Scottish Government says the policy remains <a href="http://scottishpol.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/kindergarten-logic-part-3.html">"in development"</a>.<br />
Earlier this month, the Scottish Parliament's Information Centre (Spice) produced its own independent analysis on childcare, which <a href="http://scottishpol.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/kindergarten-logic-4.html"><span style="color: #3d85c6;">pointed out even more holes in the policy</span></a>.<br />
This suggested that 6% target may be impossible to hit, as are not enough economically inactive women with children under five in Scotland to benefit from the childcare policy.<br />
The 6% rise implied another 104,000 women in work, but Spice found that in 2011 there were only 64,000 economically inactive with nursery age children, and only 14,000 of them wanted to work. <br />
So Scotland seems at least 40,000 mums short of the number needed to pay even for phase one of the policy.<br />
And as for phase two of the policy, well the Scottish Government hasn't even bothered to cost that.<br />
Spice estimates £900m to £1.5bn in revenue a year, or £1.2bn if you take the midpoint.<br />
And that's before a pound of capital spending has gone on new nursery facilities.<br />
<br />
It's an accumulation of awkward data that seemed to get the FM rather miffed when he apppeared on the most recent BBC Scotland's Sunday Politics show.<br />
He kept calling presenter Gary Robertson "Larry" for instance.<br />
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The childcare section starts c.8'50"<br />
Asked whether that 104,000 figure is attainable given the Spice report, Salmond says: "As for whether we can find jobs for 100,000 women, can I just point out that in the last year there's 65,000 - in one year - 65,000 more women have become employed, <strong>mostly in full-time jobs</strong>, in Scotland (my emphasis)."<br />
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It sounds a fair argument, and it's one Salmond has made before.<br />
For example, at the start of this clip from Sunday Politics Scotland of 12 January 2014.<br />
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Back then, he was asked how the arithmetic would stack up when the average female wage was just £17,000 (given large numbers of female workers are part-time), but the SNP seemed to be basing its calculations on an average salary of £26,000.<br />
Salmond said: "The other point I am
making to you is equally important, with evidence from the last year not a
crystal ball or equilibrium model but what’s actually happened in the Scottish
economy where 60,000 more women are working, <strong>incidentally full time, because the
vast overwhelming majority of these extra jobs are full time</strong>, which show that
these changes can take place a in a relatively short period of time and of
course as soon as people are working, as everybody watching this programme
knows, they start paying tax, everybody knows that (my emphasis)."<br />
<br />
The First Minister also said it in the Holyrood Chamber on 23 January 2014, in the context of being asked by Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson about female college students.<br />
He said: "We are talking not just about what we will do in the future—which will produce an even greater rise—but about what has happened in the past year. I heard Iain Gray say that many of the jobs are part time, <strong>but we know from the statistics that the positions are full time</strong>. The figure is 62,000—a 3 per cent rise in the number of women in the workforce (my emphasis)."<br />
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But it's not true. Most of the new jobs women are finding in Scotland are part-time, not full-time. </div>
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And the ratio of part- to full-time jobs is roughly 2:1. </div>
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That means the wages are not yielding much - if anything - in income tax or employee NICs, raising more questions about how to pay for the £700m first phase of the childcare policy.</div>
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And how do we know this? <a href="http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx?SearchType=Advance&ReferenceNumbers=S4W-19815&DateTo=4/15/2014 11:59:59 PM&SortBy=DateSubmitted&Answers=All&SearchFor=All&ResultsPerPage=10"><span style="color: #3d85c6;">John Swinney revealed the truth</span></a> in an overlooked parliamentary answer.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-KK4BHS3xIzo/U01Ak22OiAI/AAAAAAAAAQc/aQLnhK1vgMM/s1600/Childcare+PQ2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-KK4BHS3xIzo/U01Ak22OiAI/AAAAAAAAAQc/aQLnhK1vgMM/s1600/Childcare+PQ2.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">PQ from Labour Education spokeswoman Kezia Dugdale on F/T and P/T new jobs for women</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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So rather than the "vast overwhelming majority" of the new jobs being found by women in Scotland being full-time, two-thirds of them are part-time.<br />
It's hardly the death knell for the SNP's childcare policy, but it is another troubling sign that behind the frantic spin and the hard sell for the referendum, the basic arithmetic is being neglected. <br />
<br />ScottishPolhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16120223053156815765noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1769220349417402409.post-33385509530921481392014-04-03T10:31:00.005+01:002014-04-03T17:40:42.567+01:00Kindergarten Logic 4<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In recent weeks I've written about the childcare proposals at the heart of the SNP's independence White Paper, pointing out various holes in the maths.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;">For instance, </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;">I </span><a href="http://scottishpol.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/kindergarten-logic.html" style="background-color: white; color: #6699cc; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px; text-decoration: none;">drew attention</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;"> to a disclaimer buried in a Scottish Government </span><a href="http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/0044/00441783.pdf" style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #3d85c6;">paper analysing increased female participation</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;"> in the workforce that showed the Scottish Government had based its calculations on wishful thinking.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;">Although, the White Paper seems to suggest that raising free nursery provision from 600 to 1140 hours a year would deliver a 6% rise in women in work to Swedish levels, raising £700m more in taxes, in fact the figures </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;">are just "illustrative". </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;">There's no evidence the specific childcare policy proposed would lead to a 6% rise in the workforce or generate the £700m pricetag of that policy.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;">Last month, </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;">I </span><a href="http://scottishpol.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/kindergarten-logic-part-2.html" style="background-color: white; color: #6699cc; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px; text-decoration: none;">published a response to a freedom of information</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;"> request showing the government hadn't even done any modelling on the impact of its own flagship policy. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;">Today brings another development.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;"><span style="color: #333333;">The Scottish Parliament's independent information centre (Spice) has </span><span style="color: #3d85c6;">just issued a paper </span><span style="color: #333333;">on </span><span style="color: #333333;">childcare covering the White Paper policy.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;">It's more subtle than this blog, but its conclusions are worse for the Government.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;">Not only does it say, like me, that the SNP haven't modelled their own policy, it shows there aren't enough economically inactive women with children in Scotland to hit that magic 6% target.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;">Reaching Swedish levels of participation implies an extra 104,000 women in work.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;">But in 2011, there were only 64,000 economically inactive women with dependent children under primary school age, of whom only 14,000 said they would like to work.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;">So Scotland seems at least 40,000 mums short of the number needed to pay for the policy.</span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;">That's not fatal - money can be taken from other areas to pay for childcare. </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;">But the government hasn't said who the losers would be.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;">The SNP could also argue that economically inactive women with no children or older children could take up new jobs as childcare workers to lift participation rates.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;">But you can see the numbers are looking tight.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;">Even if every single out-of-work mother in Scotland with children under 5 suddenly got a job, you'd still need two-thirds as many women again to decide upon - and qualify for - a career in childcare in order to make the policy self-funding. </span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VymttECJdjU/Uz0s1yF3oEI/AAAAAAAAAPw/GBXHa651I10/s1600/spice1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VymttECJdjU/Uz0s1yF3oEI/AAAAAAAAAPw/GBXHa651I10/s1600/spice1.jpg" height="164" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From the executive summary of the Spice analysis</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;">In addition, the long term policy goal of childcare for all 1 to 5 year olds could cost £1.5bn - and that's before a single pound of capital costs to build new nurseries.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;">Spice is also unable to say how long it would be before extra taxes were generated to pay for this.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;">However, one clue in the Scottish Government literature suggests it could be more than 20 years.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;">"This may have implications for the funding of the policy, particularly over the short-term," it says with marked under-statement. </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;">The Scottish Government's work "does not provide a detailed assessment of the change in employment or wages or any indication of the composition of additional tax revenues," it adds.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;">For instance, a rise in the labour supply could end up depressing wages, making it harder for women to enter the workforce.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;">As Spice says: "For example, given the increased supply of labour, the modelled results would be expected to show downward pressure on real average wages. This could have wider implications for the labour market and on incentives for women to enter the workforce." </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;">All in all, the "transformational change" touted in the White Paper is astonishingly evidence-lite.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;"><br /></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;"><br /></span></span>ScottishPolhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16120223053156815765noreply@blogger.com1