Dear elected member,
Scottish Borders Council - like every other local authority in Scotland - may be on the verge of bankruptcy, with accumulated debts of more than £170 million. And millions more will have to be found from existing revenue budgets by cutting services still further over the coming financial years.
Yet on Thursday of this week (December 18th) each one of you will be invited to sanction expenditure of £3.5 million on a single capital project, the construction of a purpose-built 'shed' at Tweedbank to house The Great Tapestry of Scotland. It is a crazy venture which we Borders taxpayers simply cannot afford, and you have the chance to confine it to the dustbin of local government history when you're called upon to vote on the issue.
This is not the time for vanity projects dreamed up by council leaders without any thought for the long term financial implications which, as the report to council points out, will be hanging round our necks like the proverbial albatross for 30 years.
When interest re-payments coupled with instalments on the original £3.5 million are totted up the actual cost appears to come in at £8.25 million. So the burden of bringing the tapestry here - it has no link or direct connection to the Scottish Borders whatsoever - will join our extremely costly PPP/PFI secondary schools in syphoning tens of millions of pounds from the council's near-empty coffers. A number of other 'Consent to Borrow' successes simply add to the drain on cash.
The document compiled by your officers suggests there will be revenue surpluses resulting from the £10 admission charge for visitors to the Tweedbank tapestry venue. There's even a prediction of between 40,000 and 50,000 visitors a year although those numbers cannot be guaranteed.
And the plan to take money from visitors does not appear to be in line with the objectives of The Great Scottish Tapestry Charitable Trust which state: "The Trustees will endeavour to transfer the tapestry to a public museum or other public body of similar
status where it will be held for the benefit of the nation and be made available
for viewing at no cost to the public."
The proposal to find a home in our midst for this large textile should have been strangled at birth. Instead it looks as though the cash-strapped council taxpayers of the Borders are about to be presented with an unwanted Christmas stitch-up, if you'll pardon the pun.
But it is not too late to save the day...and a great deal of money which would need to be borrowed at considerable expense if this daft project is to proceed.
All it takes is for each and every one of you to vote 'No' when the motion is proposed. So show a bit of backbone and do us all a favour. You never know, you might just reap your reward at the next council election. Whichever way you vote I'm sure many of us have long memories!
Monday, 15 December 2014
Tuesday, 9 December 2014
Who'll take the rap for this classic cock-up?
Nine months in and it seems Scotland's first and only municipal DECYCLING scheme is working a treat with a record fall in the amount of household waste being composted or recycled and spiralling tonnages of refuse going straight to landfill.
While virtually every other local authority in mainland Scotland is participating in a Government led drive to hit ambitious recycling targets and an eventual aim for zero waste, Scottish Borders Council's latest set of statistics on the garbage front can only be described - perhaps appropriately - as rubbish.
Our sharp-eyed chief reporter Doug Collie warned earlier this year there would be grim repercussions after the councillors who hold the reins and crack the whips at SBC took the puzzling and daft decision to suspend collections of garden waste and render tens of thousands of green wheelie bins redundant.
However Collie was not alone in condemning the move which lacked credibility during the 'green' age we live in. There was bound to be fall-out as gardeners grappled with the issue of disposal of grass cuttings, rotting apples from Borders orchards, and the vast collection of dead bedding plants at the end of another growing season.
But we haven't even had to wait that long for the proverbial manure to hit the fan! SBC has been kind enough to publish the evidence of its own tumbling recycling rates which we now see were on the slide by the end of the first quarter of 2014/15, a couple of months after garden waste collecting was binned.
Few councils can have achieved a ten per cent fall in their own recycling levels within the space of a year by taking direct action to halt composting of garden waste. But that's exactly what has taken place in the Borders with recycling now down to an embarrassing 34.52 per cent against 44.44 per cent in the first quarter of 2013/14. It should be borne in mind that all Scottish councils were supposed to be striving for a 50 per cent figure by 2013 and 60 per cent in the year 2020.
The same locally elected members who decided on this unique waste disposal strategy will, in all probability, not give a hoot when they're told the amount of household rubbish going to landfill has increased by a distinctly unimpressive 12 per cent in the two comparable quarters...up from 7,281 to 8,152 tonnes.
In quarter one of 2013/14 the cost of sending Borders waste to landfill was £524,205. In the corresponding quarter of 2014/15 the cost was £652,160, that’s an increase of £137,955 or a massive 26.32%. And remember this is the increase in costs for just one quarter. Multiply the £137,955 by four and you get the possible annual increase in landfill costs - £551,820. How does that sit alongside the alleged “savings” from scrapping the green bin collection?
So there you have it. Another potential half-million pound legacy for council taxpayers thanks to the sheer incompetence of those running local services.
But if you're waiting for someone to put up a hand and plead guilty to a bout of stupidity or admit responsibility for sending our recycling rates to the bottom of the Scottish league table, then please don't hold your breath.
There's no doubt that heads should roll after this latest classic cock-up in the annals of Borders local government. But with so many previous examples of councillors getting it wrong I don't suppose yet another costly error at taxpayers' expense will result in drastic action to ensure the perpetrators are held to account. Why change a flawed system that's aye been?
While virtually every other local authority in mainland Scotland is participating in a Government led drive to hit ambitious recycling targets and an eventual aim for zero waste, Scottish Borders Council's latest set of statistics on the garbage front can only be described - perhaps appropriately - as rubbish.
Our sharp-eyed chief reporter Doug Collie warned earlier this year there would be grim repercussions after the councillors who hold the reins and crack the whips at SBC took the puzzling and daft decision to suspend collections of garden waste and render tens of thousands of green wheelie bins redundant.
However Collie was not alone in condemning the move which lacked credibility during the 'green' age we live in. There was bound to be fall-out as gardeners grappled with the issue of disposal of grass cuttings, rotting apples from Borders orchards, and the vast collection of dead bedding plants at the end of another growing season.
But we haven't even had to wait that long for the proverbial manure to hit the fan! SBC has been kind enough to publish the evidence of its own tumbling recycling rates which we now see were on the slide by the end of the first quarter of 2014/15, a couple of months after garden waste collecting was binned.
Few councils can have achieved a ten per cent fall in their own recycling levels within the space of a year by taking direct action to halt composting of garden waste. But that's exactly what has taken place in the Borders with recycling now down to an embarrassing 34.52 per cent against 44.44 per cent in the first quarter of 2013/14. It should be borne in mind that all Scottish councils were supposed to be striving for a 50 per cent figure by 2013 and 60 per cent in the year 2020.
The same locally elected members who decided on this unique waste disposal strategy will, in all probability, not give a hoot when they're told the amount of household rubbish going to landfill has increased by a distinctly unimpressive 12 per cent in the two comparable quarters...up from 7,281 to 8,152 tonnes.
In quarter one of 2013/14 the cost of sending Borders waste to landfill was £524,205. In the corresponding quarter of 2014/15 the cost was £652,160, that’s an increase of £137,955 or a massive 26.32%. And remember this is the increase in costs for just one quarter. Multiply the £137,955 by four and you get the possible annual increase in landfill costs - £551,820. How does that sit alongside the alleged “savings” from scrapping the green bin collection?
So there you have it. Another potential half-million pound legacy for council taxpayers thanks to the sheer incompetence of those running local services.
But if you're waiting for someone to put up a hand and plead guilty to a bout of stupidity or admit responsibility for sending our recycling rates to the bottom of the Scottish league table, then please don't hold your breath.
There's no doubt that heads should roll after this latest classic cock-up in the annals of Borders local government. But with so many previous examples of councillors getting it wrong I don't suppose yet another costly error at taxpayers' expense will result in drastic action to ensure the perpetrators are held to account. Why change a flawed system that's aye been?
Wednesday, 3 December 2014
Council job cuts: myth or reality?
Despite “savage” reductions in their budgets, the removal of
a wide range of local government services altogether, the privatisation of many
operations through the formation of so-called trusts, and tens of millions of
pounds spent on severance/redundancy and early retirement packages, staffing levels in
many Scottish local authorities are significantly higher than they were
fourteen years ago.
Back in 2000 council taxpayers enjoyed a far better
standard of service than they do in 2014, yet it appears those services were delivered
by a smaller payroll than the current staff numbers. It may be tempting to ask
how this has happened as the public sector continues to complain about multiple
job losses and is still paying out huge sums supplied by taxpayers to terminate the employment
of high earners.
The thousands of employees who have left local government service in Scotland in recent years have only enabled their employers to reduce the bloated staffing levels of 2005/2006. Between the year 2000 and 2006 the number of so-called Full Time Equivalents (FTEs) in the public sector soared from 238,400 to 263,400.
According to the Scottish Government’s latest figures the
combined total of FTEs on the books of 28 local
authorities (excluding the four city authorities) now stands
at 151,600 – 900 higher than the 2000 total of 150,700.
No fewer than 18 councils have more FTEs now than in 2000,
eight authorities have reduced their employee numbers while two have reported
identical figures for 2000 and 2014.
While councillors and senior officers whine about front line staff being cut to the bone it would appear from the statistics there's a fair layer of fat remaining to be trimmed. It seems logical that employee numbers should be below 2000 levels rather than above them given the decimation of services over the last seven years.
Some of the increases within individual councils are both eye catching and breathtaking. Aberdeenshire's statistics show FTEs up by 2,500, Falkirk 800 higher than in 2000 and Fife by 600. Here in the Borders the local council's FTE count is 100 higher than it was 14 years ago.
The data for the 28 authorities is as follows with
statistics for the second quarter of 2014 given first and the equivalent
numbers for 2000 in brackets: (figures rounded up or down to the nearest 100)
Aberdeenshire 10,400 (7,900); Angus 4,400 (4,200); Argyll
& Bute 3,700 (3,900); Clackmannanshire 2,100 (2,000); Dumfries &
Galloway 5,600 (5,400); East Ayrshire 5,100 (4,800); East Dunbartonshire 3,700
(4,000); East Lothian 3,500 (3,400); East Renfrewshire 3,800 (3,100); Eilean
Siar 1,600 (1,600); Falkirk 6,400 (5,600); Fife 15,900 (15,300); Highland 8,000
(8,700); Inverclyde 3,500 (3,900); Midlothian 3,600 (3,300); Moray 3,700
(3,200); North Ayrshire 5,500 (5,600); North Lanarkshire 13,000 (13,300); Orkney
Islands 1,700 (1,300); Perth & Kinross 4,900 (4,600); Renfrewshire 6,900
(7,200); Scottish Borders 4,400 (4,300);
Shetland Islands 2,300 (2,100); South Ayrshire 4,300 (4,800); South Lanarkshire
12,500 (12,400); Stirling 3,500 (3,300); West Dunbartonshire 4,800 (4,800);
West Lothian 6,800 (5,700).
Sunday, 30 November 2014
Perks for SBC staff: where's the press release?
I'd been tempted to pen a few lines about Scottish Borders Council's largesse towards their own hard working, dedicated staff who are to receive an attractive range of perks, including discount cards, as a reward for having to suffer an outrageous pay freeze - part of the 'savage cuts'.
But I thought it better to keep my powder (and ink) dry until the Council had time to cobble together a press release explaining to cash-strapped taxpayers how they had managed to find £18,550 hidden down the back of the proverbial sofa in such straitened times.
Alas the spinners from the well staffed media team at the Newtown St Boswells HQ have (so far) failed to produce the goods. No doubt they were fully occupied with the usual selection of positive propaganda which finds its way into our media outlets with alarming regularity.
Unfortunately too many of our newspapers and broadcasters fall for the daily supply of positive guff and pass it on to readers and listeners without bothering to ask questions. The fact that these hand-outs are often far from newsworthy doesn't seem to matter as long as they fill space or time.
You see, everything in the municipal garden is always rosy. There's no room for negativity, and anything which might attract public criticism or threaten a council taxpayers' revolt receives very short shrift.
The failure to issue a release on the 'discount deals' means we have had to rely on direct coverage from inside the council chamber. This is why we need robust, inquisitive journalists to hold our councillors and senior officers to account.
The fact that the new range of perks received the unanimous backing from elected members seems to suggest everyone concerned believed the rewards were justified.
No doubt they agreed with the sentiments expressed by Councillor Michael Cook, the deputy leader, who apparently told the meeting: "It hardly sends a positive message that we value our staff if we are quibbling about spending £18,550 over three years. Let's not be so damned miserable and get on with this".
In the same week that Mr Cook and his colleagues were proving they were not going to be 'damned miserable' so far as their workforce was concerned, we were told that vulnerable clients of the Borders social work department will have to find an extra £464,000 to pay for essential services..
Even the press release on this topic, which will be bad news for those who pay for the support they rely on, carried a positive spin. The sizeable increases for the services were being levied following 'a review conducted with care and attention.' This resulted in : "A much fairer system based on solid principles of equity, transparency and consistency, in line with national guidance".
Just a thought. At the next council meeting perhaps a member of the administration could outline plans for a discount card for the elderly and disabled clients of their social work department. After all there must be a few more unused wads of our hard-earned cash concealed in the well upholstered Newtown sofa. Every little helps!
But I thought it better to keep my powder (and ink) dry until the Council had time to cobble together a press release explaining to cash-strapped taxpayers how they had managed to find £18,550 hidden down the back of the proverbial sofa in such straitened times.
Alas the spinners from the well staffed media team at the Newtown St Boswells HQ have (so far) failed to produce the goods. No doubt they were fully occupied with the usual selection of positive propaganda which finds its way into our media outlets with alarming regularity.
Unfortunately too many of our newspapers and broadcasters fall for the daily supply of positive guff and pass it on to readers and listeners without bothering to ask questions. The fact that these hand-outs are often far from newsworthy doesn't seem to matter as long as they fill space or time.
You see, everything in the municipal garden is always rosy. There's no room for negativity, and anything which might attract public criticism or threaten a council taxpayers' revolt receives very short shrift.
The failure to issue a release on the 'discount deals' means we have had to rely on direct coverage from inside the council chamber. This is why we need robust, inquisitive journalists to hold our councillors and senior officers to account.
The fact that the new range of perks received the unanimous backing from elected members seems to suggest everyone concerned believed the rewards were justified.
No doubt they agreed with the sentiments expressed by Councillor Michael Cook, the deputy leader, who apparently told the meeting: "It hardly sends a positive message that we value our staff if we are quibbling about spending £18,550 over three years. Let's not be so damned miserable and get on with this".
In the same week that Mr Cook and his colleagues were proving they were not going to be 'damned miserable' so far as their workforce was concerned, we were told that vulnerable clients of the Borders social work department will have to find an extra £464,000 to pay for essential services..
Even the press release on this topic, which will be bad news for those who pay for the support they rely on, carried a positive spin. The sizeable increases for the services were being levied following 'a review conducted with care and attention.' This resulted in : "A much fairer system based on solid principles of equity, transparency and consistency, in line with national guidance".
Just a thought. At the next council meeting perhaps a member of the administration could outline plans for a discount card for the elderly and disabled clients of their social work department. After all there must be a few more unused wads of our hard-earned cash concealed in the well upholstered Newtown sofa. Every little helps!
Sunday, 9 November 2014
Tenth anniversary of FOI...nothing to celebrate
Ten years after the introduction of Freedom of Information legislation, an Act of Parliament allegedly devised to make public authorities more accountable, we are told that Scottish Borders Council is putting "new procedures" in place to ensure requests are handled more efficiently. Probably not before time, given the council's abysmal track record in the field of FOI.
Time after time SBC has failed to respond to requesters within the 20 working days allowed, and like most other councils, health boards and Scottish Government departments, our local authority frequently uses the long list of exclusions available within the confines of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act (FOISA) to keep sensitive or embarrassing stuff under wraps.
At the same time council leader David Parker complains that the 1,000 requests his officials receive each year represent a "significant burden" on council resources. Apparently more staff are being taken on to resolve the problems within the FOI system, and this will undoubtedly ramp up costs still further.
Perhaps our councillors could consider a cheaper option....publish more information and statistics as a matter of routine without having to be asked.
Why should publicly funded bodies only have to release information after receiving a specific request? Unless your question is tightly and precisely worded they usually manage to avoid telling the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Let's have regular disclosures of credit card spending by senior officials, numbers of assaults on teachers and other council staff, and a host of other topics which regularly feature in FOI requests. That should cut the workload on hard-pressed administrative staff.
SBC's Information Management Team (IMT) is being transferred to the council's legal services department which means qualified lawyers will scrutinise FOI requests from now on. Is that likely to increase the flow of information when far too much council business is already conducted in private?
Meanwhile, according to the Scottish Information Commissioner's (SIC) website, a conference to "celebrate" the tenth anniversary of FOI will be held in Edinburgh next month. Speakers will include First Minister-in-Waiting Nicola Sturgeon, Lord Jim Wallace, and the Commissioner Rosemary Agnew.
It is to be hoped the conference does not issue a communique declaring that FOI has been an unqualified success. For given the number of failures by authorities to abide by the rules, and the equally depressing failure of the SIC to prosecute or even pursue the miscreants, the only people with anything to shout about are the public officials who enjoy a relative level of protection under FOISA.
Commissioner Agnew recently expressed her concern at the growing number of FOI requests which are not attracting responses within the statutory time even though the 20 working days allowed appears to be more than generous.
Unfortunately none of the authorities which break the law are ever hauled over the coals. So there is no incentive for these cavalier organisations to get their acts together and respond to the council taxpayers who keep them in business. Instead of "celebrating", the forthcoming conference would serve a more useful purpose if it considered how FOI might be improved for the benefit of the general public.
Ten years after the introduction of Freedom of Information legislation, an Act of Parliament allegedly devised to make public authorities more accountable, we are told that Scottish Borders Council is putting "new procedures" in place to ensure requests are handled more efficiently. Probably not before time, given the council's abysmal track record in the field of FOI.
Time after time SBC has failed to respond to requesters within the 20 working days allowed, and like most other councils, health boards and Scottish Government departments, our local authority frequently uses the long list of exclusions available within the confines of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act (FOISA) to keep sensitive or embarrassing stuff under wraps.
At the same time council leader David Parker complains that the 1,000 requests his officials receive each year represent a "significant burden" on council resources. Apparently more staff are being taken on to resolve the problems within the FOI system, and this will undoubtedly ramp up costs still further.
Perhaps our councillors could consider a cheaper option....publish more information and statistics as a matter of routine without having to be asked.
Why should publicly funded bodies only have to release information after receiving a specific request? Unless your question is tightly and precisely worded they usually manage to avoid telling the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Let's have regular disclosures of credit card spending by senior officials, numbers of assaults on teachers and other council staff, and a host of other topics which regularly feature in FOI requests. That should cut the workload on hard-pressed administrative staff.
SBC's Information Management Team (IMT) is being transferred to the council's legal services department which means qualified lawyers will scrutinise FOI requests from now on. Is that likely to increase the flow of information when far too much council business is already conducted in private?
Meanwhile, according to the Scottish Information Commissioner's (SIC) website, a conference to "celebrate" the tenth anniversary of FOI will be held in Edinburgh next month. Speakers will include First Minister-in-Waiting Nicola Sturgeon, Lord Jim Wallace, and the Commissioner Rosemary Agnew.
It is to be hoped the conference does not issue a communique declaring that FOI has been an unqualified success. For given the number of failures by authorities to abide by the rules, and the equally depressing failure of the SIC to prosecute or even pursue the miscreants, the only people with anything to shout about are the public officials who enjoy a relative level of protection under FOISA.
Commissioner Agnew recently expressed her concern at the growing number of FOI requests which are not attracting responses within the statutory time even though the 20 working days allowed appears to be more than generous.
Unfortunately none of the authorities which break the law are ever hauled over the coals. So there is no incentive for these cavalier organisations to get their acts together and respond to the council taxpayers who keep them in business. Instead of "celebrating", the forthcoming conference would serve a more useful purpose if it considered how FOI might be improved for the benefit of the general public.
Monday, 20 October 2014
English MPs for a Scottish Issue?
A few hours after the majority of voters in the Scottish Borders rejected the chance to vote for an independent Scotland we witnessed the first divisions among Better Together campaigners with David Cameron's Downing Street dawn declaration promising English MPs for English laws. The slanging match surrounding the unsolved West Lothian question was well and truly under way.
The unholy alliance of Labour and Conservative politicians, and the eleventh hour intervention by a forgotten Fife MP by the name of Brown, may have salvaged the shaky Union. But it didn't take long for the uneasy bedfellows to switch to a "ferrets in a sack" posture after the No vote was delivered.
Cameron's pledge to ban Scottish MPs from voting on English matters in return for greater powers at Holyrood certainly received a warm reception south of the Tweed. But does it mean that under tit-for-tat reasoning three of his own MPs - Messrs Menzies, Paice and Reevell - will be precluded from further involvement in an important issue affecting the Borders and Dumfries & Galloway?
Earlier this year we brought you news of yet another Government backed 'probe' into the economic ills of the South of Scotland, a topic already done to death by an endless series of previous inquiries and investigations. Having already endured the 1968 Johnson-Marshall report which recommended a major injection of population to make the Sheep Country economy more stable, and a 1998 effort chaired by Scottish business and industry minister Gus Macdonald, there seemed little mileage left in such a tired old chestnut.
However, the current membership of Westminster's Scottish Affairs Committee (SAC) certainly didn't accept they were flogging a dead horse when they embarked on their own voyage of discovery earlier this year. Apparently they've already found out that the people of the Borderlands - their word not mine - are not getting as good a deal as they should. You don't say!
But surely if any of those previous investigations stretching back 45 years had been worth a candle then the Borders and its neighbour to the west should have been competing on the proverbial level playing field by now. These costly projects appear to have achieved the square root of absolutely nothing, and there must be a fair chance the current round of visits and consultations by the SAC will also fail to deliver a remedy for our complicated set of issues and problems even though a more generous allocation of resources would probably do the trick.
Which leads me back to the dilemma soon to face Menzies, Paice and Reevell, all of them Tory members of the SAC but representing English constituencies. Mark Menzies, who represents Fylde (Lancashire), Sir James Paice, the MP for South-east Cambridgeshire, and Simon Reevell, (Dewsbury, Yorkshire) sit on the committee because their Party doesn't have more than one elected MP in Scotland, and he's a junior minister in the Scotland Office.
If you haven't already sent in your written submission to the SAC with evidence of how they might improve the lot of us Borderers then you'd better get your skates on as the deadline for the consultation is Friday November 28.
But if Mr Cameron succeeds in his bid to banish Scottish MPs from debates featuring English subjects then should the three English Conservatives from his Party who serve on the SAC be allowed to read your submissions then discuss and vote on an exclusively Scottish subject? Not that it is likely to make much difference unless the Committee breaks the mould and produces something positive and useful.
The unholy alliance of Labour and Conservative politicians, and the eleventh hour intervention by a forgotten Fife MP by the name of Brown, may have salvaged the shaky Union. But it didn't take long for the uneasy bedfellows to switch to a "ferrets in a sack" posture after the No vote was delivered.
Cameron's pledge to ban Scottish MPs from voting on English matters in return for greater powers at Holyrood certainly received a warm reception south of the Tweed. But does it mean that under tit-for-tat reasoning three of his own MPs - Messrs Menzies, Paice and Reevell - will be precluded from further involvement in an important issue affecting the Borders and Dumfries & Galloway?
Earlier this year we brought you news of yet another Government backed 'probe' into the economic ills of the South of Scotland, a topic already done to death by an endless series of previous inquiries and investigations. Having already endured the 1968 Johnson-Marshall report which recommended a major injection of population to make the Sheep Country economy more stable, and a 1998 effort chaired by Scottish business and industry minister Gus Macdonald, there seemed little mileage left in such a tired old chestnut.
However, the current membership of Westminster's Scottish Affairs Committee (SAC) certainly didn't accept they were flogging a dead horse when they embarked on their own voyage of discovery earlier this year. Apparently they've already found out that the people of the Borderlands - their word not mine - are not getting as good a deal as they should. You don't say!
But surely if any of those previous investigations stretching back 45 years had been worth a candle then the Borders and its neighbour to the west should have been competing on the proverbial level playing field by now. These costly projects appear to have achieved the square root of absolutely nothing, and there must be a fair chance the current round of visits and consultations by the SAC will also fail to deliver a remedy for our complicated set of issues and problems even though a more generous allocation of resources would probably do the trick.
Which leads me back to the dilemma soon to face Menzies, Paice and Reevell, all of them Tory members of the SAC but representing English constituencies. Mark Menzies, who represents Fylde (Lancashire), Sir James Paice, the MP for South-east Cambridgeshire, and Simon Reevell, (Dewsbury, Yorkshire) sit on the committee because their Party doesn't have more than one elected MP in Scotland, and he's a junior minister in the Scotland Office.
If you haven't already sent in your written submission to the SAC with evidence of how they might improve the lot of us Borderers then you'd better get your skates on as the deadline for the consultation is Friday November 28.
But if Mr Cameron succeeds in his bid to banish Scottish MPs from debates featuring English subjects then should the three English Conservatives from his Party who serve on the SAC be allowed to read your submissions then discuss and vote on an exclusively Scottish subject? Not that it is likely to make much difference unless the Committee breaks the mould and produces something positive and useful.
Wednesday, 1 October 2014
Quest for truth closed down by MSPs
Every public body in Scotland will have taken time out for a huge sigh of combined relief today after members of the Scottish Parliament's Public Petitions Committee snuffed out attempts aimed at forcing councils, health boards and government departments to tell the truth.
It may come as a surprise to many, but there is no obligation under the present Freedom of Information Scotland Act (FOISA) for your local authority to furnish you with an honest and accurate response when you submit a Freedom of Information request.
It has been claimed that up to 25 per cent of the 60,000 answers supplied by FOI compliant bodies in Scotland may be inaccurate as they attempt to conceal the truth or distort the facts. The ability to mislead the people they are supposed to serve renders the entire Freedom of Information system virtually worthless. And the Scottish Information Commissioner (SIC) - the so-called guardian of FOISA - has shown a consistent reluctance to prosecute authorities which flout the law by withholding information or by issuing false responses to FOI requests.
In a bid to have an "honesty" clause inserted into the legislation, a petition was lodged at the Parliament earlier this year. It attracted support from ordinary citizens, some of them telling the petitions committee that they had been misled after submitting FOI requests.
But unfortunately the petition also attracted a totally hostile reaction from the Scottish Government and the SIC. Both of these organisations dismissed the proposed change in the law as both unnecessary and unworkable. The committee was even invited by its own clerk to close the petition down in April before the members had heard a shred of evidence. Hardly an example of democracy at work.
Those authorities whose wrongdoings might be exposed by a more robust version of FOISA had too much to lose. They were never going to allow a sensible amendment or addition to the Act to eliminate the wriggle room which allows dishonest public officials to avoid disclosing accurate, and potentially embarrassing information.
The completely gutless performance of the SIC, who has failed to promote a single prosecution since Freedom of Information legislation was introduced a decade ago, was highlighted by one supporter of the petition, a Mr M.
In a written submission to the petitions committee Mr M described how he provided evidence to the SIC after being misled by his local authority in their handling of his FOI requests.
He added: "The SIC investigating officer left me with a clear impression that pursuing a case under
Section 65 of FOISA was virtually impossible, had never been done, and would require me
to have already provided him with firm supporting evidence of 'criminal intent to withhold'
on the part of one or more individuals."
But the saga did not end there. In a bizarre twist, Mr M was invited to meet the chief executive of the council concerned who "acknowledged the Council's responses to my requests for information could have been handled better and offered the Council's apology.
"I presented the Chief Executive with correspondence and records which made a sufficiently compelling case - of Council Officers' inescapable awareness of apparent non-compliance with statutory obligations (for which they were also responsible) and of them having misled me whilst failing to provide records (which they could hardly be unaware of) I'd requested under FOISA - that the Chief Executive undertook to commission an independent investigation into the matters arising from my freedom of information requests.I did not request that meeting nor did I suggest that she commission an independent investigation."
But even strong testimony like that failed to convince MSPs on the committee that there were serious issues surrounding Freedom of Information which needed to be addressed. They preferred the evidence of the SIC and of other civil servants who maintained the present flawed FOISA should be left alone.
At their meeting earlier this week the elected members closed ranks with the Establishment in deciding: "The Committee agreed to close the petition, under Rule 15.7, on the basis that the Scottish Government has stated it shares the view of the Scottish Information Commissioner that the changes being proposed are not needed and would be unworkable."
As the petitioner told the Committee: " At the moment any requester who has evidence of dishonesty or inaccuracy by a responding authority stands no chance of achieving redress given the complete failure or unwillingness by the Commissioner and the police to even submit reports with a view to prosecution. Regrettably, that sad state of affairs is set to continue."
It may come as a surprise to many, but there is no obligation under the present Freedom of Information Scotland Act (FOISA) for your local authority to furnish you with an honest and accurate response when you submit a Freedom of Information request.
It has been claimed that up to 25 per cent of the 60,000 answers supplied by FOI compliant bodies in Scotland may be inaccurate as they attempt to conceal the truth or distort the facts. The ability to mislead the people they are supposed to serve renders the entire Freedom of Information system virtually worthless. And the Scottish Information Commissioner (SIC) - the so-called guardian of FOISA - has shown a consistent reluctance to prosecute authorities which flout the law by withholding information or by issuing false responses to FOI requests.
In a bid to have an "honesty" clause inserted into the legislation, a petition was lodged at the Parliament earlier this year. It attracted support from ordinary citizens, some of them telling the petitions committee that they had been misled after submitting FOI requests.
But unfortunately the petition also attracted a totally hostile reaction from the Scottish Government and the SIC. Both of these organisations dismissed the proposed change in the law as both unnecessary and unworkable. The committee was even invited by its own clerk to close the petition down in April before the members had heard a shred of evidence. Hardly an example of democracy at work.
Those authorities whose wrongdoings might be exposed by a more robust version of FOISA had too much to lose. They were never going to allow a sensible amendment or addition to the Act to eliminate the wriggle room which allows dishonest public officials to avoid disclosing accurate, and potentially embarrassing information.
The completely gutless performance of the SIC, who has failed to promote a single prosecution since Freedom of Information legislation was introduced a decade ago, was highlighted by one supporter of the petition, a Mr M.
In a written submission to the petitions committee Mr M described how he provided evidence to the SIC after being misled by his local authority in their handling of his FOI requests.
He added: "The SIC investigating officer left me with a clear impression that pursuing a case under
Section 65 of FOISA was virtually impossible, had never been done, and would require me
to have already provided him with firm supporting evidence of 'criminal intent to withhold'
on the part of one or more individuals."
But the saga did not end there. In a bizarre twist, Mr M was invited to meet the chief executive of the council concerned who "acknowledged the Council's responses to my requests for information could have been handled better and offered the Council's apology.
"I presented the Chief Executive with correspondence and records which made a sufficiently compelling case - of Council Officers' inescapable awareness of apparent non-compliance with statutory obligations (for which they were also responsible) and of them having misled me whilst failing to provide records (which they could hardly be unaware of) I'd requested under FOISA - that the Chief Executive undertook to commission an independent investigation into the matters arising from my freedom of information requests.I did not request that meeting nor did I suggest that she commission an independent investigation."
But even strong testimony like that failed to convince MSPs on the committee that there were serious issues surrounding Freedom of Information which needed to be addressed. They preferred the evidence of the SIC and of other civil servants who maintained the present flawed FOISA should be left alone.
At their meeting earlier this week the elected members closed ranks with the Establishment in deciding: "The Committee agreed to close the petition, under Rule 15.7, on the basis that the Scottish Government has stated it shares the view of the Scottish Information Commissioner that the changes being proposed are not needed and would be unworkable."
As the petitioner told the Committee: " At the moment any requester who has evidence of dishonesty or inaccuracy by a responding authority stands no chance of achieving redress given the complete failure or unwillingness by the Commissioner and the police to even submit reports with a view to prosecution. Regrettably, that sad state of affairs is set to continue."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)