Dogs bark, cows moo and the SNP duck their failings. It seems as though every day brings fresh revelations about Nicola Sturgeon’s regime in Scotland as more and more questions are asked about her party’s record in office. The only novelty is the sheer range of scandals which can outrage, shock and rile: last week it was the terf war and her plans to rig the electorate. Today it’s ferries and the news that, once again, proper records were not kept of the Scottish Government’s mismanaged takeover of the Ferguson shipyard.
For Audit Scotland has now demanded a fresh review about how an initial £97 million deal for two vessels spiralled into a quarter of a billion pound disaster with two new lifeline vessels still out of service after six years. Stephen Boyle, the Auditor General, expressed his ‘frustration’ to MSPs over a failure to provide crucial evidence on why ministers went ahead with the contract – despite the concerns of the government’s ferry procurement body about a lack of financial guarantees that placed them at risk.
The auditors’ probe found there was no documented evidence to confirm why Scottish ministers were willing to accept the risks of awarding the contract, even though Caledonian Maritime Assets Limited flagged the risk at the time. How terribly inconvenient. The Scottish Government is claiming that ‘a thorough search’ was conducted but that, shock, horror, the proper documentation ‘cannot be located.’ As others have pointed out, saving records is both a core and even legal duty for the Scottish Government. It has an electronic record keeping system in system with prompts to document creators to save them properly.
According to the Scottish Government’s guide in January 2020:
All Scottish Government staff receive training so they are aware of their responsibilities as individuals with respect to record keeping and management and to ensure they are competent to carry out their designated duties. This includes training in the use of the eRDM system which is then complemented by organisational policies and procedures and guidance documentation… All employees of the Scottish Government have a responsibility to effectively manage records in accordance with specified legislation and guidelines. This policy applies to all records created, received or maintained by Scottish Government staff in the course of carrying out their functions.
There’s also the fact that Sturgeon’s predecessor Alex Salmond passed the 2011 Public Records Act, which came into force in January 2013 and pre-dates the whole scandal ferries scandal by 18 months. According to its website, the ‘Scottish Government is fully committed to compliance with the requirements’ of this Act under which it is required to have a proper record management plan. Separately, former First Minister Jack McConnell has now weighed in on Twitter to point out that the loss of these documents could also breach freedom of information laws:
I’m sure that when we wrote and then passed the Freedom of Information Act we included clauses to make the destruction or removal of official documents a crime. I hope the BBC and the Auditor General are asking Police Scotland to investigate.
Just what on earth is going on at Holyrood? Perhaps it’s time for the UK Government to order a judge-level inquiry – over to you Boris.
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