That a civil servant should leap to a politician’s defence may come as a surprise to many, but not those who have been increasingly worried about the politicisation of Scotland’s civil servants after 15 years of SNP government.
That they’ve long abandoned their supposed impartiality and “gone native” with SNP ministers has been whirling around Scotland for ages. And, personally, I’ve always believed it’s ridiculous to expect officials who are members of the British civil service to work for a government whose sole aim is the break up of Britain.
I’m indebted to my colleague Daniel Sanderson for revealing this week that it’s not just cynics who are worried about the dangerous road that Scotland is on.
He wrote that a leading academic has also expressed fears that supposedly non-partisan officials had become too close to the SNP and said there were many issues in recent years where they might have questioned what’s going on.
Civil servants are supposed to request what’s called “ministerial directions”, when they have concerns over a policy, but see their advice overruled by politicians.
Such directions have been sought dozens of times over recent years in Whitehall. It happened recently in the Home Office over the Rwanda refugees decision, but incredibly it has happened only once since the SNP came to power in 2007.
And, even more worrying, the shambles of the CalMac ferries contract – which could cost the taxpayer up to £400 million, instead of the £95 million originally estimated – wasn’t challenged by officials.
Robert Pyper, the emeritus professor of government at the University of the West of Scotland, said that said the three possible explanations for the process becoming dormant were a “limited mindset” within the Scottish civil service, a deficit of quality amongst senior officials, or politicisation.
He added: “There is increasing anecdotal evidence of civil servants stepping over the line in terms of their professional position and to some extent tub-thumping for nationalist ministers.”
The learned professor can say that again. Observers of the officials’ scene in Scotland are often surprised how little cross-fertilisation there is nowadays between St Andrew’s House, the home of the Scottish Government, and Whitehall where the bulk of Britain’s government departments are situated.
A move to Scotland is not often regarded as a promotion by ambitious civil servants, these days, in the way it was viewed before devolution.
However, a larger question is what are the Whitehall mandarins – the uber bosses of all of the UK’s civil servants – doing about claims that one of their outposts may have “gone native” and likely to undermine the Union.
My guess is absolutely nothing. Successive heads of the Civil Service have been pussyfooting about with the SNP for years whilst Scotland’s civil servants have been following orders to break up Britain.
It’s a total nonsense and somebody somewhere in Whitehall must put a stop to it.
