Hundreds of Whitehall jobs switched to Scotland
● Gove orders Cabinet Office to open secondary headquarters in Glasgow
Boris Johnson is to move hundreds of civil servants to glasgow under plans to open a second headquarters of the Cabinet Office.
At least 500 workers in Michael Gove’s department will be relocated by 2024, with senior staff and ministers all now preparing to spend “some time” in Scotland.
In a letter to staff, Cabinet Office permanent se c retary Alex Chisholm said :“as a department with a key responsibility for the Union, it is particularly appropriate that we move to strengthen our presence and commitment in Scotland.”
The scots man understand sit would complement the new Queen Elizabeth House building near the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh for the Scottish Secretary.
That will feature senior officials from 15 Whitehall departments as the UK g overnment seeks to work more closely with Scottish business.
A Cabinet Office spokesman said: “Decision makers should be close to the people they serve and we want to see opportunity, jobs and investment fairly distributed across the country.
“That’s why we’ve committed to relocating Civil Service roles out of central London, building on the thousands of civil servants we already have working across the United Kingdom.”
It is the latest Whitehall department to see staff moved under the UK government’s promise to “level up” jobs and opportunities across the UK. There are plans for new offices for the Treasury in Darlington, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government is moving to Wolverhampton and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport is going to Manchester. Assistant
general secretary of the FDA union that represents senior civil servants Amy Leversidge, backed the move.
She said: “While the Cabinet Office have confirmed that there will be senior civil servant roles based in Glasgow, they have only committed that ministers will ‘spend regular time’ there. This isn’t good enough.
“There must also be a ministerial presence in Glasgow, otherwise all the decisionmaking will continue to be in London and this will act like a gravitational pull for the senior civil servants to be pulled back there too.”
Ministers hope opening the headquarters will not only bring more economic prosperity but also give a new perspective to policy making.
One official said the proposal would “bring the engine room of the UK government to Scotland”.
The SNP claimed the move meant the Scotland Office was “little more than a Tory propaganda unit.”
Keith Brown MSP said: “The fact Boris Johnson and his Tory colleagues are clearly spending so much time discussing how they can combat support for independence shows they are preparing for a referendum they know is inevitable in the face of a Holyrood majority for one. “Bluntly, they wouldn’t be spending so much time on the issue and relocating Whitehall staff to Scotland if they thought their Trump-like bid todefydemocracycouldhold.”
It comes ahead of Michael Gove visiting Glasgow next week, his first trip north of the border since the establishment of the Cabinet Union Strategy Committee.
Tasked with setting the Government's "strategic agenda" for keeping the UK together, Mr Gove and Chancellor Rishi Sunak will attend the meetings, along with the secretaries for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and chief Brexit negotiator Lord Frost.
The PM has repeatedly stressed he wants to “level up” all parts of the UK, and last month announced a £4.8 billion “level up” fund to be distributed across every region and country in Britain.
The news comes on the eve of Scottish Conservatives’ conference, as it faces a battle for second place at Holyrood’s May elections.
Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross will speak at the event, as will the PM, with the former standing with the slogan: “End Division. No Referendum. Rebuild Scotland.”
The PM is expected to rule out another independence referendum during an address to the Scottish Conservative Party conference on Sunday, arguing that holding a vote during the Covid-19 pandemic would be “reckless”.
A UK Government source said: “Absolutely, now is not the time for a reckless independence referendum. We need to be pulling together.
“We’re not having a referendum in the middle of a pandemic.”
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s party has made clear it will use an SNP victory in the Holyrood elections as a mandate to push for another ballot on the future of the UK.
It alo came as plans to have Westminster MPS work in Holyrood two weeks a year were labelled “utterly laughable”.
Two workers at the company which supplies train operators such as LNER have been called to disciplinary hearings days after The Scotsman revealed the caterer had told staff to make up symptoms to ensure they got Covid tests.
It followed an outbreak of the virus which forced the closure of Rail Gourmet’s Edinburgh premises and 12 of its 60 staff testing positive for coronavirus.
The Scotsman understands that only close contacts of those who contracted Covid would have been offered tests as a matter of course.
The Rail, Maritime and
Transport union (RMT) accused the firm of “silencing and disciplining hardworking staff who dare to raise genuine safety concerns”.
It has threatened to ballot staff for industrial action unless the charges are dropped.
However, Rail Gourmet said it was investigating claims that staff had “knowingly come to work with Covid-19”.
The Scotsman revealed last Saturday that a manager had emailed staff: “When you book a test, please put down that you have at least one symptom so you actually get a test done”.
An insider said the email was "telling us to make up we had symptoms to get a test”.
Rail Gourmet admitted the instruction should not have been issued.
It said: “We fully recognise that on this occasion, the wrong advice was given to our team.
"We will be reinforcing the correct protocols to our colleagues.”
The RMT said staff facing disciplinary hearings “for raising related health and safety concerns while they are in isolation and suffering significantly from the effects of the illness”.
The staff are being investigated for “breach of trust” and “breach of health and safety concerning Covid 19”.
One of them is an RMT industrial representative.
The union said
it was already preparing a strike ballot among Rail Gourmet staff at Paddington in London after a worker was suspended for raising similar Covid-19 concerns.
General secretary Mick Cash said: “A dozen catering workers at Rail Gourmet in Edinburgh have tested positive for Covid-19 but the company are only interested in their loss of revenue and silencing and disciplining hardworking staff who dare to raise genuine safety concerns.
“Following hot on the heels of a similar episode at the Paddington depot where we are already balloting for local strike action, it is clear this has now become the company’s policy.
“Rail Gourmet would be better off spending their energy resolving the genuine Covid-19 health and safety concerns of staff rather than hounding RMT members for raising them.”
“I am writing to Rail Gourmet to inform them that unless the charges are dropped we will declare a company-wide dispute and ballot our members for industrial action across the entire operation.”
A spokesperson for Rail Gourmet said: “The health and safety of our colleagues and customers is paramount to us, and we have strict Covid-19 related protocols in place to protect them.”