Watchdog chief didn’t read police funds report
Tribunal told it was not his job to deal with whistleblower’s claim
THE chief executive of the police watchdog signed off but ‘did not read’ a report on concerns from a whistleblower that inappropriate payments had been made to officers, a tribunal heard yesterday.
John Foley, who earned up to £120,000, told a tribunal it was ‘not his job’ to inspect a draft version of the Scottish Police Authority (SPA) certificate of assurance containing allegations of misuse of funds.
The hearing in Glasgow had previously heard the claims by SPA bookkeeper Amy McDonald involved a string of employees and officials.
They included Deputy Chief Constable Rose Fitzpatrick, who was paid £67,000 by bank transfer to help move house. Mrs McDonald claimed the proceeds were not declared ‘on a timely basis’, meaning the SPA settled the tax bill.
The tribunal also heard, in another case, Mr Foley approved a ‘settlement agreement’ rather than a voluntary redundancy package with an unnamed official after the creation of Police Scotland, but there was ‘no evidence the case was reported to the board’.
Giving evidence yesterday, Mr Foley blamed ‘paperwork’ for his failure to read the document.
He said: ‘In my office there was an awful lot of paperwork and sometimes the chief executive’s office is used as a deposit box. I never reviewed the certificate of assurance. It’s entirely feasible the certificates of assurance were in my office and it’s entirely feasible my personal assistant could have said to me something along the lines of, “Are those certificates of assurances ready to go?”. And I would have said yes.
‘That’s why we employ accountants to do that kind of work. They are also passed to the auditors, so if there was anything that needed to be brought to my attention I would expect either the senior accountants to do it or the auditors to do it. It’s not a job you would expect the chief executive to carry out.’
Mr Foley, who left the SPA in November last year after being given a £57,000 ‘golden handshake’ payment on top of an early retirement sum of £43,470, also told the hearing he had initially missed a complaint by Mrs McDonald in December 2016 because he ‘did not’ receive emails on a Sunday. He told the tribunal that he picked up the matter on his return to work the following week.
Mr Foley admitted the case involving Mrs McDonald, 44, had come amid a ‘difficult situation’ in which he had been forced to launch a money saving ‘action plan’ after which her position as an accountant had been made redundant.
Mr Foley told the inquiry he had not learnt the full details of Mrs McDonald’s grievances, known as protected disclomessage
Seeking compensation
sures’, until May 2017. But his claims contradict his then boss, SPA chairman Andrew Flanagan, who yesterday told the tribunal both he and Mr Foley had been aware of one complaint as far back as 2016, when Mrs McDonald had sent them each an email informing them litigation process had begun.
During cross-examination by advocate David Hay, representing Mrs McDonald, Mr Flanagan agreed he had received a from Mrs McDonald flagging up a number of payments she deemed ‘improper’.
He claimed he had then discussed the complaints with Mr Foley as part of weekly one-toone meetings. He told the hearing: ‘When I read it, for the most part I had a level of awareness of all the transactions and I believe Mr Foley had investigated each of them.’
Mr Flanagan said it was then decided to commission an independent investigation in June the following year into how the grievance had been handled.
The subsequent report said Mrs McDonald had highlighted a ‘number of areas of poor governance and a lack of transparency within the SPA’.
Mrs McDonald, who now works in the SPA forensics division, launched the case seeking compensation for ‘injury to hurt feelings’. She claimed she was sidelined after making the allegations of ‘financial wrongdoing’.
The tribunal continues.