Ruth’s double-jobbing ‘apologist-in-chief’ under fire for bunking off key Scotland-UK summit
POLITICAL EDITOR
BY ANDREW WHITAKER
THE Tory welfare spokesman at Holyrood has come under fire for failing to attend a parliamentary committee event because he was too busy working on his lucrative second job as a law professor. Adam Tomkins, a key ally of Ruth Davidson, stayed away from a Scottish Parliament and Westminster joint session held to “learn more about welfare reform in Scotland” — a subject that relates to his shadow cabinet brief. Tomkins was teaching at the University of Glasgow’s law school that day as part of his teaching obligations for an annual contract worth between £30,000 and £35,000.
Tomkins serves as a member of Holyrood’s Social Security Committee which hosted the event jointly with Westminster’s Scottish Affairs Committee in Edinburgh last Monday, which the two parliaments said was held to “examine how the Scottish and UK governments work together to develop and implement welfare policy”.
Tomkins had promised that he would “be a full-time MSP” when it emerged earlier this year he would continue to do paid work for Glasgow University, as well as receive his parliamentary salary of £58,000 per year.
But the Glasgow Tory MSP faced fresh criticism last night and was accused by the SNP of not putting his parliamentary work first, with his failure to attend the first joint meeting, but instead delivered a law lecture. A picture of the MSPs and MPs together showed that Tomkins was absent from the meeting held in Edinburgh.
His university employers confirmed that he had been teaching at its school of law that day, when contacted by the Sunday Herald.
A University of Glasgow spokesperson said: “I can confirm Professor Tomkins’ teaching obligations at the University are on Mondays, for 18 weeks of the year plus other days worked at the University, as arranged with the head of the law school. He was teaching in the law school on Monday.”
Tomkins controversially defended sanctions on claimants during a Holyrood debate earlier this month, saying they had always “been an important part of our welfare system”.
HE also said that “finger pointing at Westminster” by parties opposed to the Tories would not solve anything, and insisted the UK-wide Tory policies were working and had helped the poorest. The Glasgow MSP also said that welfare sanctions “affect only a tiny number of claimants”, as he cited figures from the Department for Work and Pensions which opponents said significantly underplay the number who have been sanctioned.
The SNP accused Tomkins of letting down his constituents for doing his lecturing job on the day his committee met to discuss welfare.
An SNP source said : “Adam Tomkins is hardly the only Tory with a second job topping up their MSP salary – but his constituents will rightly expect him to put his parliamentary work first. Mr Tomkins is Ruth Davidson’s apologist-in-chief for Westminster’s brutal welfare failings. Just a few weeks ago he embarrassingly used widely-discredited figures to downplay the numbers hit by sanctions in a Holyrood debate.
“The irony is that the Tories clearly have a lot of lessons to learn on welfare but their social security spokesperson is too busy giving lectures of his own to turn up.”
Tomkins’s register of interests as an MSP states: “I am a Professor of Law at the University of Glasgow, an academic, teaching and research organisation (of University of Glasgow, Glasgow, G12 8QQ). I work for one and a half days per week for which I receive remuneration of between £30,000 and £35,000 per annum.”
A Scottish Conservative party spokesperson defended Tomkins’s attendance record at Holyrood since his election in May.
“This is pretty desperate stuff from the SNP. Mr Tomkins has a 100 per cent attendance record of formal meetings on both the parliament committees on which he sits,” the spokesperson said.
“This was not a formal meeting and apologies were given by more than one member. Furthermore, four committee members have sent apologies to the next away day on Monday, November 28, including two SNP MSPs.”