Bullying Concern at complaints over ministers
NICOLA Sturgeon’s government has failed to get a grip of bullying by SNP ministers even though a new harassment complaints policy was signed off three years ago, MSPS have been told.
Dave Penman, general secretary of the FDA union, said around 30 staff in at least five ministerial offices had flagged concerns over the past decade. He also said the number of affected staff could be higher than the FDA’S tally and that people across the Government must have known things were not “fine”.
NICOLA Sturgeon’s government has failed to get a grip of bullying by SNP ministers, MSPS have been told.
The trade union representing senior civil servants said staff were still subject to bad behaviour three years after a new harassment complaints policy was signed off by the First Minister.
Dave Penman, general secretary of the FDA union, said around 30 staff in at least five ministerial offices had flagged concerns over the past decade.
He said the numbers were “pretty dramatic” and “quite extraordinary” compared to other parts of the UK civil service, and suggested a deeper cultural problem in Scotland.
He also said the number of affected staff could be higher than the FDA’S tally, that people across the Government must have known things were not “fine”, and that staff “increasingly” lacked confidence in the Scottish Government to deal with the problem.
He stressed the concerns, some of which concerned former first minister Alex Salmond’s office, were not all historical, and some were “extant”.
That indicated a “failure” in applying the complaints policy meant to address the problem, he said.
Uniquely across the UK civil service, the Scottish Government created a harassment policy for ministers and former ministers in late 2017 in the wake of the #Metoo movement.
It has also had a Fairness at Work policy since 2010.
Mr Penman said the bullying problem seemed deep-rooted, with concerns raised about “multiple ministers in multiple administrations”, and a lack of challenge leading to bad behaviour becoming normalised.
Mr Penman was giving evidence to the Holyrood inquiry into the Alex Salmond affair about the “lived experience” of employees and culture at the top of the Scottish Government.
The cross-party committee is looking at how the Government botched an in-house probe into sexual misconduct claims made against Mr Salmond in 2018.
Mr Salmond, pictured right, had the exercise set aside in a judicial review at the Court of Session, forcing ministers to admit it had been unfair, unlawful and “tainted by apparent bias” because the lead investigating official had been in prior contact with his accusers.
The collapse of the Government’s case in January 2019 left taxpayers with a £500,000 legal bill for Mr Salmond’s costs, and the Holyrood inquiry is investigating what happened.
Mr Penman said: “On the one hand this is the only part of the UK civil service that’s had a meaningful process for investigating [ministerial bullying], yet seems to have significantly more concerns about ministerial behaviour.
“The issues that we talk about are not historical, they’re current, and therefore that can only be a failure of how that policy has been applied”
Last week, the most senior official when Mr Salmond was first minister told the inquiry he had dealt with inappropriate behaviour by SNP ministers “in a number of settings”.
In written evidence, former permanent secretary Sir Peter Housden said he had managed all the problems informally. He said the volume of concerns raised with the FDA suggested top officials must have been aware of a wider problem with bullying.
He told the inquiry: “There were issues about the culture within the Scottish Government going back through a number of administrations over a long period of time, not simply about the former first minister, but other ministers as well.
“Clearly those in positions of management in the Scottish Government, as we’ve seen from evidence from previous permanent secretaries, were aware of some of that.
“I think you can’t look at that number of concerns and say that everyone thought everything was fine.”
He added: “I think our perception over time was that increasingly people were talking to us on the basis that they did not feel confident of going to that next [formal complaint] stage, even if that’s what we were recommending.”
Mr Penman, giving evidence alongside Malcolm Clark, convenor of the Council of Scottish Government Unions, said there was a need for a “completely independent” complaints process, free from ministerial involvement, citing Boris Johnson’s handling of bullying allegations against Home Secretary Priti Patel.
An investigation under the UK Ministerial Code, which is adjudicated by the PM, was launched at the start of the year into the allegations, which Ms Patel denies, but no conclusion or report has been published.
Mr Penman, whose union represents senior civil servants across the UK, said Mr Johnson was “sitting on the report”.
Tory MSP Murdo Fraser, who sits on the inquiry, said: “It’s not credible for the First Minister to claim she had no idea about what was going on when evidence indicates it was widespread.
“She must tell the Scottish public which of these many allegations she was aware of and when she first found out.”