On the line but off camera and off the record: Loophole fears as pandemic provokes surge in ministers’ calls
Open government campaigners fear lobbyists are avoiding scrutiny
Calls between ministers and big business do not need to be registered if the cameras are turned off, prompting warnings from campaigners for open government.
Analysis of ministerial diaries found the number of calls with ministers had risen dramatically during the pandemic but the details of discussions do not have to be revealed by lobbyists if they are held over the phone.
Only discussions with ministers during face- to- face meetings and on video calls must be put on the lobbying register, although a loophole allows video to be switched off to avoid the requirement.
The Electoral Reform Society said t h e re should be t ra n - sparency and highlighted calls
between Scotland’s Business Minister, Fiona Hyslop, and companies connected to the collapse of steel fabrication firm Bifab, which was part-owned by the Scottish Government.
On August 8 last year Ms Hyslop spoke with representatives of former Bifab parent company JV Driver about “Renewables in Scotland” but details were not disclosed because the discussion was by phone.
A few days earlier, on August 5, ministerial diaries s h ow Ms Hyslop held a video conference about Covid- 19 with Mitsubishi president and chief executive Tatsuya Ishikawa.
Two months later Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Vestas Wind Systems was named by Scottish and Southern Energy as the preferred supplier of up to 114 wind turbines for Scotland’s newest and largest offshore wind farm, Seagreen.
Bifab failed to secure any Seagreen work and two yards in Fife and one near Stornoway went into administration in
December. The Stornoway yard and one of the Fife yards were this month bought out of administration but the Burntisland yard will remain closed. Details of the video call with Ms Hyslop were not recorded by Mitsubishi in the lobbying register. It is not known whether the video function was switched off, or whether the video call was not considered to be lobbying. There is no suggestion of any wrongdoing by Mitsubishi or the minister.
Wi l l i e Su l l i v a n , Electoral Reform Society Scotland director, said: “The fact that import a n t discussions around issues such as Bifab are secret by default is something that we can and should fix in Scotland. “The places without information are where rumour and misinformation, distrust and then conspiracy can grow. “Those who govern have a duty to Scots citizens but also to the wider idea of democracy to work hard at being trustworthy and trusted.
“This calls for processes and systems that provide the utmost transparency and if that means lobbyists and campaigners taking a few extra hours a month to complete a public register then they should do so in the spirit of active citizenship and as small champions of democracy.”
Analysis of ministerial diaries by the campaigning organisation has found a huge increase in the number of phone calls taken by ministers. When Covid- 19 hit Scotland last March the number of monthly calls rose from fewer than 10 to more than 100.
Michela Palese, researcher at the Electoral Reform Society, said: “Unsurprisingly, there has been a dramatic increase from March onwards of phone calls being recorded in the ministerial engagement diaries – from single digits in January and February to over 100 each month from March to August.
“Most of these phone calls are not recorded in the lobbying register due to the fact that the current legislation does not require lobbyists to record phone calls.”
A committee of MSPS is considering whether Scotland’s lobbying laws should be expanded to cover further communications such as emails and telephone calls.
A draft report on the evidence received by Holyrood’s public audit
Legislation does not require lobbyists to record phone calls
and post- legislative scrutiny committee said there was no evidence of companies deliberately using other forms of communication to avoid having to register instances of lobbying activity. However, there was a body of communication and influencing that was not on the register and was not being seen.
Critics of expanding lobbying law say it will create more admin but the committee said that could be offset if the lobbying register was made more user-friendly.
The committee concluded in its draft report that the Scottish Government should launch a consultation on changing the law to remove the exemption for communications such as phone calls.
The Scottish Government said: “The Scottish Parliament is legally responsible for the regulation of lobbying.
“It is therefore appropriate for the Scottish Parliament to lead on reviewing the current system and to identify any necessary changes or amendments.
“All ministerial meetings are proactively reported.” Mitsubishi and JV Driver were contacted but did
not respond.
Adventurer on how she fell in love with frozen kingdom despite
When Anne Kershaw was first swept off her feet by a polar pilot, she didn’t know if Antarctica was to the south or the north of the globe.
The former stewardess also didn’t know that her life was about to become dominated by the icy continent – taking over the world’s only private airline to the South Pole after her husband was killed in a crash.
While she could have been forgiven for never wanting to think of the place ever again, the determined Scot instead made it a mission to make it as
safe as possible. Now, after 30 years of flying the likes of Sir Ranulph Fiennes and Michael Palin, as well as taking the world’s leading explorers and most eager young scientists, the Anne has one last great adventure planned for Antarctica – to save it.
While it might have been the cause of her greatest heartbreak, Anne has launched a new drive to help preserve the world’s last wilderness.
Glasgow-born Anne, 60, now lives in Nevada, where she raises her four teenage children and runs the Polar Commitment Foundation, a campaign to encourage governments to work together to reduce impact on the continent by sharing resources and logistics.
It’s a long way from the days when she lived in 1980s Hong Kong and worked cabin crew for Britannia airlines, where she met a charismatic English pilot.
“I didn’t know a thing about Antarctica,” she said. “I met Giles and here was this man who was one of the pioneers of flying down there and I was like, ‘Is it at the top, is it at the bottom?’. It was only until after he was gone that I really learned about it, and the first thing that hit me was that he’d died there and there was nobody there who could save him.”
When Anne first visited, she described her 28-year-old self as being more about make-up and heels than thermals and crampons, and had never done any kind of camping when her new husband whisked her away in 1988 to his air base at Patriot Hills, Antarctica.
A veteran of the British Antarctic Survey flights, Giles was a keen adventurer, working with the likes of Sir Ranulph Fiennes. And he and a group of pals had formed Adventure Network as a way to help get them south faster.
Anne said: “He and I went down there on one of our first trips after we were married.
“It was so quiet you could hear the snowflakes hit the snow. There were no people, no trees, no animals. It was so quiet and I remember thinking, ‘Oh my God this is so beautiful’, and I knew why he loved it so much. I remember not understanding any of the risks or dangers or the violent weather you could have there and my philosophy was they all know what they were doing so I didn’t feel any fear because I had no idea what I was getting myself into.”
Two years later, however, she got the call every explorer’s partner dreads. But she was so confident of Giles’s skills and experience that, when told he had died in a microlight crash on the Jones Ice Shelf, she didn’t believe it. “He never made it sound like it was a
dangerous thing he did and I just assumed he knew what he was doing and he was very meticulous with his flying. You’re young and planning a family and you just think he’s invincible and he’s done this for years and will go on forever.
“But when it sinks in, it’s this enormous blow you think you’re never going to recover from.”
From that moment on, Anne kept being haunted by the idea that there had been nobody there to help him, and was determined that nothing like that would ever happen again.
Near where Giles died, the massive Mount Kershaw is named in his memory. She wanted Adventure Network to be a living tribute to him.
She started work in 1991, determined to have a say in making safer the airline she now part-owned. The flights left from Punta Arenas in southern Chile, but her first duties saw her parked in the Miami office. Anne admitted: “I was doing a lot of running. Running away from the sadness and the grief and trying to fill my days with anything that kept me busy.”
She proved a success and soon took over management of the airline. She said: “I thought if this was going to be a company that operates in the Antarctic, it has to be safe. So, over that period of time, we had the best pilots, the best aircraft and the most experienced guides. We went from being this tiny little company that took people to Mount Vincent to being the largest air operator next to the American government.”
Even with the most stringent safety rules, flying to the Antarctic is one of the trickiest tasks imaginable. Back in the 1990s, there was little of the weather tracking or satellite phones enjoyed by modern flyers, and fuel reserves meant that once you had flown halfway there, there was no turning back no matter how nasty the weather might turn.
Added to notoriously choppy winds was a four-mile-long, mainly ice-covered runway, which was, as Anne said,
“at the end of a mountain range and the hope is that the aircraft is going to stop”.
The new-look company helped rescue Giles’ former expedition crewmate Sir Ranulph Fiennes when a mission went awry, while Anne also enjoyed some TV stardom when Michael Palin appeared to hitch a lift for the final step of his Pole to Pole series in 1992.
“Ran’s a good friend and it’s always been great working with him. Michael Palin did huge things for us, because all of a sudden people realised you could actually get there. He was one of the first celebrities to do that – and a wonderful human being.”
In 2003 – the year she was made an MBE for her services to aviation in the Antarctic – Anne left Adventure Network and turned to charity work, teaming up with explorer pal Robert Swan to run 2041. The group, named after the year the Antarctic mining treaty expires, is dedicated to helping young people learn more about the continent.
By that time living in the US, she remarried, to explorer Doug Stoop, and had son Tyree, now 19, and adopted Than, also now 19, from Thailand. The couple are now divorced and she has since adopted Ethiopian-born orphan twins Zek and Habte, both now 16, as a single mother herself.
Two years ago, after more than a decade with 2041, Anne decided it was time for one more career change and so she set up Polar Commitment Foundation with a mission to get governments to save money and share resources for better operations in Antarctica.
“I’ve gained a lot from Antarctica and it was time to give back. My idea was to work with governments to encourage them to share logistics – most of them don’t do that – so they can save money and put the money back into science. The more I’ve worked with governments, the more I realise there is a lot of room for change – good change. With the Polar Commitment Foundation, I believe we can be the catalyst for that change.
“The hook is, there are seven continents on Earth, can we save one of them? I feel like we can make a difference.”
Anne has now been to Antarctica more than 50 times, and feels the presence of Giles every single visit. “Once I’m on the continent, I get a little space for myself and it’s this incredible feeling which takes me right back to when I was first married and going down there with Giles.
“I felt at home but you have to remember it’s somebody else’s home and you can’t let your guard down.”
There were no people, no trees, and no animals. It was so quiet
It’s coffee time at Alexander Mccall Smith’s Edinburgh home, an afternoon ritual usually shared with friends and one the acclaimed author has been missing during lockdown.
But cradling a cup on a Zoom call, the prolific novelist is clearly making the best of our new digital social life after many months conducting virtual book tours and taking part in online book festivals around the globe.
The fifth novel in his comic series about the outlandish Professor Moritz-maria von Igelfeld is about to be published, 24 years after the first and more than a decade after the last, and the latest zany instalment, Your Inner Hedgehog, could not be better timed to lift our lockdown blues.
He cheerfully acknowledges his latest read might offer a little relief: “They really are lighthearted, ridiculous books, but people all over the world love them. There is no real rhyme or reason why a few years seem to elapse between them; it is when the spirit moves me to write another.”
But the man behind the No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency and Scotland Street novels does agree that the timing could not be more serendipitous. It’s been a year like no other and his family, like so many in the country, has been hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic. Both his doctor daughters, mums in their 30s, caught the potentiallylethal infection.
Despite the anxiety that has entailed, he hasn’t lost his sense of humour or, it seems, his sense of duty. Both he and his wife Elizabeth took part in the Edinburgh-based Oxford/ Astrazeneca vaccine trials.
Laughter, he says is important in the darkest of times. He said: “People are weary, and a bit tired and discouraged by the experience of the last year. I think they are ready for a bit of humour. There is a limit to the amount of tragedy and sadness we can take. When you have a constant diet of dire predictions and sorry tales about the world, you’d be forgiven for wanting to have a bit of a release.
“We have all experienced something we never thought we would experience and our lives have been changed by it. Some people’s lives have changed drastically and irretrievably in a very sad way.
“We have been touched by it because my daughters have been dealing with it in their jobs. They have had Covid-19, but I wouldn’t make much of that because everybody knows somebody who has been affected by it. Just about every family has been touched in some way.
“My wife and I both volunteered for the Oxford vaccination trials. We had injections. You agree to be tested every week and have your blood looked at. It was very interesting being involved.”
The blind trials went ahead in Edinburgh, the couple later learning that they had been in the control group and given meningitis vaccines. They have now had their Covid-19 jags but remain part of the trial.
The emeritus professor of medical law who received The Medal of Honor for Achievement in Literature from the National Arts Club of America in 2017, praised the “magnificent” the vaccine operation at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre.
“Oh boy, oh boy,” he said. “The people involved in that, from top to bottom, can be seriously proud of what they have achieved. It was remarkable; they made it a very pleasant experience. Another thing that has come out of this is that we have seen what the people who are looking after us are doing in the hospitals and the health service, and it is heart-warming and impressive.”
The grandfather of four has found joy in lockdown though his family, his writing – poetry, prose and libretti for opera – and cycling.
He said: “I have been writing perhaps more than ever.” He has just finished a standalone novel set in Sri Lanka in the days when it was Ceylon, and has started writing volume 22 of his Botswana-set No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency saga – The Joy And Light Bus Company – that will publish in the autumn. And he has been working on separate projects with composers Tom Cunningham, Thomas Hyde, and Fergus Hall – one based on the infamous Lord Lucan case, another featuring a bestiary of imagined animals, and a third that sets his St Kilda poems to music.
A screenplay based on an amateur orchestra is also in the offing. Was it sparked by the comically titled Really Terrible Orchestra he founded in 1995 with friends in Edinburgh? He smiles: “Let’s put it this way, it’s no coincidence.”
And when he’s not working? “I have an electric bike
‘ There is a limit to the amount of sadness or tragedy that we can take
and my wife has one as well. We go to Ratho, to Balerno or Cramond; we have a good set of cycle tracks in Edinburgh.” But he admits: “There are things I am missing. My daughter Lucy is an obstetrician and works in Oxford. She has a son, six, and a daughter, two. We haven’t seen them for a long time. My daughter Emily is a hospice doctor and a GP in Edinburgh. She has two little boys who are five and three and we are allowed to provide interim childcare for them.
“But I’m also missing not being able to have coffee or lunch with friends. I so look forward to the time when we can do that.
“And we can’t go over to our house in Argyll. I am a very keen sailor and am looking forward to getting back on the water. I have a motor cruiser and sail it around Mull. The Small Islands are lovely, Muck is a favourite of mine. In those waters you can see whales. The boat has been up on the hard ground. I hope to get it back into water in May, but it all depends on when we are allowed.”
He mused:“i suppose we are looking very carefully at our lives and reflecting on how they might be rather different in the future. I think people are much more aware of the need for sustainability. They are realising we were far too frantic and busy prior to this.
“I like to think we have learned certain lessons. One is not to be profligate with the world’s resources and not to assume that we can continue with our bad old ways. And we need to appreciate how dependent we are on other people like our neighbours.
“Interestingly I have found that people seem to be more willing to greet and speak to others, to strangers. Walking around the streets near where I live, or when I am out on my bicycle, people are smiling at one another. There is a sense of all of us being in this together, which is really quite striking.
“We have come to appreciate our friends and to value friendships more – even if we don’t see them or see them remotely. All of these things are making us rather different and slightly better people. I hope all of us want to come out of this slightly better than when we went into it. You could argue that is pie in the sky and we will go back to our bad ways, but I believe this has made us think.”
Your Inner Hedgehog will be published by Little, Brown on March 25