The case for a national whistleblowing officer with real powers is stronger by the day

Meanwhile, the 2002 Freedom of Information Acts in Scotland and England was supposed to usher in a new era of openness, something then Prime Minister Tony Blair almost immediately regretted.

“I quake at the imbecility of it," he famously wrote in his 2010 autobiography, A Journey. Learning from the master’s mistake, the SNP Government decided not to back a short Freedom of Information (Scotland) Reform Bill, and now as member’s legislation taken up by Labour MSP Katy Clark, there is a race against time to get it through the Scottish Parliament before the start of the official Holyrood election campaign at the end of March.

Into the mix is the vital role of whistleblowers, without whom the lid would very rarely be lifted. As outsiders, journalists are only as good as their sources, but there is no denying some whistleblowers are wary of approaching reporters in case a trail leads back to them. Therefore, protection for whistleblowers lies at the heart of a current petition to the Scottish Parliament, prompted by the horrendous experience of employees who found themselves targeted after trying to expose serious wrongdoing within Edinburgh Council’s social work and education services, and what they felt was the dismissal of many of their testimonies during the 2021 reviews led by Susanne Tanner KC.

The petition’s specific call for the appointment of a national whistleblowing officer for education and children’s services is gathering support, not least because of failure to deliver the Scottish Government’s “Promise” to children in care exposed by Audit Scotland this month, but also a growing acceptance that authorities cannot be relied upon to investigate complaints against themselves. “Public bodies are failing to observe the first basic principle of any justice system … they are marking their own jotters,” Fergus Ewing MSP told the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee earlier this month. “Any public body, when facing criticism, will circle the wagons and defend itself. That is an instinct. It is very simple: there is an inherent conflict of interest between defending its own interests as a public body and dealing with a complaint from a third party,” he said.

Unusually, it is a very senior figure, Glasgow City Council’s director of education, Dr Douglas Hutchison, who judging by reports has been forced to fall on his sword for assisting a whistleblower. Finding himself outside Glasgow’s wagon circle, Dr Hutchison’s resignation comes after he admitted responding to a councillor’s text inquiries about last year’s council budget which, according to the authority, "may have strayed into potentially undermining the council's budget process".

It is understood the councillor in question is Fiona Higgins, the former teacher who is currently facing an Ethical Standards Commissioner investigation for breaching the Councillors’ Code requirement to uphold an authority’s reputation and not to criticise officers publicly, by refusing to take down a social media post in which she accused Glasgow’s former finance director Martin Booth of using his position to "wilfully and cynically mislead councillors and the public” by allegedly trying to disguise a cull of 450 teachers from the schools budget.

Emails revealed Mr Booth had discussed it being "safer to soften the wording into reform and transformation rather than pure teacher reductions...." and it appears Cllr Higgins had sought clarification from Dr Hutchison, hardly surprising given his department was directly affected. In another email seen by The Herald newspaper, Dr Hutchison said the language “suggests something positive, which it isn't", and it was "difficult to agree something that doesn't have on the face of it, the potential staff loss and so lacks a degree of transparency."

Supporters of Cllr Higgins say there is nothing wrong with a councillor seeking more information from a director affected by budget cuts, or for a director to give a frank response, and they point to the fact the advice was given weeks after the budget was approved, and so impossible for him to “undermine the process” as the council now claims.

But it’s beyond doubt a senior official has lost his job and a councillor is being subjected to a stressful inquiry for raising a matter clearly in the public interest and is another illustration of how the system can be used as a disincentive for others to do the same. Whether the appointment of an independent national whistleblowing officer would make a difference in this case is moot, because the petitioners did not have protecting service directors in mind, although whistleblowing is obviously not limited by rank.

The common thread between an enhanced whistleblowing protection system, a stronger Freedom of Information regime, and reform of the councillors’ code is case after case where lack of transparency has allowed abuses to subvert the public interest. Without proper oversight, extreme confidentiality can even be used as a cloak by a vexatious third parties to blow open a complaint, as is suspected to have happened in the case of shamed Edinburgh Councillor Cammy Day.

Labour’s determination to part the wagons just enough for Cllr Day’s return mean there are more twists in that saga to come before the dust properly settles, but the limitations of the inquiry into that squalid affair by former Information Commissioner and Standards Commission convener Kevin Dunion only made the case for national whistleblowing officer with real powers. And after a three-year campaign, it’s a scandal the petitioners still have a fight on their hands.