There’s certainly no shortage of MSPs with a self-evident self-awareness deficit. Which Mr Popular aka John Swinney has ably underlined since becoming first minister. In dismissing the Standard Committee’s decision on Michael Mathieson’s iPad expenses claim, Swinney’s opinion was that it was procedurally flawed, because prior to the actual decision committee member Annie Wells had made prejudicial statements against the first minister’s ‘friend and colleague’.
Eh? He’s claiming the process had been prejudiced against his friend and colleague? That sounds a bit like a defence solicitor claiming in court the sheriff had been prejudiced against his “old school pal and current drinking buddy” who had been charged with assault after a pub brawl – it doesn’t really help the lawyer sound like his defence case is particularly objective and unbiased.
But in turn Swinney’s comments about the ‘integrity’ of Holyrood (no sniggering, please) raises the bigger question about how the parliament’s procedures conform to principles of due process in the first place – if Swinney’s case has any merit, and assuming Annie Wells hadn’t made her statement publicly, the first minister would presumably have accepted the committee’s decision, but it would still be flawed, but we just wouldn’t have evidence that Annie Wells was prejudiced.
Not that we should expect Annie Wells to be unprejudiced anyway because, as even ten minutes of FMQs make clear, how should we possibly expect disciplinary procedures involving MSPs judging their own to be unprejudiced, whatever they say or don’t say in public? Mathieson himself has opined that the procedure had become ‘highly politicised’ – partisan politicians politicising – whatever next?
Which, of course, is all pretty obvious, and something even the dogs in the street could tell you, assuming they could speak. A bit like permanently bickering and fighting schoolkids marking each other’s homework, or adjudicating on their friends and enemies when things get out of hand.
Thus just like in politics more generally, it’s to a large extent about pretence. They all go along with it when it suits, but when it doesn’t they’ll try to pick holes in a process that’s fundamentally flawed from the outset. And then it’s back to the whole charade. Until the next time.
So much for the elites, but a more concrete example is perhaps provided by local authority planning and licensing committees which can make or break the little people (and, for what it’s worth, is one of my pet subjects).
These committees comprise local councillors usually elected primarily because they are members of one or other of our five most prominent political parties. But on these ‘quasi-judicial’ committees we’re expected to accept the pretence that these councillors can park their politics and prejudices at the door and act as some kind of hybrid judge and jury. Thus a bit like Holyrood’s process regarding Mr Mathieson.
One example involved an applicant for a ‘taxi’ driver’s licence in Glasgow, where a ‘Polish man’ had been involved in a ‘cannabis cultivation’ he and others had accidentally found in Poland when he lived there, and which convener Alex Wilson described as ‘insignificant’ in terms of quantities. There are myriad reasons I wouldn’t trust councillors to impartially decide a case like this because of the political dimension, in this case essentially because all Scotland’s political parties are pro-immigration (some to the extent of effectively promoting an open borders approach) and because of the generally pro-drugs orthodoxy in Scottish politics, despite their supposed illegality (and that applies to hard drugs like heroin and cocaine, never mind the likes of the cannabis considered by the licensing committee).
However, there was also other stuff reported that in my opinion demonstrated evidence of some kind of irrational prejudice. One councillor questioned the applicant’s knowledge of Glasgow’s streets. But a council either requires aspiring drivers to pass a ‘topographical’ test or it doesn’t, so what was the relevance of asking the applicant about it?
Another couple of councillors asked the applicant about the vehicle he would drive if granted a licence, because Glasgow City Council operates a limit on the number of taxis and private hire cars. However, since the council has maintained a limit on taxi licences from around the time one of said councillors was literally in her nappies, the relevance of that questioning with regard to whether the applicant was ‘fit and proper’ (ie more of a character assessment) is anyone’s guess.
So although for wider political reasons it might be expected that some of the councillors would hardly be able to approach the case objectively, on the other hand some of the reported evidence suggests committee members were fishing for irrelevant reasons to reject the application. (And, for what it’s worth, the licence wasn’t granted.)
Coming back to Holyrood, there are echoes of the Alex Salmond saga in the Michael Mathieson imbroglio – recall that the civil service process against Salmond was “unlawful”, “procedurally unfair” and “tainted by apparent bias”.
Former SNP justice secretaries Kenny MacAskill and Mr Mathieson obviously ended up on different sides of the fence regarding the Salmond affair – MacAskill ended up in the Salmond camp, with Mathieson in Nicola Sturgeon’s tent, and the latter now defended by fellow camper, and ‘friend and colleague’, John Swinney.
But while in charge of Scotland’s ‘justice’ system both MacAskill and Mathieson oversaw reviews of the kind of Glasgow City Council procedure described above, but it seems neither process even questioned these kangaroo courts, never mind proposing any kind of reform.
Thus the (now) Alba and SNP elites can rely on the likes of expensive lawyers and FMQs to attempt to dig their ‘friends and colleagues’ out of a hole (rightly or wrongly) and at taxpayers’ expense (in direct financial terms as regards the £631k cost of the botched Salmond case, and the less direct cost in terms of the whole brouhaha surrounding Mathieson’s mendacity and the subsequent time and resources devoted to dealing with it).
The little people, meanwhile, are left at the mercy of often jumped-up and ill-informed councillors, and that’s even before considering any political bias and prejudice they bring to the proceedings. John Swinney said, with regard to apparent unfairness against Mathieson, he would “come down like a ton of bricks” on something that “wouldn’t be tolerated in any other walk of life”. By which he presumably means the ‘walk of life’ inhabited by people he can identify with like his ‘friends and colleagues’ (again!) rather than the plebs.
(Those aggrieved by local authority planning and licensing decisions can seek redress through the courts, or perhaps complain to the Standards Commission for councillors. However, again the former is obviously a more financially daunting and procedurally intimidating process for the likes of the ‘gig economy’ applicant described above, as opposed to highly paid politicians with their ‘friends and colleagues’ and other resources, and the latter process is cumbersome, often ineffectual, and hardly timeous).
(1) Strictly speaking, the application was for a private hire driver’s licence rather than the taxi equivalent, which may have implications in relation to the knowledge test stuff and numerical vehicle limits. However, from the ‘fit and proper’ dimension that should make no difference. Moreover, at least two of the councillors are quoted in the press article as misusing the word ‘taxi’, which may indeed help explain some of the evidence of irrationality, and to that extent further undermined the whole process.