Watching the proceedings of the Scottish Parliament, a thought often occurs: if these people won elections, imagine the runners up. The runner-up to the SNP’s Collette Stevenson in East Kilbride was Joe Fagan, and while the Labour man ultimately got in via the regional list – truly the participation trophy of Holyrood’s proportional voting system – he must return to those vote tallies every now and then and wonder what he did wrong.
Yesterday, Holyrood’s transport committee was scrutinising plans by the SNP government to restructure Transport Scotland. Without getting too deep into the weeds of devolved administration, Transport Scotland is an executive agency, a self-contained government body that answers to ministers but isn’t integrated into the transport department. Think the Coastguard and Maritime Agency or HM Courts and Tribunals Service.
Executive agencies are a well-established part of government in Scotland (as in England) and are often in the news for all the wrong reasons. I’m looking at you, Education Scotland. Collette Stevenson, however, was confused, and wondered what the overhaul would mean for TUPE, the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations that enforce workers’ rights when their employer changes hands. Which led to this exchange with Graeme Cook, director of rail delivery at Transport Scotland:
Collette Stevenson: ‘I take it Transport Scotland’s a registered charity.’
Graeme Cook: ‘Transport Scotland is a non-departmental government body.’
Collette Stevenson ‘Right. Okay. So I take it then that when you transfer over all the staff will be getting TUPE-ed over.’
Graeme Cook: ‘Transport Scotland is an agency, so all of the Transport Scotland staff are already part of the civil service. There will be no change in employment whatsoever. It’s the same legal entity. As an agency, Transport Scotland is the same legal entity as the Scottish government.’
The discussion lasted less than a minute but it felt like forever in that excruciating, knuckle-chewing horror that is secondary embarrassment. Stevenson is a member of the transport committee. Scrutinising Transport Scotland is a large part of her job. Yet somewhere along the way she got the idea that this government body was actually a charitable organisation. What’s worse, nothing and no one she encountered in her duties caused her to reflect on the implausibility of Scotland’s transport policy being executed by a voluntary organisation which was also somehow answerable to government ministers.
Stevenson sat through this agonising exchange with the pained expressions of a meerkat trying to do mental arithmetic. I’m generally against civil service pay bumps but Graeme Cook deserves a fat bonus just for keeping a straight face. Back when devolution was being peddled by that grievance-drenched wrecker Donald Dewar, we were assured the quality of debate would be superior to that in the House of Commons. Some look at Collette Stevenson and wonder when Holyrood will show us the best it has to offer. I look at her and suspect it already has.
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