New council complaint probe has a lot of history to examine - John McLellan

Former SNP group leader Adam McVey and his now former Labour counterpart Cammy Day

I faced a standards complaint because of how I raised questions at a meeting attended by two young female solicitors about the report into the scandalous cover-up of sex abuse in the Council’s social work department, and McVey rarely missed an opportunity to refer to “a Conservative councillor accused of abusing young women”.

The innuendo was clear, even though the allegation was about legitimate questions in the public interest, as confirmed by a subsequent Standards Commission hearing, but when it came to skewering a hated political opponent, that didn’t matter.

It was one of the lowest episodes of my life, which I have no doubt will give McVey great pleasure to learn, so I have a smidgin of sympathy for his now departed successor Cammy Day, who faces far worse allegations than ever confronted me.

However, it’s limited by the fact Day was involved in the complaint against me, teeing up a question for the lawyer leading the report team, Susanne Tanner, to make the allegation during a council meeting before I knew anything about it.

And the bitter, bitter irony, is that the crisis now engulfing the authority tracks back to that inquiry, the allegations it received and the way the council handled them.

Allegedly sending salacious texts to Ukrainian refugees is one thing, but the most serious allegation involves a complaint lodged in late 2017 about a serving Labour councillor who had been accused of grooming a 15-year-old in care.

The complaint was made to the council administration but nothing happened and details surfaced over the weekend on social media.

This incident should be the starting point for the new independent inquiry into this latest scandal approved by Tuesday’s policy and sustainability committee. Who knew about the 2017 complaint? What efforts were made to investigate it?

I know it was subsequently drawn to the attention of police, so what happened then? Who did they interview? Was any attempt made to contact the alleged victim? Maybe there was nothing in it, because none of it made its way into the Tanner reports.

There are events more recently which the new probe must examine. Details of a complaint involving Day sent to a confidential whistleblowing sub-committee by the supposedly secure Safecall investigation system, validated by the Tanner inquiry, have been leaked, and the leak could only have come from a councillor. Who did this and why? Was it all going to be brushed under the carpet again?

And why, when allegations stretch back years to when Day and McVey were partners in the 2017-22 coalition, are complaints only surfacing now?

Victims who took their stories to the Tanner inquiry team felt utterly let down by what they regarded as whitewash, and not without reason. A petition largely driven by their experiences still sits with the Scottish Parliament.

There is now an opportunity to rectify the inquiry’s deficiencies, reports which appeared more concerned with pinning the blame on the previous administration than getting to the truth, so there can be no question of anyone involved with those reports having any part in this new probe. Except as witnesses.