Sue Webber: First lesson of standards in public life – always tell the truth
Earlier this month, I wrote about standards in public life and how the public set a high bar for elected members. But telling the truth isn’t a high bar but a basic expectation.
So there I was in the Holyrood debating chamber last Thursday for First Minster’s Questions, listening with some incredulity as John Swinney tried to wriggle off the hook when pressed by Scottish Conservative leader Russell Findlay about the soft treatment of a teenager convicted of killing Elgin bus driver Keith Rollinson.
Not only will the thug be freed after two years in charity accommodation, not jail, but neither Mr Swinney nor the SNP minister for connectivity, Jim Fairlie, can confirm if he will be stripped of his pass, despite the fatal attack being his second assault of a bus driver.
Apart from the indefensibly light sentence and the affront to Mr Rollinson’s widow, I was amazed John Swinney plainly stated a Code of Conduct designed to underpin a system for removing free bus passes from people guilty of anti-social behaviour had been presented to the Net Zero, Energy and Transport committee.
“The draft code … was shared with the parliamentary committee that will scrutinise these issues on 28 January,” he said, quite clearly.
First of all, the meeting in question was on January 20, and I was there. Jim Fairley, however, failed to present the code for debate, instead claiming it was still being developed.
“I have to take some responsibility for that,” he told the meeting. “Officials have done a lot of work on it, but I chose not to present it to the committee at this stage, because I want to be sure that everything is tied into it.”
It indicates Mr Swinney doesn’t even know what his own ministers have done, but let’s put it down to a momentary lapse of memory. That being so, it would be easy to correct the record, but such is Mr Swinney’s arrogance that he refused.
“There is absolutely no reason whatsoever for me to change the Official Report of what I have said to Parliament today,” he said when I pointed out the error.
Is it any wonder people lose faith in politicians when “Honest” John can’t accept he made a very obvious mistake? And if he can’t admit to this, it explains why the SNP spends millions of taxpayers’ money in the Court of Session trying to cover up the really serious allegations of misconduct that have dogged this administration for years?
As for the bus pass Code of Conduct, it has only just been published, and it’s not even a side of A4. It’s not that the rules are bad, just that it’s very hard to see what the problem was when Mr Fairlie said it was not ready.
Basically it says that the entitlement card could be withdrawn if someone acts “in a way that hurts or threatens others” or damages or disrupts the bus. And that’s it.
It could have been written in five minutes, but only after over a year of pressure did Mr Swinney reluctantly agree to look into the clear demand from bus operators for a crackdown in anti-social behaviour last May.
Nine months to produce a couple of paragraphs; in May people should grasp the opportunity change this tired and self-serving administration.