WHY IS THE COST OF RUNNING THE SCOTLAND OFFICE INCREASING?

I recently received a newsletter from Newsnet Scotland, and was interested in an article on the Secretary of State for Scotland using his position to promote himself and Labour. The following quote is from the minutes of the Joint Management Board at Dover House:

"The Secretary of State is still working hard to raise and maintain his public profile and has been doing well in the media so far. He continues to look for opportunities to promote his own position and the role of the UK Government in Scotland."

I didn’t know that the Scotland Office was funded from the Scottish block grant, assuming that as it is part of the “federal” government, it would be the UK that paid for it. Surely, given that, we need to ask if these funds have been used by Murphy for the “promotion” alluded to in the minutes. This would undoubtedly violate the ministerial code which states: 'ministers must not use government resources for party political purposes'.

Newsnet also revealed that the running costs for the Scotland Office increased by 27% in 2007-2008 with staff levels increasing by over 9.5% on the previous year.

This seems an odd situation given that the role of the Scotland Office has not increased and overall the UK government has expressed a desire to downsize its staffing. It couldn’t be, could it, that Labour prefers to spend the Scottish Block Grant on staffing in its Dover House Offices in London, than have the money spent in Scotland?

Staffing levels, as reported by Newsnet and shown here in the first line, are showing a strange trend, as are costs (shown in line 2):

• 2005-6 -9.6%; 2006-7 -3.70%; 2007-8 +9.50%

• 2004-5 -10.3%; 2005-6 -0.9%; 2006-7 +1.5%; 2007-8 +27.3%

It seems that since the SNP government was elected, the cost of running Labour's Scotland Office has increased.

The SNP's Angus MacNeil said: "Since devolution the remit of the Scotland Office has shrunk but its staffing levels have mushroomed. The £7m spent on the Scotland Office annually would be much better invested in services the Scottish people actually need - not in a New Labour anti-Scotland spin machine that specialises in doing Scotland down."

However, it is the decrease in staff and costs in the Labour years in Scotland, and the increase since the SNP took over that I find difficult to understand, unless Labour's idea is to waste as much of our budget as possible.


The role of the Secretary of State, a very small one since devolution, is to promote the devolution settlement and to act as guardian of it and to promote partnership between the UK Government and the Scottish Government. Well, there’s a laugh!

It is an interesting thought that £7 million is coming out of our budget in any case, but very worrying that some of it may be used to do down our own government. In any case it needs investigation.

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