SIR Jeremy Heywood, the Cabinet Secretary, has been asked by Edinburgh East MP Sheila Gilmore to investigate whether or not Nick Clegg's aide Ryan Coetzee has broken the Whitehall code of conduct for special advisers.
Mr Coetzee is often referred to as the Liberal Democrats' equivalent of the Tories' polling guru Lynton Crosby.
But unlike Mr Crosby, Mr Coetzee is paid his £110,000 salary, the highest of Mr Clegg's special advisers or spads, from public funds.
His official title is director of strategy and he spends much of his time advising the deputy prime minister on how his party can boost poll ratings. The party insists Mr Coetzee fully complies with the special advisers' code of conduct. It explained his role entailed ensuring all Coalition messages strictly reflected Lib Dems' priorities. "He is a special adviser so he is paid out of public funds. The salaries are all transparent and published on the Internet," said a spokesman.
But Ms Gilmore pointed to the code, which stresses spads "should not use official resources for party political activity".
"If Mr Coetzee is working on issues concerning the Liberal Democrats' election strategy rather than the objectives of the Cabinet Office, where he is employed on the public payroll, this would appear a breach of the code," wrote the Labour backbencher. She added: "It would rightly be extremely concerning if the Liberal Democrats were exploiting public resources and the important role played by special advisers to further party political interests rather than Government objectives."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article