CIVIL servants were sceptical about a controversial idea by Henry McLeish’s administration to call itself a Government instead of an Executive, new Cabinet papers reveal.
In 2001, McLeish tried to regain the political momentum with a series of high-profile policy initiatives, including floating a branding change.
Some of his Ministers were already referring to the “Scottish Government” and the phrase was used at briefings with the media. However, files disclosed by the National Records of Scotland body reveal the internal commentary by senior mandarins.
Bill McQueen, at that point a civil servant in the transport ministry, noted that Minister Sarah Boyack and others had been “slipping into the parlance” of “describing themselves as the ‘Scottish Government’”.
He added: “I confess that my own first thought was that such a description would be constitutionally incorrect but perhaps, as we seem increasingly to live in a world of Humpty Dumpty where ‘words mean what I want them to mean’ it does not matter and as officials we need neither be precious or unduly concerned about any developments of this kind?”
Robert Gordon, one of the most senior civil servants at that time, wrote: “My advice is that we should use the term ‘Scottish Executive’ to describe ourselves, rather than ‘government’.”
He accepted that the word had crept into usage, but wrote that “my own view is that staff (and the outside world) should be encouraged to use the term ‘Executive’ to avoid any confusion arising in people’s minds".
Brian Fitzpatrick, who was the Executive’s Head of Policy Unit and would later become a Labour MSP, was more biting: “I thought we had agreed that the distinction between the Scottish Executive and the Government was easily made simply by using those words.
“Repeated references to the 'UK' Government might suggest we had somehow fallen under the suzerainty of another – have I missed something?”
An unnamed civil servant also piped up with a sarcastic comment: “I imagine our friends in the Scotland Office would be appalled if they thought we were contemplating the use of Scottish Government without the prefix devolved.”
The idea was dropped after a negative backlash, particularly amongst the contingent of Scottish Labour MPs.
However, Alex Salmond resuscitated the plan when he became First Minister in 2007 and Scottish Government has been used ever since.
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