Tomorrow night a book will be launched in an Inverness pub favoured by the Fourth Estate. It should be an intriguing work, having been inspired by, of all things, the Scottish Government’s review of the enterprise and skills services.
In particular the recommendation that a Scotland-wide statutory board should replace existing individual agency boards and co-ordinate the activities of Scottish Enterprise, Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE), Scottish Development International, Skills Development Scotland and the Scottish Funding Council.
Despite repeated ministerial denials, this outraged many in the Highlands and Islands concerned at the prospect of decision-making being taken away from HIE. It has been denounced as SNP control-freakery breaching a 50 year consensus.
It was debated in the Scottish Parliament with MSPs inflicting a rare defeat on the Scottish Government, which with the current emphasis on the sovereignty of Holyrood, should matter.
Professor Lorne Crerar, chairman of HIE conducted a second phase of the review recommending HIE keep an advisory board to report to the national board. We still don’t know the Scottish Government’s final position. An announcement is expected this week.
However many SNP supporters in the Highlands have been left scratching their heads, as to just how we got here.
On the face it, arrangements for the governance of quangos seem a rather unlikely topic for any book. The more so in that it might be overtaken by the time it is published.
But the whole HIE episode has triggered a significant debate about the future of Highlands and Islands policy. “On Scotland’s Conscience”, edited by journalist Iain MacDonald (BBC Radio Scotland’s emeritus ‘Voice of the Highlands’) should make an important contribution to that.
The title comes from Willie Ross, Secretary of State in 1965. He declared in the House of Commons, when setting up HIE’s predecessor the Highlands and Islands Development Board (HIDB): “For two hundred years, the Highlander has been the man on Scotland’s conscience.”
MacDonald has commissioned pieces from historian Professor Jim Hunter; one time UK trade minister Brian Wilson; ex- Highland Council leader and Lochaber GP Dr Michael Foxley; Maggie Cunningham, formerly head of Radio Scotland and now chair of MG Alba; and Peter Peacock who retired as an MSP and Scottish education minister, and is now Policy Director of Community Land Scotland.
They have all been distinguished champions of the interests of the Highlands and Islands for decades. Between them they represent both sides of the independence debate, but share a common goal of ensuring that the area is a place where people can build their lives, without leaving. The HIDB and HIE can claim some success in this, but significant pockets of depopulation have so far defied their best efforts.
What the authors are saying is being kept under wraps by publisher Kessock Books, but it is unlikely any will endorse the Scottish Government's approach. However there will be calls for radical reform of those public bodies serving the Highlands and Islands. This genie will be hard to put back in the bottle.
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