A FORMER college principal at the cente of a pay-off row will be ordered to reappear before the Scottish Parliament after being accused of talking "nonsense" at his last appearance.

The move by the public audit committee comes after members of the college's remuneration committee - who approved the inflated package - said information on the approved limits for such deals appeared to have been deliberately withheld.

Last week, John Doyle, the former principal of Coatbridge College, in Lanarkshire, accused public spending watchdog Audit Scotland of making an "inaccurate and vexatious" claim that he deliberately withheld Scottish Funding Council (SFC) guidance that no member of staff should receive more than a 12-month pay-off.

He said the remuneration committee should have been aware of the limits because guidance was available on the college intranet as well as claming his deal was not funded with taxpayers' money.

But after the latest meeting of the public audit committee Paul Martin, the convener, said: "The evidence the committee has heard to this point has led us to agree that John Doyle needs to appear before us again.

"We are determined to carry out a full inquiry into the governance of severance payments at Coatbridge College."

Earlier the committee heard from Auditor General Caroline Gardner, who stood by an earlier statement - backed by six members of the college remuneration committee - that information had been deliberately withheld.

Ms Gardner also suggested MSPs should look at creating a new offence after lawyers concluded the actions of key individuals at the college did not meet the legal definition of fraud.

Ms Gardner told the committee: "Mr Doyle, as principal and accounting officer for the college, had a responsibility to ensure the remuneration committee had the advice it needed.

"In my view, there was a deliberate withholding of information from the people who were charged with making the decision."

The Herald:

Auditor General Caroline Gardner at the public audit committee.

Conservative MSP Mary Scanlon asked several members of the remuneration committee whether the Auditor General's conclusion that information was withheld was "a fair assessment".

Ralph Gunn, replied: "With hindsight, yes, but at the time we didn't know there was anything like that. If I had guidance in front of me that said something markedly different from what we eventually decided, I would not have made the decision we did make."

Last week, Mr Doyle told the committee the SFC advice was available on the college intranet.

Thomas Keenan told MSPs today: "If Mr Doyle seriously thinks that to advise committees appropriately that we should go to the intranet, then quite simply that is absolute nonsense."

He said he was "very concerned that we had been misled", was "more than upset" and he sympathised with trade unionists who then went "absolutely ballistic" when they learned of the pay-off.

And Paul Gilliver added: "My view of the income was it went into the common reserve which was applied to the charitable objectives of the college. It came from college resources."

Liberal Democrat MSP Tavish Scott said: "If the money ... only came from the SFC up to a certain level, and did not come from commercial income, it must have come from college resources which would normally pay for things that go on in classrooms to help the students."