THE head of the Civil Service in Scotland has been defended strongly by his UK counterpart, who has slapped down Opposition criticisms at Holyrood and Westminster.
Sir Gus O’Donnell, Cabinet Secretary and head of the UK Civil Service, has backed Sir Peter Housden, who came under ferocious attack by Holyrood opposition leaders and in the House of Lords this week.
Sir Gus has written to Iain Gray of Labour, Annabel Goldie of the Tories and the LibDems’ Willie Rennie to reject their criticism of Sir Peter.
The opposition leaders all wrote to Sir Gus after comments by Sir Peter on an internal Scottish Government website. Mr Gray said Sir Peter had adopted an “arrogant attitude” while Mr Rennie said he was disappointed by the “drift away from impartiality”.
Sir Peter had written in an in-house blog about constitutional issues: “It’s remarkable how the terms of this debate have changed irrevocably in just three weeks. Calman and the status quo now seem lost in the mists of time.”
This prompted the attacks from Holyrood Opposition leaders and others in the House of Lords this week, with Lord Foulkes for Labour calling for Sir Peter to resign and Lord Forsyth of the Conservatives joining in.
But Sir Gus made clear: “It is right and proper that civil servants working to their respective administrations undertake the relevant work to support their ministers to pursue their aims, whether or not these aims are the subject of political controversy.”
A Scottish Government spokesman said: “Sir Gus O’Donnell has made it absolutely clear civil servants in Scotland should support Scottish Ministers in developing policy on constitutional change and that to do so is entirely consistent with the Civil Service Code.”
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