AILEEN Campbell is not, as far as I know, a black-hearted rapacious villain. Far from it.

Since covering her first election, she has always struck me as a decent, hard-working MSP.

But the former Communities Secretary is this week the poster girl for a system that most definitely doesn’t pass the smell test.

As the Herald revealed on Tuesday, simply for having done her job, Ms Campbell is being paid golden goodbyes worth more than £75,000 after standing down at May’s election.

To be precise, a full year’s salary of £64,470 for no longer being the MSP for Clydesdale and another £12,112 for no longer being in the cabinet, where her responsibilities included, ahem, “tackling inequalities”.

READ MORE: SNP's Aileen Campbell gets £75,000 'golden goodbye' despite landing new job

That she had already lined up a new job as chief executive of Scottish Women’s Football before leaving government didn’t affect her pay-off. The money went to her automatically - without any need to claim for it - under the Scottish Parliamentary Pensions Act 2009.

This states that MSPs who are not returned at an election, whether they stand down (like Ms Campbell) or are ousted by voters, get a “resettlement grant” worth 50 to 100 per cent of their salary, depending on length of service, to help adjust to life after parliament.

The bar is set low. Being an MSP just before an election and not being one after it is all that is required. So even late-arrivals from byelections can get six months’ salary, with older hands getting an extra month for every full year between six and 12 years.

The first £30,000 is tax-free.

So-called office-holders - ministers, cabinet secretaries, the presiding officer and deputy presiding officers - also get a loss of office grant worth 25% of the pay bump for that role.

So Ms Campbell, as she was elected in 2007, received the maximum resettlement grant due to all MSPs who have served 12 years or more, plus a quarter of her ministerial salary.

If that sounds generous, it’s because it is. Absurdly so. Holyrood’s golden goodbyes are now by far the best-paid of any UK parliament or assembly, roughly twice as generous in fact.

The system dates back to the 2000s, when changes to UK pension law forced the Scottish Parliament to update its own pension scheme.

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A committee of MSPs was set up in early 2008, which decided broadly to shadow what Westminster did. Its report was debated in less than half an hour in June 2008 by five MSPs who chummily commended its “reasonable and affordable” ideas.

Their recommendations became the 2009 SPP Act, which MSPs passed unanimously in January that year.

Four months later, the Westminster expenses scandal exploded.

Thanks to a massive data leak to the Telegraph, MPs’ perks provoked a national outcry. Cash-filled soft landings were no longer the done thing. A new era had arrived.

But not at Holyrood. While Westminster changed its pay-off system, Holyrood kept its intact, as if nothing was amiss. And it has stayed that way while change has taken place in Wales and Northern Ireland too.

It is inconceivable that the Holyrood scheme could be introduced today, given public disgust at such things.

Yet what now looks like a high-water mark in self-dealing remains on the statute book, leading to fat automatic pay-outs like Ms Campbell’s.

And not just hers. After May, 43 MSPs shared resettlement grants of £2.28m, an average of £52,925 each.

Of these, 20 received the same maximum £64,470 resettlement grant as Ms Campbell as a result of serving more than 12 years.

They include two cabinet secretaries - Mike Russell and Roseanna Cunningham - who also got that extra £12,112 loss of office payment to give a pre-tax total of £76,582.

Another 12 MSPs got six months' salary - £32,235 - after serving just a single term, or less in Michelle Ballantyne's case, as the Tory-to-Reform defector arrived in 2017.

That compares to £632,000 for 20 Senedd members who didn’t come back after its election the same month (an average of £31,600); £2m for 71 ex-MPs after the 2019 general election (£28,000 average), and £302,000 claimed by 14 former MLAs after the Stormont election of 2016 (£21,570).

The reason is simple. The rules everywhere else have been tightened.

At Westminster, Holyrood-style resettlement grants haven’t been paid since the 2010 election. Former MPs now get a “loss of office payment” which is double statutory redundancy pay, meaning at most £31,500 in 2019, based on age and length of service.

Moreover, former MPs only qualify if they fight and lose their old seat.

If they step down, it’s two months’ salary to help wind up their office.

In Wales, where an Independent Remuneration Board has set the figures for a decade, Members who fought and lost in May got resettlement grants of between 50 and 100% of salary based on age and service, with only those aged 55 to 64 and having 15 years experience getting the maximum amount.

Those who stood down voluntarily suffered a 50% cut to their pay-off.

At the next Senedd election, only those who stand and lose will get any grant, capped at 50% of salary, with office-holders getting a 25% slice of their old pay bump.

At Stormont, where an Independent Review Panel sets the scheme, grants of up to 100% of salary based on age and service have also gone.

In future, resettlement allowances, which must be actively claimed, will be capped at 50% of salary, though they can go to both quitters and losers.

To repeat, in Wales and Stormont, resettlement grants are a maximum of 50% of salary. In Holyrood they are a minimum of 50%, and can be 100%.

In addition, in Westminster and Wales, pay-offs now only go to those who stand and lose at elections, while in Holyrood they go to both voluntary leavers and the defeated. It matters.

If resettlement grants had only been paid to the nine MSPs who lost in May, and the 34 MSPs who quit got nothing, the bill to taxpayers would have been £419,000, not £2.27m.

If the resettlement grants were calculated as in Wales and Northern Ireland, the bill would be £1.3m.

Our system is bloated, out-dated, inflexible and unfair.

The biggest pay-off after the Welsh election went to Carwyn Jones, a former first minister who was first elected in 1999. He got £50,963.

At Holyrood, a clutch of utterly forgettable backbenchers got £53,725 after warming a seat for two terms, as did former Finance Secretary Derek Mackay, despite abandoning the parliament in disgrace for a year.

Many of the MSPs who maxed out their resettlement grants in May were also retiring. They didn’t need a hand finding a new career. It was all gravy.

There are arguments for keeping the system. Its generosity encourages a churn of MSPs, introducing new talent as veterans cash in. It can also be hard for former politicians to find their feet. Public service should be recognised.

But overall, it’s an indefensible relic that chugs on because MSPs don’t want to fix it. But fix it they must.

They should start by copying Wales and Stormont and have an outside board determine if it’s time to say farewell to those golden goodbyes.