Alister ‘Viceroy’ Jack's mission to stop work on independence

Hepburn insists that it’s completely legitimate for civil servants to help create a series of independence prospectus papers, and for there to be ‘a golden thread of independence running through every policy area’. As he told the National’s Holyrood Podcast in his ebullient post-match interview: “I’m not going anywhere...that's something that Alister Jack’s just gonna have to get over.”

READ MORE: The Secret Civil Servant on ScotGov meltdowns and weathering storms

Back to the studio! Or to Holyrood, at least, where my big boss and Scottish Government Permanent Secretary, JP Marks delivered the exact same message with his trademark Zen-like calm to last month’s Finance and Public Administration Committee conclave.

And he went further, stating that civil servants should support the development of the independence prospectus paper series, including through the provision to Ministers of ‘frank advice, warts and all’.

This was a pretty remarkable statement, and broadcast a clear message to all Scottish civil servants: there’s no constitutional impropriety here. Not only is it legit for civil servants to work on independence, it’s actually part of our sacred duty to serve the government of the day.

Like any self-respecting and ostensibly-neutral Good Morning Scotland pundit or Match of the Day rent-a-gob, I’ve got three main reactions to this, none of them related to my personal feelings about an independent Scotland (which can be summarised as: ‘yeah, no, sounds like a lot of work’).

Firstly: fair do’s. Whether you’re a foam-flecked unionist or a rabid nationalist, this situation surely seems no less kosher than the UK Government spaffing millions of taxpayers’ dosh on the opposing project of ‘saving the union’.

And didn’t we see, back in the hallowed antiquity of 2014, how intensely relaxed Whitehall civil servants seemed to be about managing these tensions in the run-up to indyref. Some of us remember one HM Treasury civil servant picking up a government award for ginning up analysis supporting the case for Scotland remaining part of the UK.

Jamie Hepburn (Image: free)

On receipt of the gong, the winner gushed “we've learned that it is possible for civil servants to work on things that are inherently political and quite difficult, and you're very close to the line of what is appropriate, but it's possible to find your way through and to make a difference.”

Right-o. What’s sauce for the goose and all that.

Secondly, it’s weird how low a profile the independence prospectus seems to currently have within the Scottish Government itself. No town-hall style meetings to give us government workies the big picture. No mention of it in any of the endless leadership briefings every senior manager gets sent every other week. No standing instructions on exactly how to handle this type of work. Instead: tumbleweeds.

Or as self-declared Partick Thistle fan Jamie Hepburn might put it, ‘come on, lads, where’s the high press?’ I mean, the sheer scope of preparing for a transition to being an independent nation state, the enormous political capital that our Ministers have lavished on it, and the reported £1.5m civil service wage bill being spent to support that work (although I’d be astonished if the full cost doesn’t turn out to be multiples of that) surely justifies an avalanche of agitprop to get us lot all onside.

Yep, you can understand that some elements might be under wraps to stop clatty nerd-do-wells like me leaking the deets – and Mr Hepburn won’t publicly say what independence paper #4 is about until it’s first been laid before Parliament – but in recent months there’s been nary a ripple.

My third point follows on from the first two: that the lack of transparency and visibility concerning a vital area of work creates a feeling within the civil service that our work supporting the case for independence is on something of a shoogly peg.

Even if you take at face value the idea that the indy broth could be spoiled by the presence of too many cooks, given the hyper-partisan fury that infects both sides of the debate, you have to ask: are civil servants really going to be able to tell Ministers the unvarnished truth, ‘warts and all’, about how it really tastes?

READ MORE: It's duty of civil servants to work on Scottish independence says official

After all, the very same Committee that Mr Marks spoke to on May 16 about constitutional propriety also discussed its inquiry into the Scottish Government’s decision-making capability. The Committee discussed the quality of civil service advice to Ministers and gave a pointed reminder of previous evidence that government decision-making has been ‘rushed, unclear and unstructured’.

That this Committee covered these two issues – propriety and effectiveness – doesn’t feel accidental. For a start, there’s been no shortage of suspicion, such as that described by the Struan Stevenson in The Scotsman, that Scotland's civil servants have cooried right into the SNP's obsession with independence at the expense of the welfare of the Scottish people. Professor Robert Pyper has also claimed that there is a pro-SNP culture amongst Scotland’s civil servants, on the basis that Scotgov civil servants insist on Ministerial directions far less frequently than the rest of the UK Civil Service.

Personally, I’ve not witnessed any direct breaches of the civil service code where our relationships with Ministers are concerned, but I know we sail very close to the wind at times. For a start, it’s not unheard of for Ministerial special advisers to pressure officials to soft-pedal certain data or facts in order to present a more salubrious picture to the public.

Do we push back? Too right we do. Yes, there’s a tension between the political and the practical that always needs to be managed, even for devolved issues like health and education. But when you’re talking about independence, and all the legal, technical and social ghouls that can conjure up, civil servants look at that constitutional tightrope and all we see is cheesewire.

I’ve heard some colleagues say that independence work should be de-prioritised – or removed from our brief entirely – to create the space for more pressing policy concerns to be sorted out. Others feel perfectly comfortable with working on it, but only as long as the parameters for doing so are crystal clear. And there will be some who share the fear that will be familiar to our cousins in the UK Home Office: what if working on this does turn out either to be illegal or a massive waste of time and money?

And therein lies the rub. Despite the assurances about our honesty and impartiality given by Mr Marks, I know I’m not the only one worrying that this approach to working on the case for independence is, in the words of the Committee, ‘rushed, unclear and unstructured’, and may in the end, undermine the public’s trust in us. Perhaps an independence convention along the lines of a much broader civic – not just political – approach to working on this (as recently proposed by Ash Regan) would make us all breathe a little easier.

Meanwhile, the Scottish Government lurches along, facing genuinely frightening budget pressures, a UK government pursuing a ‘scorched earth’ approach to devolution, and multiple social, economic and reputational crises. Which is why Mr Marks is trying to cultivate a reputation for being a strong reformer of how we spend money and make decisions in response to all of those challenges. Good on him.

But if Scotland is to be an independent nation state in the foreseeable, it’s going to need a stronger civil service that, perhaps above all other qualities, is capable of speaking truth to power.

The Secret Civil Servant (@secretcivilscot) works for the Scottish Government. All fees from this series are donated to The Trussell Trust.