Somebody may have been looking for a patsy to run Scotland’s main law enforcement watchdog. But they have not found one.
For the last few months there has been a growing view that the Government would try to impose some order on the Scottish Police Authority.
After all, the body, charged with overseeing a £1 billion police budget, had been found to have “dysfunctional” leadership. As its ruling board members quarrelled, not least over transparency, it generated ugly headlines that the SNP and Scotland’s bureaucratic establishment could have done without.
So there was bound to be a temptation in Government to put in place their own man or women to sort things out. Have they done so? Not really, say insiders.
The new chief officer is Kenneth Hogg. He’s in with the bricks at St Andrews House, a career civil servant who helped design Police Scotland and its governance arrangements. So he knows how things were supposed to be.
Given that his post, a temporary one, was only advertised in Scottish justice circles, it is no surprise that it is being filled by a well kent face.
But Mr Hogg was not, several sources have said, an expected candidate. “Eyebrows were curled,” said one insider. “He isn’t just somebody who wants to put in an easy shift.” Nobody had expected somebody quite as credible to even apply for such a job. Mr Hogg, 27 years in the service and already at a senior director level at the civil service, can be under no illusions about the profile – or dangers – of this post.
And one of those dangers is even appearing to do the bidding of ministers or, perhaps worse, the civil service.
Impressions, however, matter. Mr Hogg does not just need to be independent of Government, he needs to be seen to be so.
He is an accountable officer, an official responsible for a huge budget of more than £1bn. His year-long secondment is deliberately set to cover the entire period of an annual accounts. That means if things go wrong it’s his neck on the line. Mr Hogg, even if he wanted to, would struggle to do anything but defend his own institution, even from its former (and most likely) future paymasters in the Scottish Government.
His secondment is also timed to cover a period when the SPA is supposed to transform itself, under a new-look board, chair and chief officer. The SPA, most policing sources would agree, has struggled to define a role for itself in the new law enforcement system.
But with one chief constable retired early and his successor on leave amid bullying allegations, the watchdog really does have to prove itself. That means recovering from infighting.
Mr Hogg’s job is not the only one that needs filled. He will be waiting to see who comes to chair SPA. The names of candidates being interviewed, have leaked. They include former Labour councillor Paul Rooney, who chaired the old Strathclyde police board, and former Labour health minister Susan Deacon. Such candidates suggest Mr Hogg will also not have a patsy as his boss. But watch this space.
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