ALEX Salmond has suggested the people to blame for a botched misconduct probe into him are hiding behind a Scottish Government overhaul of its human resources operations.
A spokesman for the former First Minister said top official Leslie Evans and others seemed to be “trying to sub-contract their own responsibility onto their personnel department”.
The spokesperson said: “They should not be allowed to get away with it. The buck should stop with those in charge.”
It followed news that the government is spending £187,000 hiring consultants to help it develop an “HR Transformation Strategy” for its troubled People Directorate.
Read more: Scottish Government to overhaul HR operation after Alex Salmond case
Edinburgh-based PA Consulting Group is due to start work on Monday on options, targets, a “transformation roadmap”, plus an outline business case and a detailed business case.
Their task also covers “HR best practice”, suggesting shortcomings in the current set-up.
The contract was announced a month after the collapse of the in-house probe, led by the People Directorate, into two sexual misconduct claims against Mr Salmond.
After Mr Salmond challenged the process in a judicial review, it emerged the investigating officer had been in prior contact with the complainers.
The defenders in the case - Permanent Secretary Ms Evans and Scottish ministers - were forced to admit that prior contact rendered the process unlawful, unfair and “tainted by apparent bias”, which left taxpayers with a £500,000 legal bill.
The overhaul of the government’s HR operation will look at “HR services trends, and the ‘art-of-the possible’... emerging technologies (e.g. Cloud) and HR ‘best-practice’.”
Read more: Business diary of Nicola Sturgeon's top aide records gym class but not Alex Salmond meeting
The People Directorate said it wanted “to become a fit-for-purpose, modern, continuously improving HR function that makes the most of our people, processes and technology”.
A spokesperson for Mr Salmond said: “In the Court of Session case it was the decisions of the Permanent Secretary Leslie Evans as First Respondent which were found to be “unlawful”, “unfair” and “tainted by apparent bias”, at a potential cost to the Scottish taxpayers of over half a million pounds. The other respondents were Scottish Ministers.
“This latest development looks like they are trying to sub-contract their own responsibility onto their personnel department. They should not be allowed to get away with it. The buck should stop with those in charge.”
Separately, Mr Salmond last month appeared in court charged with two counts of attempted rape, nine of sexual assault, two of indecent assault and one of breach of the peace.
He strongly denies any criminality.
The Scottish Government rejected any linkage between its HR overhaul action and the failures exposed in Mr Salmond’s judicial review.
A spokesperson said: “These issues are entirely unconnected. This contract is part of a three year programme to improve the digital systems for our HR service, which started in October 2017. The business case for this phase was approved four months ago in October 2018.
“We operate a shared HR service for a number of different government agencies.
“We are transforming the service to meet the needs of the increasing customer base and to ensure the efficiency of our processes and technology.”
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