It might be that the Auditor General for Scotland, Caroline Gardner, is guilty of understatement to a remarkable degree. Equally, it might be that she has simply struggled to express her appalled astonishment at the goings on among senior staff at the former Coatbridge College. The latter would be understandable.
To say that “a case this egregious is unusual” is to say the least. Ms Gardner has found “very serious failures of governance” during her inquiries. They are “amongst the most serious” she has encountered in her time as Auditor General. She has discovered the chairman of a college board and a principal working together “to achieve a certain outcome” while their remuneration committee was kept in the dark.
The Auditor has further found that the serious concerns of the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) did not reach the committee. This was “very unlikely to be an oversight”, but rather – on the evidence – “a deliberate withholding of information”.
The upshot: former principal John Doyle, a member of his staff and five managers shared half of a £1.7 million severance pot between them while 26 others had to settle for the rest. Or as Nigel Don MSP puts it, this was a case, for Mr Doyle and friends, of “feathering one’s own nest”.
That damning verdict is not in doubt. Nor is it in doubt that, at the time, with further education colleges semi-autonomous, the SFC had no power to intervene, or even to ensure that its concerns were heard. Worst of all, or so the tax-paying public might conclude, there seems to be no legal means by which funds can be recovered, or any other action taken.
As Ms Gardener suggests, the SFC must examine this “gap” as a matter of urgency. The council might these days take responsibility for approving funding packages but the absence of legal remedies where Mr Doyle and his closest former colleagues are concerned is a glaring oversight.
Holyrood’s Public Audit Committee, already incensed, should waste no time in calling for appearances from the less-than-magnificent Coatbridge seven. There is no obligation on them to turn up, of course, but that does not mean the invitation should not be extended. The absence of Mr Doyle and any other holders of golden pay-off tickets will speak volumes. Their failure to appear should not meanwhile inhibit committee members from offering opinions on the episode.
Self-evidently, it has been a profoundly shabby affair. The further education sector has not had its problems to seek in recent years, but if this was the quality of governance at Coatbridge, you can only wonder about leadership. To see these payments engineered at a time of financial stringency –Coatbridge being one of three institutions merging to become New College Lanarkshire – is especially galling.
As the Auditor General warned earlier in the summer, the payments shared by Mr Doyle and others were “significantly higher” than guidelines allowed. Nevertheless, and despite the SFC’s concerns, there was “a lack of transparency”. To top it all, even the Auditor “encountered difficulties” in extracting information.
As Ms Gardener observes, “most public servants do not behave like this”. If there is a lesson, it should be that no public servant should ever have the opportunity. Meanwhile, we invite Mr Doyle to give us his side of the story just as soon as he feels able.
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