In the first decade of devolution a tale unfolded about how the Scottish liberal elites routinely trample over the basic human rights of marginalised communities when they decide they’re just not worth the hassle.

In 2005, the Labour-led Government had lost an appeal against a prisoner's compensation for being forced to slop out, the practice in which inmates use buckets in their cells as toilets. The prisoner had been awarded £2450 after successfully arguing that the practice breached his rights under the European Convention on Human Rights.

It also emerged that the Government had been warned repeatedly about the disgusting conditions inside some jails – including slopping out – but had chosen to ignore them. They had even been given a substantial EU grant to end slopping out, but had opted to spend this money elsewhere. The resultant flood of similar claims – more than 1000 – eventually cost the government millions of pounds more than the cash they’d received to fix the problem.

Four years later - by which time the SNP had come to power - a tawdry deal was struck between Scotland and the UK to stop inmates receiving compensation for slopping out. Emergency laws were railroaded through Westminster and Holyrood to introduce a one-year time bar on claims. By then, compensation claims had amounted to more than £11m and almost £70m had been set aside for future claims.

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Now, you may hold a rather different view about such matters than me: that when offenders lose their liberty they should also lose their human rights. I prefer to be led by Sir Winston Churchill on this matter.

In a speech to the House of Commons in 1910 about the treatment of crime and criminals, the then Home Secretary said: “The mood and temper of the public in regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of the civilisation of any country.”

The callous disregard for those whom the political classes in Scotland deem to be less than fully human has been evident throughout the entire devolution era. It reveals a troubling mind-set: that poor or otherwise very vulnerable people are less likely to have the funds, knowledge and connections to defend themselves.

Moreover, they are less likely to vote and possess little of the lobbying power required to access political decision-makers. The bulk of these across Scotland and the UK are still skewed in favour of corporate interests; university-educated culture warriors and boutique middle-class ‘progressives’ whose radicalism is measured in pronouns and artisan coffee consumption.

This was evident last week when the Daily Record revealed that the Scottish Government had casually owned up to spending a £97million Westminster grant to fix unsafe cladding, post-Grenfell, on other projects. Seven years after the Grenfell disaster, in which 72 people lost their lives, ministers still don’t know how many buildings are affected in Scotland.

This seemed to be emblematic of the callous disregard for the lives of poor people distressingly outlined in Sir Martin Moore-Bick’s 1700-page report into the Grenfell fire. This highlighted escalating spirals of failure across government and embedded private-sector interests.

Former Deputy First Minister and Justice Minister Jim Wallace, now Lord WallaceFormer Deputy First Minister and Justice Minister Jim Wallace, now Lord Wallace (Image: PA)

Among the many previous warnings about the quality of cladding materials in the years before Grenfell were those following a fire at Garnock Court in Irvine. As in other instances across the UK, cladding found to be flammable wasn’t banned because it had met then British safety standards.

The class-based disregard of our civic authorities for marginalised groups and communities has also become evident in the customs and practices of Police Scotland. Our national law and order agency says that its purpose “is to improve the safety and wellbeing of people, places and communities in Scotland, focusing on Keeping People Safe in line with our values of integrity, fairness and respect and with human rights at the heart of everything we do”.

Such lofty aspirations though, do not apply to women living inside Scotland’s women’s prison estate. In a letter to Holyrood’s Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee the force insisted that “allowing individuals charged or convicted of rape or attempted rape to ‘self-declare’ their sex fosters ‘a strong sense of belonging’.”

For the avoidance of doubt, thousands of years of science and the overwhelming majority of reasonable people know that “individuals charged or convicted of rape or attempted rape” have penises and, as such, are adult human males.

The Herald’s Political Editor, Andrew Learmonth, revealed that the policy analysis group Murray Blackburn Mackenzie had submitted a petition in 2021 expressing concerns that an offender who was born male but self-identifies as female would be recorded in crime statistics as female.

The group had warned that allowing men to identify as women would skew those figures and that recording sex accurately “matters for data accuracy and trust in official statistics, public policy, media reporting, research, and for trust in public bodies".

Police Scotland insisted though, that their approach was “consistent with the values of the organisation”. What this means then is that Scotland’s national police force believes that the feelings of rapists should be given priority over their female victims.

Police Scotland know more than anyone else that the overwhelming majority of women in Scotland’s criminal justice system are there owing to complex mental health needs; addiction problems rooted in coercive and abusive relationships and financial crises arising from this. If Police Scotland think these women’s needs must be subordinate to those of violent men then the organisation is not fit for purpose.

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This sinister targeting of our most deprived and marginalised groups now forms part of the DNA of the Scottish Government. Its favoured agencies and public sector glove puppets earn too much money to risk it all by pushing back on something they know to be truly wicked.

Nowhere is this more conspicuous than in Scotland’s multi-million-pound addiction recovery sector. Here, the failed policies of a swollen suite of high-earning executives and government ministers have condemned thousands of poor Scots to premature deaths caused by addiction. Their anointed lifestyles rest on excluding those who have a genuine care for victims of addiction like Annemarie Ward, founder of FAVOR (Faces and Voices of Recovery).

Last month, Ms Ward admitted defeat in her struggle to force the SNP and their addiction moguls to do the right thing. Her parting condemnation of them applies across all many areas of Scottish public life.

“They have spent millions creating an addiction industry employing a vast army whose focus is ‘harm reduction’ instead of recovery. For years I’ve spoken up about the spin, the lies, the pulling the wool over the public’s eyes. I can’t stomach it a moment longer.”