THE Treasury is advertising a “unique” post for a new dedicated representative in Scotland, leading to the SNP accusing the Tories of “politicising” the civil service.
A job advert has been published for the position of “Scotland Insight and Engagement Lead”, which attracts a salary of up to £54,000 a year.
The description states the Edinburgh-based role will involve representing the Treasury in Scotland, which includes establishing a network of contacts in different sectors to “gather intelligence, understand key Scottish issues and promote HM Treasury (HMT) policy priorities”.
It goes on to state the successful applicant will support the wider work of the Treasury’s devolution team, which includes “promoting HMT interests within [UK Government] constitutional and Union policy”.
The job advert says it is “unique for HM Treasury”. The UK Government did not respond when the Sunday National asked if a similar post was being created for Wales or Northern Ireland.
An SNP spokesperson said it showed the Tories’ “cavalier attitude” to rules designed to prevent the civil service becoming politicised appears to have developed into “wholesale disregard”.
He added: “It is not the job of Treasury staff who are career civil servants to promote the Union in Scotland but Boris Johnson’s government obsession with branding everything with a Union Flag has seen them jettison any remaining sense of propriety.
“And it is yet another clear indication that – despite their rhetoric to the contrary – the Tories are gearing up for another independence referendum “It is also indicative of the increasingly sinister blurring of lines between what is right and wrong by Johnson’s government.”
One former civil servant told the Sunday National such a job was not clearly “out of line”, but it could “raise eyebrows”, saying: “The Treasury could be particularly keen in making sure it understood the realities of devolved government, the realities of what was going on in the ground in Scotland, that Scottish interests were properly taken into account in its policy formulation, and that wouldn’t seem to be a bad thing to do.
“You could say having someone from the Treasury based in Scotland would help them understand things – one of the big criticisms of Whitehall departments is that until 2014 and the EU referendum they didn’t really invest much time and effort in understanding what was going on beyond London.
“But we do know conversely that there is a very big UK Government strategy to promote the UK presence in Scotland.
“This seems to be a manifestation of that strategy.”
The former civil servant added: “One of the things they mustn’t do is stray over into political territory, so they need to be very clearly doing things that are appropriate uses of public money. It is a line which Treasury officials will have to be very careful to police.”
The Treasury was at the centre of rows over impartiality around the 2014 referendum. It was accused of running a “political dirty tricks department” spinning against Scottish independence by the SNP, after claims sensitive information about Royal Bank of Scotland plans to leave the country in the event of a Yes vote were leaked.
And in 2015 MPs on the public administration select committee accused head of the Treasury Sir Nicholas Macpherson of endangering the civil service’s reputation for neutrality by publishing his advice to Treasury ministers warning against a currency union with Scotland in February 2014.
It brushed off Macpherson’s defence that the independence referendum was an exceptional case where the “very existence of the British state was at stake”.
It stated: “The only purpose [for releasing his letter] was to use the impartial status of a permanent secretary to give authority to the advocacy of a political argument.”
The MPs also criticised senior civil servants in Edinburgh in the report, saying they wrongly allowed public money to be used for Alex Salmond’s white paper on independence, which had veered into becoming a party manifesto.
The Treasury did not respond to a request by the Sunday National for more details of the job role and for a response to the claims it risks “politicising” the civil service.
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