Chamber and committees

Okay. We might return to that before we finish.

My next question is for Jonathan Athow. The Audit Scotland report that accompanies the NAO report made a point about good governance and assurance arrangements and the need to keep those under continual review. It said that the process should include

“ongoing consideration of the frequency of third-party data checks and Service Level Agreement performance measures, such as setting compliance target levels for Scottish taxpayers without ‘S’ prefixes.”

Why has HMRC still not introduced a target in relation to the number of missing S prefixes? Will it do so at some point in the future?

I welcome Graham Simpson, who is an MSP for Central Scotland and who joins us for item 2, which is consideration of the 2020-21 audit of South Lanarkshire College.

I am pleased to welcome the Auditor General for Scotland, Stephen Boyle, to give evidence to the committee. We are also joined by Rebecca Seidel, who is a performance audit and best value manager at Audit Scotland, and by Lucy Nutley, who is a director at Mazars and who I think carried out the audit on the ground at the college.

I invite the Auditor General to give us a short opening statement.

Okay. Obviously, we will await that response with interest.

I want to go back to something that Alyson Stafford said. As I understand the process, amendments to the Scotland Act 1998 provided for the setting of a Scottish rate of income tax from April 2017 onwards. HMRC collects and administers Scottish income tax, HMRC’s accounts are audited by the National Audit Office, and the Comptroller and Auditor General is required to report to the Scottish Parliament on HMRC’s administration of Scottish income tax. His seventh report on Scottish income tax was laid in Parliament on 14 January 2022. However, you told us earlier that you do not take any account of the NAO’s estimates of Scottish income tax. Why do you ignore that important body of evidence and rely solely on the Scottish Fiscal Commission’s estimates?

Okay. Maybe as DG for the Scottish exchequer, you could write to let the committee know what are the sources that are used.

Yes.

Okay. Thank you.

On that note of clarity, I thank our witnesses Jackie McGeehan, Jonathan Athow, Alyson Stafford and Fiona Thom for the evidence that they have given. We appreciate their time and their contributions.

We will consider what steps to take and how we can keep a monitoring eye on this important work in future. As we have said, we want it, above all, to be evidence led. Whether it is around people’s behavioural patterns, compliance rates, collection rates or people fleeing the country in order to evade or avoid tax, those things are important to us, so I thank you very much for your openness in discussing them with us this morning.

Good morning. I welcome everyone to the 14th meeting of the Public Audit Committee in 2022. Under the first item on our agenda do we agree to take items 4, 5 and 6 in private?

Members indicated agreement.

On the cabinet secretary’s points, if a compensation scheme would be so divisive and so difficult to do, how does he think that Boris Johnson will be able to do it? Secondly, he mentioned the independent review; it is clear that the Scott report was silent on such a scheme because it was not within its remit to consider that.

Among those who are attending today is Professor Jim Phillips from the University of Glasgow, who provided advice to the Scott review. He is in favour of a compensation scheme. We know that Dennis Canavan, who was a member of the Scott review, is in favour of a compensation scheme, and as I alluded to earlier, the NUM is in favour of a compensation scheme. They see this as an opportunity for the Parliament to lead the way, not to be divisive, and I ask the cabinet secretary and members of the committee to think on that.

In his earlier remarks, the cabinet secretary said that, as a student at the University of Dundee, he was in favour of the miners. I ask him to reflect on what that student would think of him now, 38 years later, as the cabinet secretary who has the ability to financially redress the wrongs of that era. Surely the younger Keith Brown would have looked to the older Keith Brown to take decisive action and to go beyond the symbolic pardon in the bill.

I am accused by some people of wanting to go beyond the intentions of the bill. I am guilty as charged, because I want the bill to have not just a symbolic effect, but a moral effect, a practical effect, a financial effect and a meaningful effect. That is what the Parliament should be aspiring to do, and that is what amendment 16 is intended to do.

I say to Fulton MacGregor and others, as I said in the stage 1 debate,

“If not now, when? If not us, who?”—[Official Report, 31 March 2022; c 94.]

The cabinet secretary brought a degree of party politics into the discussion. I am reminded that, over the past few weeks, the First Minister has been riding round Scotland on a campaign bus with a message on the side about sending a message to Boris. In a press interview, she said:

“this election is an opportunity for people to send a message to Boris Johnson that they find his behaviour and response completely unacceptable.”

The First Minister has previously said of the Prime Minister, to whom the cabinet secretary is now looking to provide a compensation scheme,

“the truth is a disposable commodity”.

She has called him “corrupt” and a “liar”, yet that is who the cabinet secretary is expecting the Parliament to vest its faith in. More than that, that is who the cabinet secretary is asking the former miners, miners’ families and mining communities to vest their faith in. I do not think that that is a credible argument to pursue.

The cabinet secretary mentioned other schemes that have been put in place. These days, I take an interest in financial and audit matters much more than I did previously. There is a note in the annual accounts of the Scottish Government about redress for survivors of historical child abuse cases. The Redress for Survivors (Historical Child Abuse in Care) (Scotland) Act 2021 was passed in March 2021 and received royal assent on 23 April 2021. The note in the accounts says that Redress Scotland

“will consider applications and make determinations, which may include an offer of a redress payment to be made by the Scottish Government. It is not possible to determine the number of applicants or the level of payments likely to be made under the scheme.”

Therefore, it seems perfectly reasonable that we can agree to the principle of a scheme without getting to the point of being able to determine the number of applicants or even the level of the payments that are likely to be made.

I will finish on this point. We have an opportunity before us to set an example and—to borrow the words of the NUM—to “lead the way”. We can be a beacon for the rest of the UK. We can take what I believe is an historic opportunity. The strike ended 37 years ago, and all the pits have long since closed. For new generations, this might seem like old history, but for those of us who lived through it in coalfield communities, as I did, who were part of miners support groups and who saw all the strife, unrest and difficulties that those communities faced, and the hardships that were inflicted on people by the justice system, those memories will stay with us. That is why now is the time to open up dialogue and discussion about the establishment of a compensation scheme for the miners and their families. [Applause.]

I thank the committee for giving me the opportunity to speak to amendment 17, and I welcome those who have joined us in the public gallery. We are, in the end, a people’s Parliament, and we need to listen to and reflect the views of the people who send us here.

Amendment 17 seeks to add to those pardoned, miners who were convicted of an offence under section 7 of the Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act 1875. The date reminds us that that law is quite archaic; it is a law from Victorian times that goes back to the days when the Prime Minister was Benjamin Disraeli. It was introduced following a gas workers’ strike in 1872 and, at the time, its intent was to remove the criminal law and the crime of conspiracy from employment relations.

However, the truth of the matter is that the act was very, very rarely used in the 20th century. One of the most notorious occasions of its use was in connection with the Shrewsbury pickets in 1973; the people involved included Des Warren and Ricky Tomlinson, who, just last year, had their criminal convictions overturned in the Royal Courts of Justice. That is one reason for many people thinking that the 1875 act is quite a discredited piece of legislation. Amendment 17, therefore, attempts to iron out a wrinkle in the legislation and to improve it.

However, I am quite clear that the amendment also tackles an inequality, an injustice and a form of discrimination that appears to have been at work, given that it was only miners who lived in the Strathclyde area who were convicted under the 1875 act. As the cabinet secretary has said, according to the best records that we have, 16 people were charged with the offence in Strathclyde, and the maximum fine that was received was £50. That suggests that the activity did not include the acts of violence that have been referred to. If the activities that the people charged under the 1875 act were involved in had taken place elsewhere—in Fife, Clackmannanshire or the Lothians—those people would have been convicted under breach of the peace, and they will therefore be granted pardons as a result of the bill. The 1875 act covers public offences in the same way that breach of the peace does. It is a statutory form of breach of the peace, and it is equivalent.

Reference has been made to the language in the 1875 act. Section 14 of the Public Order Act 1986 talks about the police being given the right to disperse crowds if there is

“intimidation of others with a view to compelling them not to do an act they have a right to do, or to do an act they have a right not to do”.

The word “compelling” is contained in both acts. My concern is that those in Strathclyde who were charged under one act will not be covered by the pardon, while those charged under an equivalent act in another part of Scotland will be. In difficult circumstances—after all, the bill relates to events that happened 37 or 38 years ago—we are all attempting to ensure that the bill is the best that we can make it.

I am clear that amendment 17 needs to be incorporated into the bill, because, in my view, it would be irrational and unjust not to include it.

Amendment 16 seeks to establish a compensation scheme or schemes to make some financial redress to people who will be pardoned under the bill when it becomes an act. It has been suggested to me that the scheme could cover people who were arrested and not charged, those who were arrested, charged and convicted, and those who were arrested, charged, convicted and dismissed.

Of course, the bill as it stands refers to those people who were convicted being pardoned. The Scott review points out that the best estimate that we have is that, between March 1984 and March 1985, 1,400 miners were arrested and around 500 miners were convicted, and we know that 206 miners were sacked as a result of those convictions.

Because of the passage of time, some of those affected are now deceased, which is why amendment 16 proposes that a legal representative or executor—maybe a next of kin—should be eligible for financial redress under a compensation scheme or schemes. The truth is that many of those who have died, died without a will, which is why there are issues around the need for legal representation.

Amendment 16 also calls for the rules of a scheme to be laid before the Parliament. I want to go back to why I think that that is important and remind people why we are here considering this proposed legislation. Today is 10 May, and on this day in 1984, 290 miners—eight coachloads—were stopped on the A80 at Stepps by Strathclyde Police. They were charged under sections 17 and 41 of the Police (Scotland) Act 1967 and with breach of the peace, and they were then fingerprinted, photographed and held in police custody. That is a salutary reminder that many of those held in police stations across Glasgow had never set foot in a police station before, never mind been incarcerated in a cell, and many of them never set foot in a police station afterwards. That was an extraordinary event and an extraordinary act by Strathclyde Police.

Many of us have heard the harrowing story of Doddie McShane, who took the rap for a broken window—a crime that he did not commit—and as a result lost his job. However, more than that, the late Doddie’s son, James, has testified about visiting his father in jail in Saughton as a result of the charge. He has movingly told us that his father was in jail sharing a cell with someone who was in there for armed robbery and someone who was in there for attempted murder. The family and friends of Doddie McShane are with us this morning.

Also with us is Jim Tierney, who was on one of those buses in Stepps 38 years ago today. He later spent 26 days and nights in Barlinnie and was sacked and blacklisted.

The Scott report, which is the genesis of the bill, points out:

“what sets these cases apart in our view is the disproportionality of cumulative impacts caused by dismissal following on from dealings with some aspect of the justice systems, especially convictions.”

The report goes on to say:

“No one has suggested to us that dismissal was an appropriate, reasonable or measured response to what were commonly relatively minor acts of public disorder punished by modest financial penalties imposed by a court.”

At the weekend, Mick McGahey’s son, who was himself a striking miner who was arrested repeatedly and sacked, said:

“The miners and their families, the women and children who bore the brunt of what happened, had their future stolen from them. It’s only right they are compensated for that. What was done to those men was one of the worst injustices in Scottish history.”

Members of the committee and other members of the Scottish Parliament will have received a communication from the National Union of Mineworkers. The cabinet secretary referred to the discussions and constructive dialogue that he has had with the NUM. This is what the NUM is saying about a compensation scheme. A letter from Nicky Wilson, the national president of the National Union of Mineworkers, says in plain terms:

“The NUM wants to see compensation paid to miners across the UK. We believe that this bill provides a historic opportunity for Scotland to lead the way by including a compensation scheme for those miners, and we will continue to advocate for a public inquiry.”

He goes on:

“Time is of the essence. Many miners have passed away and time is running out for others who were convicted. We understand the Scottish Government wishes to pass the bill to enact the pardon and is concerned that including a compensation scheme may delay this, but the pandemic has demonstrated the speed with which legislation can be enacted when the issue is afforded priority. We believe this is the time for priority to be given to these historic wrongs, including a clause in the legislation in support of the establishment of a compensation scheme, which would cause no delay and indicate the Government’s intention to act in this area.”

At the end of the cabinet secretary’s opening remarks in moving that the general principles of the bill be agreed to at stage 1, he said:

“as a society, we want to pardon those convictions. In that way, we are recognising the hardship and suffering of entire communities and bringing some comfort and reconciliation to the many who were involved.”—[Official Report, 31 March 2022; c 87.]

Recognising the hardship and suffering demands action and not just a symbolic pardon, so I ask the cabinet secretary to come forward with a financial resolution in time for the stage 3 debate on the bill. He knows, and members of the committee know, that it is only he who can do that, so I call on him this morning, in front of the committee, to give an undertaking that he will do that, and that he will work with the National Union of Mineworkers and others to make sure that Parliament gets a vote on what is seen by many as a glaring omission from this important piece of legislation.