This blog post is about the events up to when I resigned the whip on 28th February 2014. It’s an old story but I’m publishing it for two reasons. Firstly, because it demonstrates that the SNP group was not just dysfunctional but demented and that this was hugely damaging to the city. Two senior council officers (both highly paid lawyers) also became actively involved in a ludicrous project to spread false information within the city chambers and people need to know about it. As usual there was a total lack of any oversight or interest on the part of the SNP, which should have had people available to look into what was going on. But it’s not that kind of organisation. The party membership deserve better and they also deserve some transparency. So although this last and perhaps wildest episode of my almost two-year tenure as an SNP councillor presents the party in a terrible light, the need for transparency and accountability is more important than preserving reputations. It is really not obvious that senior people in the SNP fully understand modern governance and behavioural standards.
Secondly, the SNP have always resolutely refused to acknowledge that I had any kind of valid reason for resigning the whip. As I write this in March 2021 I’ve still not managed to be properly readmitted to the party in the seven years since then. There was also what appeared to be an attempt to permanently expel me in July 2018. It’s annoying and all too typical of how the SNP is mismanaged and how it usually expends political energy on the wrong priorities. I’ll explain these other shenanigans in another blog in due course.
Additional to the above is the fact that I quit my job in 2007 and campaigned for years to win approval as a potential parliamentary candidate and not join the council which was the only option left open to me in elected politics by the SNP. The disastrous clashes in approach and personality documented below and elsewhere were all too obvious from my perspective from at least as early as 2007. But no-one would listen. See here and here for background.
The cycling budget fiasco
I’d been under pressure since being elected in May 2012, for example during the cash-gate scandal and on multiple other occasions. This particular episode around the cycling budget began on the 5th of November 2013 when an SNP transport committee back-bencher, Cllr Bill Henderson, decided to approach the local paper to criticise our popular and successful cycling policy in this article – see also the front page splash below. Cllr Henderson had unsuccessfully challenged me to be the transport vice convener at our spring 2013 AGM and, despite being defeated, occasionally just pretended to be the transport spokesperson anyway for some reason. His comments were not just a denunciation of the transport budget he’d voted for but also a breach of SNP group standing orders which prevent public criticism of agreed party policy. It was mad. The Green party spokesperson had to be contacted by the Evening News to defend SNP policy.
Even Cllr Henderson might have realised that he had gone too far this time as he had created a problem for his friends Cllrs Steve Cardownie (the group leader) and Gavin Barrie (the group whip) as they now needed to find a reason why he shouldn’t be disciplined. I just wanted him kicked off the transport committee where, along with Cllr Barrie, he had made a complete pest of himself at every opportunity since the AGM eight months previously. They all came up with a rather amazing fairy tale that would dominate and paralyse the SNP group discussions for the next three months.
As this rather demented email exchange shows, Cllr Henderson’s story had evolved significantly from expressing a view in the Evening News that pothole repairs were more important than cycling infrastructure. He now had a new theory that money had been nefariously “siphoned off” from the transport budget. So to get himself off the hook, a backbench councillor had dreamed up a story of incompetent and/or dishonest officers misappropriating millions of pounds under the noses of councillors. As can be seen, Cllr Gavin Barrie was immediately sympathetic to his friend’s new version of events. Nothing came as a surprise in those days. The SNP group which I was part of just caused trouble all the time and should never have been let anywhere near an administration role. A Labour/Tory coalition would have been much better for the city but, unfortunately for the residents and council officers, this wasn’t permitted.
The background was that in February 2012 the council had very publicly and to much praise announced the policy of £1m (or 5% of the transport budget) for cycling and then it had simply been implemented. It was very widely covered in the media such as here and could not have been clearer. As 5% clearly equated to around £1m, the “transport budget” (less major projects such as the trams) was therefore around £20m. It may sound simple but it wasn’t for the SNP councillors who voted for it.
Cllr Henderson’s version of events was that he was entitled to take a line from the council’s audited financial statements that said “transport”, work out 5% of it and complain when he got about £20k rather than £1m. Cllrs Cardownie and Cllr Barrie summoned me to a deeply unpleasant meeting and put it to me that Cllr Henderson was right and that I should just own up to it. Cllr Barrie was clutching some financial accounts and pointing at a number. I politely told them their theory was garbage. I used to earn a living auditing local authority financial accounts as it happens, not that it helped.
Over the three months from November 2013 Cllr Cardownie, supported by Cllrs Barrie, Henderson and the group chair Cllr Mike Bridgman, also took unauthorised control of this and several other transport issues to campaign to “prove” that Cllr Henderson’s fantasy story was true. It was one of the dominant topics at every group meeting, every week, and I could only sit and watch and try to get a word in when I could. As the democratically elected transport spokesperson I should have had my position protected by the group standing orders but in truth several articles of the standing orders were regularly ignored by the group whip year after year.
For example following a (similarly deeply unpleasant) “Special Group Executive” meeting on cycling spend on the 14th of November 2013 the following was minuted on the 25th November 2013.
3.Office Bearer’s Reports
a. Leader – S Cardownie reported on the following:
Transport Budget – He reiterated that after the recent meeting with G Barrie, B Henderson, J Orr and himself, there had been an agreement to await information from Officials and then meet again to determine the next steps forward. He also reported he would give a report to the Group (verbal report) and not commission a report as indicated in J Orr’s emails of 24 November 2013.
The matter of the transport/cycling budgets had also been raised at that mornings Chief Executive/Leaders meeting and [“Mr X”] had taken ownership; promising to prepare a report for the Council leader and Deputy Council Leader with his findings. S Cardownie would issue this report to Group Members once he had received it, for discussion at a future Group meeting. This was AGREED.
As part of the plan to vindicate Cllr Henderson, Cllrs Barrie and Cardownie began approaching senior officers across different parts of the council to persuade them that Cllr Henderson was right and that they (the officers) were wrong. The senior Transport officers were the first group to be summoned for a discussion. They feared the worst and joked about “getting their P45s” as they climbed the stairs to the SNP rooms. They were bewildered by the whole misappropriation theory and bravely refused to budge. The atmosphere was surreal and I just looked on in amazement.
The chief accountant was next to be approached but he was a decent robust guy and he wasn’t willing to cave in either. So there was only one option left for the three rogue SNP councillors. This was to approach the council’s senior lawyers for support for the misappropriation theory.
Initially I been confident that I could see them off as I’d checked the view of the council’s top lawyer (“Mr X” who’s name is removed in the extract from the above minutes) and he’d told me by text message on the 11th of December that the campaign was “just silly” and that such silliness was widespread. This was an understatement. The SNP group were preventing the council from functioning properly across the board. Just the focus of senior officers’ time on madcap theories like Cllr Henderson’s was hugely damaging.
However the same lawyer was present at the meeting with transport officers and, presumably detecting that this campaign might grow to threaten his own welfare, he was already backtracking on his “just silly” position. It was incredible to see just how mirky were the dealings of a “legitimate” SNP group in the city chambers of the capital city of Scotland, half a mile from the parliament and the SNP HQ.
Naturally the usual haranguing tactics were widely used throughout this period and it was deeply humiliating. I was subject to treatment that would be illegal in a conventional workplace but it was impossible to interest the SNP in my welfare. They have never employed a properly qualified HR or governance officer so there was no-one to approach in the HQ or elsewhere. Given that Alex Salmond was the boss, inappropriate and thuggish workplace behaviour was considered to be an occupational hazard.
The tipping point was the report, mentioned in the minutes above, which was supplied on the 17th of January from the council’s top lawyers who Cllr Cardownie and others had met on the 6th and 13th of January; meetings which I, as the SNP group’s transport spokesperson, was excluded from. The Transport convener Lesley Hinds wasn’t invited either but she didn’t care as it wasn’t a real meeting.
The full 5-page report is astonishing and is attached here. It was neither dated nor signed by the author, and was headed “Legally Privileged and Confidential” in bold and capitals for effect. The author evidently didn’t want to be associated with it and didn’t want it circulated. He had good reason. It was a disgraceful piece of writing from a senior officer drawing down well over £100k per year with input from another council lawyer who was also on a huge salary. Here are some extracts with comments:
In summary, the lawyer was suggesting that even if the former transport convener Cllr Gordon Mackenzie regarded the 5% figure as equating to £1m per annum, we simply have no way of knowing whether the rest of the councillors though that too! Or perhaps the old trusism applied: it’s difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it. Everything about the report suggests that it was written under duress, would be a breach of article 4.14 of the Member / Officer protocol if true.
The email trail with the report and subsequent correspondence are worth reading and are here. The report pondered how to proceed “in the event of a formal challenge to the Council decision” yet the only person threatening such a challenge was the backbench loose cannon Cllr Henderson who’s outburst on 5th November had triggered this fiasco in the first place. He proclaimed himself worried and pondered whether something illegal might have happened. It sounded like he wanted to call in the cops.
The 17th January email containing the report was signed off with “happy to discuss” but author flatly refused to discuss it with me although he’d discussed it with numerous others in the SNP including Cllr Henderson according to the email.
So a senior council officer had produced and distributed a report which was: unsigned, undated, headed with a legal warning to minimise circulation, lacking fundamental facts but including dubious conclusions, backed up with private briefings to councillors without transport responsibilities and all to support a premise which he had described as “just silly” a month earlier. This for me was a serious disciplinary offense. Officers are not permitted to collude with councillors to produce fake reports in order to discredit and undermine other councillors.
Of course there was never going to be any change to the actual cycling budget. The only purpose was some internal SNP theatrics that would vindicate one councillor and damage another.
Following the dodgy report and some private briefings on the matter, the inevitable conclusion was self-proclaimed victory for Cllrs Cardownie, Barrie and Henderson as noted in the minutes of 27th January 2014. And my obvious incompetence at not noticing this apparent misappropriation of millions of pounds did not go unnoticed. The relevant extract is as follows:
2.2.2.2.9.a. Application of the cycling budget – S Cardownie reported after discussion with senior officials, it was confirmed B Henderson had been correct in determining a misallocation of the transport budget to the benefit of cycling budget.
As the council’s lawyers (the author of the report and his assistant) had provided totally contradictory advice I thought about reporting them to their professional institute, as lawyers have to be scrupulously honest. But I didn’t have the heart to do it and just didn’t want to be that guy. Also I wasn’t then in the business of going public on impropriety or bringing bad publicity to the SNP. I’d had enough of the toxic atmosphere in the city chambers and was thinking about stepping down as a councillor entirely and just emigrating like I’d tried to ten years earlier. The behaviour of several SNP councillors was just intolerable and sitting anywhere near them became impossible.
After resigning the whip at the end of February I requested an internal audit report on the cycling budget. The auditors didn’t find anything wrong with the budget or even a single high-risk finding. It is summarised here. There was no misappropriation.
The response from SNP HQ was that all this was normal and I just had to put up with it. I had kept them very well informed. The SNP HQ only exists in the imagination of the staff and senior politicians. It doesn’t serve as a conventional HQ when it comes to matters like providing oversight and addressing poor behaviour. It’s just a media and election-running organisation.
What annoys me most about this fiasco is that it was entirely foreseeable. The idea that my career in elected politics should be restricted to standing at council elections came out of the blue following a meeting with Ian McCann, Kevin Pringle and Allison Hunter in late 2005 and which was reinforced by another meeting with Bruce Crawford and Ian Hudghton in early 2006. I thought it was crazy at the time and dedicated most of the 6 years which followed those meetings to trying to overturn the decision. What I did to earn such hostility remains unclear.
Further Gavin Barrie case studies from around this time
There were plenty more examples of political thuggery that wore me down prior to resigning the whip. This email from 3rd December 2013 from Cllr Barrie to undermine progress with the solar co-op is well worth a read. Plenty of colleagues were copied in so they got the message: do not vote Orr at the forthcoming AGM. No-one in their right mind would object to the Solar Coop and it was a huge success when launched. The only objections to it I even heard came from the SNP group whip and his pals even though it was supposed to be a top priority for the Labour/SNP coalition (see pledge 53). Stakeholders working with the council often wonder why it is so hard to get anything done, well if they read this blog they will soon work it out.
Cllr Barrie also insisted on being briefed around the multitude of initiatives around our energy policy (see here) with a view to finding weaknesses he could exploit and progress he could stall. The many verbal discussions and harangues I had to endure were much more frank and nastier than what was put in writing and so are not evidenced. Everyone knows about it and it had been going on for years, for example here. Cllr Barrie was simply replicating his boss’s “abrasive” tactics.
Another gem of an email from Cllr Barrie came on 16th December 2013 as attached here. It has to be read to be believed. It starts “I see that once again you are featured in the Evening News regarding cycling in the City.” Promoting cycling was literally my job. His concerns centered around a handful of stenciled cycle logos on pavements in the city centre. How’s that for prioritising? As a toddler Cllr Barrie had perhaps had a collision with a bike on a pavement sparking this curious animosity. The modus operandi was to be so obnoxious and obstructive, on even the tiniest of matters, that I would either stand down or that I would be undermined enough to lose out on re-election. This was the primary focus of the SNP group leadership for around a year up to March 2014.
The Leith Highline Bridge which never was
Once the cycling budget episode was safely resolved in Cllr Cardownie’s favour he then decided that he needed to assume control of numerous further transport matters. Here is another example from the group minutes. The Transport Convener, Lesley Hinds, wanted to support the creation of a pedestrian walkway where a rail bridge used to be at the bottom of Leith Walk. It was always unlikely to be realised (see also here) but proved so “controversial” to the SNP that the group leader had to seize control of it, escalate it to the top of the agenda and discuss it with several senior councillors and officers. The “City Centre Bus Services meeting” mentioned below was a similar episode – there were dozens. As mentioned above I chucked in the towel at the end of February and haven’t spoken more than a few words to any of the three mentioned above since.
I have quite a few more examples of similar impropriety from around this time and will write them up as and when I have the time and can lay my hands on the documentation.
MrJimOrr 