UK NEWS

TOP SCOTS CIVIL SERVANT IN LIMO SCANDAL

Sir John Elvidge, right, used the limo 318 times

Sunday June 8,2008

By Ben Borland

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SCOTLAND’S top civil servant was under fire last night for using a chauffeur-driven limo for trips to the cinema, restaurants and even a Champions League match at Ibrox.

Sir John Elvidge - who earns £155,000 a year as permanent secretary to the Scottish Government - made more than 200 journeys in an official ministerial car in just nine months.

Critics said he had placed an “extremely large burden” on the taxpayer and called for him instead to use taxis, public transport or even walk for short trips across Edinburgh.

On Friday, it emerged that ministers and senior officials made almost 3,000 journeys between May 2007 and January 2008 - although this was 500 fewer than the Labour/Lib Dem administration in the same period the year before.

Sir John made a total 318 journeys, more than three times as many as other top mandarins put together. On 135 occasions, he was collected or dropped off at a “personal address” - believed to be his home in Sciennes, around a mile south of Edinburgh city centre.

During last summer’s festival season, he was driven to and from official engagements at Edinburgh Castle, as well as the Playhouse, Festival and Kings theatres. He also made two trips to Cineworld in Fountainbridge during the Edinburgh International Film Festival.

Sir John - dubbed Scotland’s ‘Sir Humphrey’ - also visited ten of the capital’s best restaurants, including Michelin-starred The Kitchin in Leith, and 16 hotels, including a one-mile trip from his home to the nearby five-star Prestonfield Hotel.

On October 23, the London-born Oxford graduate was driven from Edinburgh to Ibrox - where Rangers were taking on Barcelona in the Champions League - and then back home later that night.

Most journeys were short hops around the capital, including several return trips from his office at St Andrew’s House to the Scottish Parliament - a journey which takes around eight minutes on foot.

Other senior Scottish Government civil servants, including HM chief inspector of constabulary Paddy Tomkins , NHS Scotland chief executive Kevin Woods and education director-general Philip Rycroft, made a total of 78 official car trips during the nine months.

However, many of those were cross-country - including journeys from Edinburgh to Aviemore, Dumfries, Irvine and Dundee - which critics said could have been made just as easily by train.

Sir John was appointed to Scotland’s top government post by his friend Jack McConnell in 2004, although since May last year he has built up a close working relationship with Alex Salmond’s SNP administration.

Last night, Mark Wallace, campaign director of the Taxpayers’ Alliance, said that Sir John had charged a “shocking amount” of limo journeys to the public purse.

He said: “Sir John is very well paid as it is, so taxpayers are bearing an extremely large burden while he enjoys chauffeur-driven trips. At a time when everyone else is having to tighten their belts its highly questionable why we should also be paying for his trips to and from restaurants.”

And Green MSP Patrick Harvie said: “It does seem that whichever lot of Scottish Ministers gets elected, they ‘go native’ on transport the moment the Sir Humphreys start working on them. Perhaps this evidence tells us why.

“Scots are increasingly commuting to work by public transport, by bike, or on foot, and we certainly don't expect the taxpayer to send us a car, any more than we do when we go to the movies or out for a meal.”

However, a Scottish Government spokesman said Sir John often represented the Scottish Government at meetings and official events, and it was appropriate for him to use one of the ministerial fleet of Volvos.

SCANDAL, WHAT SCANDAL?

08.06.08, 10:08am

Journalists are in some danger, one feels, of wearing out certain words the meaning of which they seem to be ill acquainted with.

I know what a scandal is. It is not a scandal that I am not chauffeur-driven around or that Joe Bloggs is not chauffeur-driven around, because neither he nor I need to carry around with us on official business or even to and from home and elsewhere large quantities of official documents marked "in confidence", "confidential" or "secret", etc., the loss or mislaying of which on a no. 9 bus or elsewhere would be a scandal and would be pounced upon as such by your newspaper and others.

Joe Bloggs and I are not in charge of the civil service in Scotland, nor do we have ministerial responsibilities, which are no more confined to an office than they are confined to office hours. Senior civil servants and government ministers, as you very well know, have to carry sensitive government papers around with them and must do so securely.

Or perhaps you think they should not carry such papers around with them securely. Perhaps you actually think that they should wander around the streets with them tucked under their arms and perhaps you will not mind and will quite understand when government documents go astray in one way or another in the course of numerous time-consuming perambulations in all weathers around the not notably safe streets of our cities.

Government business is urgent and needs to be secure. At levels of the highest responsibility this requires secure transportation. The present Scottish Government is plainly doing what it can to keep this to a minimum. It is plainly doing better than its predecessors.

Any suggestion that civil-service and political heads of government departments should not be chauffeur-driven for the reasons stated above is completely ill conceived.

• Posted by: domhnalldomhnallach • Report Comment

CHICKEN FEED

08.06.08, 10:05am

Although this is obviously disgraceful, I'll bet there are a lot of Scottish MPs happy to see that the situation is diverting attention from what would be much worse indiscretions. In terms of wasted money, this is likely to be chicken feed.

• Posted by: chevin • Report Comment