FOI and Equal Pay
Here's a copy of a letter I sent to the Leader of South Lanarkshire Council - Councillor Eddie McAvoy - earlier today. In my view, the arguments in favour of Councillor McAvoy resigning his position as Council Leader are overwhelming - because the buck stops with him and no one else.
Dear Councillor McAvoy
FOI and Equal Pay
I thought I should drop you a note in the wake of South Lanarkshire Council's abject defeat at the UK Supreme Court earlier in the week.
As you know, the Council has been fighting tooth and nail to keep this pay information secret for years, but has now had to accept the that the public has a right to such information and that local government - as well as national government - has a duty to operate in an open and transparent manner.
I was struck by your reported comments that the Council's lawyers are responsible for getting South Lanarkshire into this mess, which I take with a big pinch of salt I have to say as I have always believed that the buck stops with political leaders - not their senior officials or external advisers.
So, I will be writing to the Council's chief executive within the next few days with another FOI request which will ask for details of the advice that the Council actually received to fight this case all the way to the UK Supreme Court at such huge public expense, of course.
I will be particularly interested to discover what kind of 'risk assessment' the Council carried out and what recommendations were made by senior officials because South Lanarkshire's case was laughably weak and was described by one of the Supreme Court judges as being like something out of Alice in Wonderland. I think the public are entitled to know more about the quality of advice being offered to the Council and what role, if any, these senior officials and advisers continue to play in relation to FOI and Equal Pay.
On the wider issue of Equal Pay, I think I may be right in saying that you may be the only council leader in Scotland to have been in post continuously since July 1999 when the 1999 Single Status (Equal Pay) Agreement in Scotland was introduced.
As you will recall, this was hailed as a 'landmark agreement' at the time and was intended to sweep away years of pay discrimination against many female dominated council jobs - jobs such as carers, classroom assistants, cleaning, catering and clerical workers - jobs which are the backbone of every council in Scotland.
Now if the 1999 Single Status (Equal Pay) Agreement was implemented as originally intended, by raising the pay of low paid women workers, the reality is that these traditionally female jobs would have been earning £9.00 an hour and more - many years ago. Which did not happen of course because South Lanarkshire, in my opinion, tried to implement Single Status and Equal Pay on the cheap.
In 2013 South Lanarkshire is trumpeting its support for a Living Wage of £7.56 an hour, but in my view this represents a complete betrayal of Scotland's low paid council workers who could have, and should have, been earning more than that hourly rate a full ten years ago - during a period of plenty when council budgets in Scotland more than doubled (between 1997 and 2007).
To put these issues into proper perspective, just consider that in the year 2000 Scottish councils, including South Lanarkshire, entered into a new pay agreement for school teachers in Scotland (the McCrone Agreement) which provided for an eye watering pay increase of 23.5% in a single year and cost the public purse £800 million a year thereafter.
In other words much more than the estimated cost of implementing the 1999 Single Status (Equal Pay) Agreement in full, which was less than £500 million a year and would have had the added benefit of eliminating the need for the crazy and expensive system of working tax credits.
In recent years I have often wondered how a Labour-led Council such as South Lanarkshire can square this kind of behaviour with its alleged commitment to fairness and social justice, especially during many years of growth and relative financial plenty, at a time when Labour was in control of COSLA and enjoyed the support of a majority Labour Government at Westminster and a Labour-led coalition in the Scottish Parliament as well.
So far from being a champion of the low paid, I regard South Lanarkshire Council (along with others to be fair) as having failing miserably to stand up for the interests of its lowest paid workers. Taken together with the debacle over FOI and the UK Supreme Court, I think you should now do the decent thing and resign your position as the Council's Labour Leader.
I enclose two leading or editorial articles from the Herald and Scotsman newspapers which you might find interesting, if a little hard to face up to, since both express forthright views without exactly pulling their punches.
Kind regards
Mark Irvine
The Scotsman - Tuesday 30 July 2013
What councils are not for is to serve the interests of politicians and officials who lose sight of democracy and come to the view that what they believe is what is best for their local authority.
Sadly, the political leadership and the senior officials who work for them in South Lanarkshire Council have lost sight of these principles. How else can we explain the authority’s decision to fight a request for information on its salary scales for men and women, which has cost council taxpayers some £200,000 after the legal battle went to the highest court in the land?
Yesterday, the UK Supreme Court ruled that campaigner Mark Irvine’s freedom of information request to know how much the council paid male and female staff for similar graded work was legitimate and that South Lanarkshire’s claims that disclosure of such information would break data protection laws was spurious.
Responding to the ruling Mr Irvine said justice and common sense had finally prevailed leaving the council “looking rather silly and … with egg all over its face”.
The council and its political leadership had questions to answer over “this debacle and the terrible waste of public money involved”. Given the circumstances, it is impossible not to agree with Mr Irvine.
The council had at initially resisted his request to Scotland’s Information Commissioner as “vexatious,” a legal term meaning unreasonable or disproportionate, but changed its stance to cite data protection legislation, hardly a convincing about face.
Given this and the continued court fight against giving out the information, which the court confirmed would not involve disclosure details of individuals’ pay, if anyone has been vexatious it has been the council.
What legitimate reason did it have to act like this? Even if, as the council appeared to fear, Mr Irvine were to pass on the details to lawyers who might make money from equality claims from women, the council still had no right to refuse to publish the information. The suspicion must be that the data contains something that would embarrass the council. Perhaps it had refused to take seriously the deserved claims of women workers denied equal pay? Or perhaps the leadership just did not like transparency?
This stubborn refusal to adhere to the principles of openness and accountability has cost the taxpayer at least £168,000, if the commissioner’s costs are taken into account. As Mr Irvine says, the council leadership should hang their heads in shame. But they should also take to heart the principle of being public servants and governing for the people and the importance of doing the right thing.
Does the council leadership truly believe this legal battle amounted to £100,0000 of public money well spent?
It is very difficult to see how. The local authority, which is currently fighting a £10m back- pay claim from 1500 female staff, must have known there was a high probability of losing. After its arguments had been rejected first by the Scottish Information Commissioner and then by the Court of Session, there was clearly a substantial risk that the Supreme Court too would rule against it, but the council ploughed on regardless. Now it faces a huge legal bill at a time when money is tight.
South Lanarkshire council tax payers could be forgiven for being angry. Such a sum of money would make a significant difference to any number of cash-strapped services funded by the council. This is the council, after all, that has warned 120 jobs are at risk as part of a £12m cuts package. Its legal costs are hefty and South Lanarkshire should not have risked incurring them; instead, it should have agreed to hand over the information when the Scottish Information Commissioner ordered it to do so.
It is not only the council's unwise decision to risk wasting money pursuing the case to the Supreme Court that is at issue. It is also the fact of having proved itself so unwilling to be open about the information in question in the first place.
South Lanarkshire is not the only council to have faced equal pay claims. Many others have had to face up to their obligations. Whichever council it may be, it is not hard to understand the dismay councillors and officials must feel at the thought of potentially having to fund costly pay-outs to some workers at a time of fiscal retrenchment, but budgetary concerns cannot be allowed to trump the interests of justice. Where there is the suspicion that women have been discriminated against by being paid less than men for doing similarly skilled jobs, every council has a duty to investigate and right any wrongs that emerge, promptly.
Where South Lanarkshire is concerned, its vehement attempts to block publication of pay banding information that might reveal whether women have been discriminated against, leave it open to the suspicion that it is less interested in rooting out examples of sex discrimination than in keeping its bills down. That is what will infuriate workers and rightly so. The current spate of sex discrimination claims being brought against councils are about trying to put right a long-standing wrong. Councils perceived as resisting what is right, will be judged, by employees and by voters, as acting dishonourably.
The equal rights campaigner Mark Irvine has called on South Lanarkshire council leader Eddie McAvoy to resign, as being "ultimately responsible" for this waste of public money. The council certainly has questions to answer about the decision to push this serially unsuccessful case so far.
What councils are not for is to serve the interests of politicians and officials who lose sight of democracy and come to the view that what they believe is what is best for their local authority.
Sadly, the political leadership and the senior officials who work for them in South Lanarkshire Council have lost sight of these principles. How else can we explain the authority’s decision to fight a request for information on its salary scales for men and women, which has cost council taxpayers some £200,000 after the legal battle went to the highest court in the land?
Yesterday, the UK Supreme Court ruled that campaigner Mark Irvine’s freedom of information request to know how much the council paid male and female staff for similar graded work was legitimate and that South Lanarkshire’s claims that disclosure of such information would break data protection laws was spurious.
Responding to the ruling Mr Irvine said justice and common sense had finally prevailed leaving the council “looking rather silly and … with egg all over its face”.
The council and its political leadership had questions to answer over “this debacle and the terrible waste of public money involved”. Given the circumstances, it is impossible not to agree with Mr Irvine.
The council had at initially resisted his request to Scotland’s Information Commissioner as “vexatious,” a legal term meaning unreasonable or disproportionate, but changed its stance to cite data protection legislation, hardly a convincing about face.
Given this and the continued court fight against giving out the information, which the court confirmed would not involve disclosure details of individuals’ pay, if anyone has been vexatious it has been the council.
What legitimate reason did it have to act like this? Even if, as the council appeared to fear, Mr Irvine were to pass on the details to lawyers who might make money from equality claims from women, the council still had no right to refuse to publish the information. The suspicion must be that the data contains something that would embarrass the council. Perhaps it had refused to take seriously the deserved claims of women workers denied equal pay? Or perhaps the leadership just did not like transparency?
This stubborn refusal to adhere to the principles of openness and accountability has cost the taxpayer at least £168,000, if the commissioner’s costs are taken into account. As Mr Irvine says, the council leadership should hang their heads in shame. But they should also take to heart the principle of being public servants and governing for the people and the importance of doing the right thing.
Does the council leadership truly believe this legal battle amounted to £100,0000 of public money well spent?
It is very difficult to see how. The local authority, which is currently fighting a £10m back- pay claim from 1500 female staff, must have known there was a high probability of losing. After its arguments had been rejected first by the Scottish Information Commissioner and then by the Court of Session, there was clearly a substantial risk that the Supreme Court too would rule against it, but the council ploughed on regardless. Now it faces a huge legal bill at a time when money is tight.
South Lanarkshire council tax payers could be forgiven for being angry. Such a sum of money would make a significant difference to any number of cash-strapped services funded by the council. This is the council, after all, that has warned 120 jobs are at risk as part of a £12m cuts package. Its legal costs are hefty and South Lanarkshire should not have risked incurring them; instead, it should have agreed to hand over the information when the Scottish Information Commissioner ordered it to do so.
It is not only the council's unwise decision to risk wasting money pursuing the case to the Supreme Court that is at issue. It is also the fact of having proved itself so unwilling to be open about the information in question in the first place.
South Lanarkshire is not the only council to have faced equal pay claims. Many others have had to face up to their obligations. Whichever council it may be, it is not hard to understand the dismay councillors and officials must feel at the thought of potentially having to fund costly pay-outs to some workers at a time of fiscal retrenchment, but budgetary concerns cannot be allowed to trump the interests of justice. Where there is the suspicion that women have been discriminated against by being paid less than men for doing similarly skilled jobs, every council has a duty to investigate and right any wrongs that emerge, promptly.
South Lanarkshire council tax payers could be forgiven for being angry. Such a sum of money would make a significant difference to any number of cash-strapped services funded by the council. This is the council, after all, that has warned 120 jobs are at risk as part of a £12m cuts package. Its legal costs are hefty and South Lanarkshire should not have risked incurring them; instead, it should have agreed to hand over the information when the Scottish Information Commissioner ordered it to do so.
It is not only the council's unwise decision to risk wasting money pursuing the case to the Supreme Court that is at issue. It is also the fact of having proved itself so unwilling to be open about the information in question in the first place.
South Lanarkshire is not the only council to have faced equal pay claims. Many others have had to face up to their obligations. Whichever council it may be, it is not hard to understand the dismay councillors and officials must feel at the thought of potentially having to fund costly pay-outs to some workers at a time of fiscal retrenchment, but budgetary concerns cannot be allowed to trump the interests of justice. Where there is the suspicion that women have been discriminated against by being paid less than men for doing similarly skilled jobs, every council has a duty to investigate and right any wrongs that emerge, promptly.
Where South Lanarkshire is concerned, its vehement attempts to block publication of pay banding information that might reveal whether women have been discriminated against, leave it open to the suspicion that it is less interested in rooting out examples of sex discrimination than in keeping its bills down. That is what will infuriate workers and rightly so. The current spate of sex discrimination claims being brought against councils are about trying to put right a long-standing wrong. Councils perceived as resisting what is right, will be judged, by employees and by voters, as acting dishonourably.
The equal rights campaigner Mark Irvine has called on South Lanarkshire council leader Eddie McAvoy to resign, as being "ultimately responsible" for this waste of public money. The council certainly has questions to answer about the decision to push this serially unsuccessful case so far.
