‘Yer tea’s oot’, John Swinney and Scottish Government axe Glasgow Labour Council of shame ‘double pay’ for Councillors, anyone got a hankie?

Dear All

Proper planning prevents piss poor performance.

P6.

Down at the Glasgow Labour Council of shame, they have been sailing along in their own little world munching away on expenses and getting double pay under a controversial system of gratuity payments to councillors. The ‘double pay’ was started as Glasgow Council set up Aleos.

The Arms length external organisations were former council departments hived off, private companies with council mentalities.

So, when Steven ‘bin laden’ Purcell was running his presidential style government, he used Aleo payments to keep the Labour mob in line.

The SNP on the Council also got some scraps chucked their way as window dressing.

Now, the party’s over, it is time to call it a day, and that means SNP Ministers have ‘kicked in the door’ and announced plans to outlaw ‘double pay’ within weeks.

For some people, this will result in a massive drop in income.

Finance Secretary John Swinney is to publish new regulations to stop local authorities allowing a body it controls awarding payments.

This is a pre-emptive swipe aimed at Labour-run Glasgow City Council’s raft of so-called arm’s-length external organisations (Aleos).

Glasgow Labour Council of shame won’t clean up its act, so the Scottish Government is going to do it for them/

The amended regulations will come into force on July 1, once Parliamentary approval is obtained.

Having said that councillors will still be able to claim for associated expenses which should continue and is fair!

It costs the council more than £250,000 a year to have its councillors involved in bodies that carry out work the authority did itself before it was hived off.

Post regulation, it will be interesting to see who will remain on Aleos when they aren’t getting paid.

Glasgow Council is the only council in Scotland to make the extra payments and as such had attracted the interest of the Scottish Local Authorities Remuneration Committee (SLARC), who said axe the system.

John Swinney said:

“A limited number of councillors can receive additional payments to help deliver broadly the same services as delivered by their own councils. In effect, some councillors are being paid twice. The SLARC report highlighted that only Glasgow City Council had a policy to pay additional monies and confirmed that 40 councillors were sharing £260,000 in additional payments. This completely undermines the principles of the existing councillor remuneration scheme.”

When the axe falls and the shock sets in, you might see an exodus from Aleos with Councillors looking for outside work in the private sector.

Effectively this will make more councillors part time, which is pretty much the case as anyone can see by looking at the register of interests.

There will be a lot of unhappy people floating about the City Chambers having to face the dawn that in some cases £20,000 a year is being removed.

Councillors should be paid £30k a year in Scotland because people need their councillors to be full time and knowledgeable.

At some stage there will be a debate on councillors’ pay because public sector reform is sorely needed in Scotland.

And that really should be left in the hands of part timers or unelected council management who have a vested interest in the status quo.

Good decision by John Swinney, now he needs to make another good one, raising councillors pay to £30k, so it’s full time, all the time.

Yours sincerely

George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University