BBC chief hits out at ‘personal attacks’ on bias-row civil servant

James Boyle: Has defended Peter Housden

ANDREW WHITAKER

A FORMER civil service commissioner and controller of BBC Radio 4 has mounted a robust defence of Scotland’s top civil servant following a series of complaints from opposition leaders that he has promoted SNP policies.

James Boyle, who sat on the commission charged with appointing Britain’s senior civil servants, said that attacks on Alex Salmond’s permanent secretary Sir Peter Housden did an “injustice” to the civil servant in the run-up to the independence referendum.

Mr Boyle, writing in The Scotsman today in a personal capacity, makes a strongly worded defence of the permanent secretary, after a series of internal memos from Sir Peter to civil servants were made public in the aftermath of the SNP’s landslide election victory last May.

Sir Peter, who earns £185,000 a year, wrote to staff claiming the constitutional question had moved on from the UK coalition’s plans to devolve more power to Holyrood, saying: “It is remarkable how the terms of this debate have changed irrevocably in just three weeks. Calman and the status quo now seem lost in the mists of time.”

Mr Boyle, who is also a former Scottish Arts Council chairman, dismisses what he claimed were “personal attacks” on Sir Peter for his use of Twitter to communicate with civil service staff, and suggests that some critics of the civil servant wanted to “force him from the job”.

He writes: “His messages were in fact notes from the leader to the troops, humanising a job often thought to be held by the unapproachable.

“He’s a modern leader using a throwaway medium to keep his staff close to him. In his memo, Sir Peter said of the drama: ‘To my mind, it does genuinely speak to our present condition as a nation.’”

Mr Boyle goes on to defend Sir Peter’s strategy of preparing government departments for independence “if the majority want that” in a referendum.

He writes: “They must prepare for both ‘yes’ and ‘no’ outcomes after the referendum on independence. Our non-partisan civil service has a duty to us, the citizens, to be ready to administer on behalf of any government – including an independent one that we choose.”

Sir Peter’s memos to staff led to official complaints being lodged with Sir Gus O’Donnell, the Cabinet secretary and head of the UK civil service, that he had broken the civil service code. The then Scottish Labour and Conservative leaders Iain Gray and Annabel Goldie lodged the complaints along with Lib Dem Willie Rennie last year, although Sir Peter was later cleared.

Brian Adam, Scotland’s minister for parliamentary business, said that Mr Boyle’s intervention showed that the attacks on Sir Peter by opposition politicians had backfired. He said: “Mr Boyle has got this spot on and it’s a much more reasoned judgment than the ludicrous attacks made by the opposition parties.”

This website and its associated newspaper adheres to the Independent Press Standards Organisation's Editors' Code of Practice.
If you have a complaint about editorial content which relates to inaccuracy or intrusion, then contact the
Editor by clicking here.

If you remain dissatisfied with the response provided then you can contact the IPSO by
clicking here.

The Scotsman provides news, events and sport features from the Edinburgh area. For the best up to date information relating to Edinburgh and the surrounding areas visit us at The Scotsman regularly or bookmark this page.

For you to enjoy all the features of this website The Scotsman requires permission to use cookies.

Find Out More ▼

What is a Cookie?

What is a Flash Cookie?

Can I opt out of receiving Cookies?

About our Cookies

Cookies are small data files which are sent to your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc) from a website you visit. They are stored on your electronic device.

This is a type of cookie which is collected by Adobe Flash media player (it is also called a Local Shared Object) - a piece of software you may already have on your electronic device to help you watch online videos and listen to podcasts.

Yes there are a number of options available, you can set your browser either to reject all cookies, to allow only "trusted" sites to set them, or to only accept them from the site you are currently on.

However, please note - if you block/delete all cookies, some features of our websites, such as remembering your login details, or the site branding for your local newspaper may not function as a result.

The types of cookies we, our ad network and technology partners use are listed below:

Revenue Science ►

A tool used by some of our advertisers to target adverts to you based on pages you have visited in the past. To opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Google Ads ►

Our sites contain advertising from Google; these use cookies to ensure you get adverts relevant to you. You can tailor the type of ads you receive by visiting here or to opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Digital Analytics ►

This is used to help us identify unique visitors to our websites. This data is anonymous and we cannot use this to uniquely identify individuals and their usage of the sites.

Dart for Publishers ►

This comes from our ad serving technology and is used to track how many times you have seen a particular ad on our sites, so that you don't just see one advert but an even spread. This information is not used by us for any other type of audience recording or monitoring.

ComScore ►

ComScore monitor and externally verify our site traffic data for use within the advertising industry. Any data collected is anonymous statistical data and cannot be traced back to an individual.

Local Targeting ►

Our Classified websites (Photos, Motors, Jobs and Property Today) use cookies to ensure you get the correct local newspaper branding and content when you visit them. These cookies store no personally identifiable information.

Grapeshot ►

We use Grapeshot as a contextual targeting technology, allowing us to create custom groups of stories outside out of our usual site navigation. Grapeshot stores the categories of story you have been exposed to. Their privacy policy and opt out option can be accessed here.

Subscriptions Online ►

Our partner for Newspaper subscriptions online stores data from the forms you complete in these to increase the usability of the site and enhance user experience.

Add This ►

Add This provides the social networking widget found in many of our pages. This widget gives you the tools to bookmark our websites, blog, share, tweet and email our content to a friend.