A SECOND government minister announced last night that he would put hundreds of thousands of pounds of company shares beyond his control in the escalating row over conflicts of interest within the SNP administration.Were Ministers, at the time of their appointment, not specifically warned of the need to avoid any appearance of a potential conflict of interest, particularly with regard to shareholdings? If not, why not? Such a warning should go with the receipt of a red box and the keys to the Ministerial booze cabinet. Were their civil servants asleep on the job?
Jim Mather, the enterprise minister, told The Scotsman he would find a way of putting his £350,000 worth of shares into a blind trust to make sure there could be no question of a conflict of interest with his ministerial role.
Yesterday, Stewart Stevenson, ... the transport and climate change minister, said he would sell £30,000 of ScottishPower shares amid suggestions of a conflict of interest with his government role.
But whether or not there was a specific warning, the requirements of the Ministerial code are - or should be - sufficiently well-known. It is really not good enough for Ministers to come along four months after their appointment and in effect to say that, now they've been found out, they will hasten to build the necessary Chinese walls between themselves and their shareholdings.
A first sign of carelessness in the SNP administration?
1 comment:
It's difficult to see that the SNP Ministers had anything to gain by keeping these shares. However the rules are there for good reason and it is simply extraordinary that they did not know about them. Serious questions have to be asked about the Permanent Secretary's role in all this. Did he tell Ministers of the rules and did he check that they were complying? The lengthy time it has taken for the parliament to publish the new register of Memebers' Interests is also troubling
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