John Swinney’s clumsy plan to restructure Scotland’s NHS and local councils could become a lucrative windfall for a new generation of highly paid public-sector bosses.
The First Minister’s supposedly bold programme of public-service reform is increasingly looking less like a carefully prepared strategy and more like an idea hastily drafted on the back of a cigarette packet.
The Scottish Mail on Sunday reported this week that health boards were not told about Mr Swinney’s proposal to cut their number from 14 to just two.
The absence of any meaningful consultation is remarkable — or perhaps it would be in any normal political system not run by the SNP.
Instead, the episode reflects the familiar approach of a secretive administration that announces major changes with little warning and limited engagement with the people expected to deliver them.
Confusion deepened after a disastrous weekend interview with Deputy First Minister Jenny Gilruth, who appeared unable to explain the SNP’s plans for streamlining local government.
Hard-pressed Scottish taxpayers will continue to fund the growth of John Swinney’s failed state, writes Graham Grant
The proposals would replace existing councils with between six and ten “regional authorities”, alongside as many as 120 to 160 “community authorities” — bodies that sound remarkably similar to councils themselves.
There is a growing risk that the SNP’s attempt to create a smaller, more efficient state will deliver neither.
Instead, the restructuring could turn into a generous payday for NHS and council executives who are already among the best-paid figures in the public sector.
Compulsory redundancies are reportedly excluded from consideration. Given the influence of the trade unions, that decision is hardly unexpected.
Ministers appear reluctant to confront organisations capable of making the Government’s political life extremely difficult. That leaves one straightforward question.
If senior officials are not being shown the door, where will they go?
One possibility is that many will simply move on to the payrolls of the new strategic bodies, authorities and quangos Mr Swinney plans to establish.
Under that model, reform becomes a bureaucratic merry-go-round: officials leave one well-funded structure only to reappear in another, with taxpayers left to cover the cost.
The central issue is whether these changes will improve public services — and whether the customer, or more accurately the taxpayer, will see any tangible benefit.
Past experience offers little reassurance.
Mergers, reorganisations and high-profile announcements frequently create additional layers of management while leaving frontline services largely untouched.
Scotland could therefore end up with the same bureaucracy, the same spending and the same failures it has today — simply repackaged under a different organisational structure.
The transformation of the exams agency SQA into Qualifications Scotland is a useful reminder of how easily supposed reform can amount to little more than a change of name.
The shop front changed, but largely speaking the management did not – yet this cosmetic makeover, superficial as it was, cost a great deal of money.
The example of Police Scotland is also instructive.
It was established in 2013 ostensibly as a way of saving cash, although we were also told it would create a superior service by ending back-office duplication and sharing resources.
Yet the single force has become a basket case, overwhelmed by controversy on an almost routine basis and apparently in the grip of perpetual managerial turmoil.
Ministers responsible for creating Police Scotland are either long gone or sit quietly on the sidelines – pretending none of it is happening.
It is not uncommon, however, to hear SNP ministers speak about this new model of policing as though it were a template for the large-scale re-think of the NHS and local government that Mr Swinney now proposes.
Given the force’s turbulent history, that is hardly an encouraging sign.
It also remains entirely possible that this latest initiative is smoke and mirrors – a charade designed to create the appearance of action.
After all, if the First Minister and his officials have not even spoken to the bosses of health boards about their plans, does that not suggest Mr Swinney’s blueprint is somewhat insubstantial, to put it diplomatically?
A great many livelihoods may potentially be on the line further down the food chain from the executive tiers – and many hard-working NHS staff will be justifiably concerned about their future.
There was, however, an alternative path – if only the SNP had possessed the courage to take it.
Ministers might have weeded out the countless diversity managers and other non-jobs which have sprung up like knotweed.
That would have involved the sort of bold and difficult decisions civil servants like to describe as ‘challenging’.
There is no real evidence Mr Swinney would have had the courage to take such a hardline approach.
Yet, ironically, he is now contemplating a far more fundamental reorganisation – one that is bound to create even greater confrontation with the unions.
In the past, Mr Swinney and his predecessors have repeatedly caved in to eye-watering pay demands from unions.
It therefore seems highly unlikely that this time around he will suddenly discover an appetite for taking on the union barons.
He and his Left-wing colleagues will not want difficult stand-offs with unions if they can possibly avoid them.
Meanwhile, SNP backbenchers are likely to become restive as this process unfolds.
Many will fear a jobs bloodbath in their own constituencies as workers fall foul of the SNP’s axe.
Yet the First Minister is determined to have his cake and eat it.
One minute he rails against ‘Tory austerity’ – the next he boasts about his determination to eliminate waste.
This is despite the fact that his own administration has presided over years of excessive spending and the proliferation of largely pointless quangos.
We are now being asked to believe that the very people who oversaw the development of a bloated state are somehow best placed to cut it down to size.
Much of public life in Scotland is populated by individuals whose chief qualification is often loyalty to the prevailing political culture rather than a record of exceptional achievement.
For years, large parts of Scotland’s quangocracy have operated under the vice-like grip of an SNP administration that has embedded its worldview at every available opportunity.
The risk for the SNP is that it may now weaken a network of influence that has helped sustain its dominance.
If layers of bureaucracy are genuinely stripped away, some of the political assumptions and institutional allegiances that have accumulated during almost two decades of Nationalist rule may disappear with them.
Voters are entitled to ask why it took so long – and whether Mr Swinney truly has the stomach for the battle ahead.
In the meantime, hard-pressed taxpayers will continue to bankroll the growth of a sprawling failed state which the SNP may ultimately prove incapable of bringing under control.
