GETTING THE ANSWERS…to protect the taxpayer!

Getting the answers

It is not easy to track what is happening in Government, or to track how the state apparatus spends our money. There are obstacles everywhere. It can be expensive and time consuming, pretty impossible for private individuals, who have neither the finance or expertise needed to get through the information jungle to get the answer.

To a great extent we have to look to our elected representatives to protect us as they have access to research facilities such as the House of Commons Library research facilities, they are better able to get the information that suggest areas where very substantial amounts of taxpayer money is being expended without full explanation, for the reason or how the figures were arrived at and justified.

This example comes from work carried out by Kenny MacAskill who has been trying to establish why and how it is possible for the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service in Scotland (COPFS) to be required to pay out in compensation and settlement, on one case in one year, more than SIX TIMES the total expenditure for the whole cumulative expenditure in England and Wales for the same category of EVERY case going all the way back to 2015. 

That this issue is the responsibility of COPFS is doubly of interest as under the previous Lord Advocate James Wolffe it has been surrounded in controversy over the Alex Salmond Judicial Review and subsequent criminal trial, neither of which resulted in a single judgement or conviction against Mr Salmond, but cost taxpayers huge sums of money in compensation and costs. 

This work however does not involve Alex Salmond but the settlement reached, out of court, with those involved in the Glasgow Rangers sale to Craig White and the subsequent liquidation of the club.

The problems lie in the admission by lawyers of “malicious prosecution”. This allowed two of those who were administrating the liquidation to claim compensation for false arrest.

This from the Daily Record explains “Lawyers acting for the Crown Office later admitted the prosecutions, which related to the financial collapse and sale of Rangers, had been “malicious”.

Both men launched a compensation claim and they were each paid £10.5m in damages by the Crown and millions in legal expenses.

The current bill, according to Scottish Government figures is approaching £40 million pounds and it is being forecast to reach an eye watering £100 million before the entire process is completed. These numbers effectively mean the compensation will have to be paid by the Scottish Government as the existing COPFS budget would be incapable of funding such a package.

To put that figure in perspective Kenny MacAskill sought information from the Crown Prosecution Service in England and Wales for any compensation and damages they had paid out for cases of “malicious prosecution” in recent times. I detail an extraction of the figures that were provided.

Below are the total amounts of “special payments” recorded in the CPS’s annual accounts for the last six financial years:

• FY 2015-2016: £1,645,000.

• FY 2016-2017: £1,631,000.

• FY 2017-2018: £243,000.

• FY 2018-2019: £1,340,000.

• FY 2019-2020: £630,000.

• FY 2020-2021: £447,000.

A total of £5,936,000 in total for six years for every single case in the whole of England and Wales. This pales into insignificance compared to the £40 million already paid out for one case, in one year, in Scotland.

Kenny had also contacted the House of Commons Library service to gain more information as he was staggered at the amount of money that had been agreed. I print their response in full below.

“You asked how many awards for personal damages compensation of more than a) £6 million and b) £20 million have been made by courts in England and Wales. This is to compare with compensation payments made recently by the Crown Office in Scotland to parties wrongfully prosecuted in relation to the liquidation of Rangers FC.

There is not a great deal of published data on this subject. Looking first to personal damages claims made by individuals in civil courts in England and Wales, the published statistics only tell us how many hearings there were for claims of £50,000 or more. Between 2011 and 2020, there were 1,914 hearings for personal damages claims of £50,000 or more, although the statistics don’t tell us how many were successful. In 2021, a new category of £100,000 or more was added to the statistics and between January and September there was 1 hearing for a claim of this size (MoJ, Civil Justice statistics quarterly: July to September 2021).

The equivalent civil justice statistics for Scotland don’t provide any information about the amount being claimed in personal damages cases.

What might be useful to put the Rangers FC-related compensation payments into context is information about other large compensation payments made by government departments and bodies. For comparison, the amount paid out so far by the Scotland Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) in the Rangers FC case is around £35.3 million (see Annual report 2020-21).

For example, the Crown Prosecution Service – the equivalent of the COPFS – has paid out damages of over £300,000 on 5 occasions since 2014-15 (the earliest data I can find). On one occasion in 2014-15, it paid £726,520 in respect of one civil case and I cannot find evidence of a higher pay-out than that (see CPS, Annual reports, various years).

The Home Office has paid out large amounts in compensation in the past, for example for wrongful detention (see HC146257, Answered 4 July 2018). In 2019-20, it paid out £4.6 million in one compensation case, although the nature of the claim was not specified (Annual report 2019-20, p.119).

The NHS pays out a substantial amount each year in damages payments for negligence. In 2020-21, a total of £2.2 million was paid out in respect of clinical negligence schemes (see NHS Resolution, Annual report and accounts 2020-21, p.17). In terms of individual large claims, there were 492 damages ongoing claims towards NHS England for amounts over £2 million in 2020-21, although it is not clear how many were successful (Annual report and accounts 2020-21, p.45)

There are other examples of large sums being made available to pay damages in cases of public policy errors, although these have tended also to concern large numbers of potential claimants. For example:

• Up to £1 billion has been made available to compensate postmasters wrongly convicted or forced to pay back funds they were wrongly accused of stealing due to faulty accounting software (‘the Horizon scandal’). Fifty-seven interim payments of £100,000 have been made through the compensation scheme so far (see BEIS Committee, Oral evidence HC 106, 11 January 2022).
• £171 million to £215 million has been anticipated to be paid in compensation to people wrongly accused of being illegal immigrants (‘the Windrush Scandal’).  As of October 2021, £33 million had been paid to 885 claimants (Home Office, Windrush Compensation Scheme data). There have been 6 payments of between £200,000 and £250,000 (the highest amounts recorded).

I hope this helps and do contact me if you have any questions.”

There are so many questions needing a much fuller explanation that we have been offered thus far. One that immediately come to mind is why these matters, when the amounts are way in excess of payments made ever before, anywhere in the UK, settled outside of any court process? Kenny has asked how these sums were agreed, were they calculated using any fixed tariff or other control for instance? 

I have read reports that the Scottish Government have agreed to an inquiry, possibly involving a judge from outside Scotland, but to my knowledge nothing is yet underway. 

Mr Wolffe of course is no longer Lord Advocate having retired from the post but I think these events, plus the shambles of the unfair and unjust persecution of the former First Minister, makes abundantly clear the important need to create space between the Scottish Government and the judiciary. 

I look forward to the start of the full inquiry. Taxpayers have every right to demand answers. My thanks to Kenny MacAskill for his relentless pursuit of highlighting this issue.

I am, as always

Yours for Scotland,

BEAT THE CENSORS

Sadly some sites had given up on being pro Indy sites and have decided to become merely pro SNP sites where any criticism of the Party Leader or opposition to the latest policy extremes, results in censorship being applied. This, in the rather over optimistic belief that this will suppress public discussion on such topics. My regular readers have expertly worked out that by regularly sharing articles on this site defeats that censorship and makes it all rather pointless. I really do appreciate such support and free speech in Scotland is remaining unaffected by their juvenile censorship. Indeed it is has become a symptom of weakness and guilt. Quite encouraging really.

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