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Summary of a report written by Hannah Rodger, Sunday Mail, Chief Reporter

Not including Scotland’s 32 local authorities, 14 health boards, police, fire and ambulance services, Scottish taxpayers are picking up a £22million annual bill for the salaries of chief executives and committee members of almost 100 public bodies, (quangos) including some people don‘t even know exist:

Scotland’s Water Quangos: Four quangos manage elements of Scotland’s water systems.

Former Scottish Water CEO Douglas Millican who departed in May 2023, received £520,000 in payments in 2022. This included a salary of £270,000, a long-term incentive payment of £160,000 and a bonus of £80,000. Disasters under his watch include sewage spills directly into Scotland’s rivers, lochs and seas and a heavy fine imposed on it in May 2023 for releasing chemicals into a Fife river that killed hundreds of salmon and trout in October 2018. His successor, Alex Plant, was awarded an even higher annual salary of £295,000.

Alex Sutherland, CEO of the Water Industry Commission for Scotland (WICS), on an annual salary and incentives exceeding £400.000 was sacked at the beginning of December 2023 following revelations of financial irregularities. See the 2022/23 audit of the Water Industry Commission for Scotland. The annual salary and incentives of the CEOs of the other two quangos including, the Scottish Canals, Drinking Water Quality Regulator for Scotland is around £400,000.

The Scottish Advisory Committee on Distinction Awards (SACDA) – is supposed to decide which NHS dentists and consultants should receive awards for outstanding work but have not granted any since 2010 when the Scottish Government froze the awards budget. With no real work done in the past year, more than £100,000 has been spent keeping them running.

The School Closure Review Panel (SCRP) is supposed to examine any school closures by councils which are later called in by Scottish ministers but there have been no refferals since 2021. Despite this, SCRP incurred running costs of £76,000 last year.

The Forestry Commission, which managed forests in Scotland, England and Wales, stopped taking responsibility for Scottish and Welsh sites in 2019. The Welsh government merged the work with other organisations to form one new body.

But the Scottish Government formed two bodies to replace it – Forestry And Land Scotland and Scottish Forestry. They each have a chief executive paid up to £115,000 and £90,000 plus incentives annually. A Scottish Forestry spokesperson said: “Scottish Forestry regulates and supports the whole forest industry, including the private sector, whilst Forestry and Land Scotland directly manages the 650,000 hectares of national forests to provide multiple benefits for Scotland’s people. The agencies were set up five years ago as part of fully devolving forestry to Scotland. Before this, both bodies already existed, but in slightly different forms. The Scottish Parliament unanimously agreed that it was necessary to establish two separate forestry agencies to carry out the entirely different functions. The salaries of both Chief Executives are part of the standard civil service senior management grades.”

Ferry chiefs who presided over the scandal of delayed contracts and broken-down boats were paid well over the odds to manage their organisations. Tim Hair, the turn-around director at Ferguson Marine, was given a £591,232 plus incentives fee for his work while Robbie Drummond, CEO of Calmac was paid around £156,000 plus incentives. He stated that: “CalMac is not a quango, it is a private company delivering contracts secured competitively. We compete in the private sector to attract staff and recruit staff from some of the best maritime, vessel management and transport companies in the UK, and to do this CalMac must pay its team competitively. David MacBrayne Ltd’s Duncan Mackison, who left last year and was not replaced, was on as much as £190,000 plus incentives annually while Caledonian Maritime Assets Limited (CMAL) director Kevin Hobbs was paid £148,127 plus incentives, last year.

The Scottish Trades Union commented: “The STUC has always argued for directly democratically accountable bodies to run our public affairs and that position has not changed. It’s intensely curious, if not blatantly hypocritical, that governments are calling for wage restraint and turning their fire on low-paid public sector workers who have had their wages cut in real terms, yet this standard doesn’t seem to apply further up the career ladder. It’s not too much to ask that each and every organisation undertaking a public function is fit for purpose and delivers high-quality services, including sufficient pay for those at the bottom too. Workers deserve nothing less. The SNP are presiding over an increasingly bloated number of quangos rather than delivering the best value for money for taxpayers. Given these quangos are linked to many of their huge failures – including the ongoing ferries scandal – there are serious questions for ministers to answer as to why costs are threatening to spiral out of control.”

Redress Scotland commented: “A serious review is needed to decide how many of these organisations are needed in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis when our NHS, our schools and hundreds of Scots are struggling just to get by.”

Political opponents commented: “When the SNP came into power, they promised the ‘bonfire of the quangos’ but under their leadership the amount of public money being used to support quangos and spin has swelled year upon year. At the same time as local government has seen its budgets slashed, the SNP has elected to pour more and more money on arms-length bodies that fail to deliver value for money.”

December 2023: A row broke out after it emerged the SNP-led Government appointments committee had nominated Michael Russell to be chair of the Scottish Land Commission SLC Quango on a split decision. Russell had stood down as SNP President in anticipation of being appointed to the near £400,000 annual salary and incentives post. A full vote of MSP’s will now consider the appointment at Holyrood.

Former Green MSP Andy Wightman, a land reform expert and probably the best qualified person for the post, tweeted: “Depressing that the vote as to whether to recommend Mike Russell as Chair of Scottish Land Commission broke along party lines. Decisions like this should not be political but, in the circumstances, it is perhaps not surprising that the SNP & Greens didn’t want any scrutiny.”