Margo MacDonald: MacAskill must do nation justice

Published on Wednesday 27 May 2009 09:37

HAS justice minister Kenny MacAskill offered to jump ship, before he's pushed on to the gangplank by the motley crew of Holyrood MSPs who're annoyed that a prisoner classified as dangerous as Brian Martin should have escaped from an open prison that, according to their understanding of Scottish penal policy, he should never have been near in the first place?

Whether the Edinburgh East and Musselburgh MSP is a politician of the old school, I don't know. My yardstick for judging if elected representatives are toffs or toerags is the man Margaret Thatcher said she couldn't do without, her then-home secretary Willie Whitelaw.

When the harmless, but scary, Michael Fagan joined the Queen in her bedroom for a late-night chat, noblesse oblige saw Willie offer his resignation immediately. The Prime Minister refused to accept it for the very good reason that nothing her home secretary had done or could have done was responsible for such a daft crime.

When foreign secretary Peter Carrington offered his resignation following Argentina's invasion of the Falklands, she accepted it. The difference between Whitelaw and Carrington was that the latter was responsible for the change of policy that saw HMS Endurance up anchor and leave. This created the misunderstanding that Britain intended to pull out of the Falklands, and encouraged Galtieri to occupy what he called the Malvinas.

It's not yet known if Kenny MacAskill has done a Whitelaw or a Carrington. MSPs tried to pressurise Alex Salmond into sacking him after it became obvious he had no intention of copying either noble Lord. But that doesn't either prove the First Minister a wimp, or the justice minister a rascal.

If it transpires that Mr MacAskill ordered a change in the length of time prisoners had to do in a lock-down nick before they could be transferred to an open prison, or that he made an exception in Martin's case, or that he changed any other condition of a prisoner being transferred to an open prison, allowing "the Hawk" the opportunity to escape, he should resign.

But if Martin – who is now back behind bars – was transferred as an operational measure, either in defiance of the regulations, or on a judgement call prison governors are entitled to make as to prisoners' suitability for open prison, then even if the justice secretary does a Whitelaw, the First Minister should not accept his resignation.

Now that the system has been found wanting in this instance, Mr MacAskill must review both the circumstances and the policy, otherwise he's not doing the job he's paid for.

Resignations of honourable men and women went out of fashion during the Blair years in Downing Street, but they're back . . . with a vengeance. Only this time the resignations are disguised as retirement and there's nothing honourable about the MPs who'll get out before their electors vote them out.

Sir Nicholas and Ann Winterton are the latest MPs who've said they'll sit the next one out to spend more time with their money, their children's trust money, your money, our money, but definitely not the money doled out so generously by the Fees Office. On radio phone-ins, it's not unusual to hear listeners demand that the worst offenders should resign right now. But if the objective is to punish them, unless all of the MPs who've been exposed as either greedy, or uncaring about their responsibility to respect the public purse, are entirely without shame, having to see out their term will be even harder to bear than the regret of having been forced to resign.

And it's not in the public interest that all the chancers, and even those whose stories may be of interest to the police, should be allowed to walk away before constituency organisations have had time to select new candidates, and before the Commons under a new Speaker puts its house in order.

Also, voters should give themselves time to absorb the big picture that's been obscured by the scandalous behaviour of some individuals. That the system of paying MPs needs reform goes without saying, but does it require to be administered by a special unit independent of MPs? Or should MPs be expected to have the courage of their convictions and vote themselves salaries that they believe the job merits, and that they can defend, even in hard times? Shouldn't this principle, together with the quality of transparency adopted to publicise MSPs' allowances, become the basis for a clean start in Westminster?

After the next general election we may have a more detached interest in how Westminster works if the transfer of the powers leading to a sovereign Holyrood has started. But, for the moment, Scotland's good name is sullied by being part of the Westminster takeaway . . . so let's try to help.