Councillors get on junkets bandwagon

FOR years the nation has been obsessed with the grossly inflated price tag of the new Scottish parliament and questionable expenses run up by some of the 129 MSPs it was built to house.

But while all eyes were on Holyrood, just what were Scotland’s 1,200 local councillors up to?

The answer, according to figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, is publicly funded travel - and plenty of it.

Scotland on Sunday asked every one of the country’s 32 local authorities to reveal which trips councillors had undertaken over the past three years. Glasgow failed to provide any information, blaming an "administrative error", while Orkney and Inverclyde claimed not to have received our request.

Figures from the remaining 29 show that hundreds of councillors took the chance, funded out of the public purse, to escape the mundane world of local politics and travel abroad.

Highlights - for the councillors involved - include the £856 trip to the picturesque French community of Cognac taken by Perth and Kinross Provost Bob Scott to celebrate the town’s Festival of the Grape Harvest.

A spokeswoman said the aim of the trip was to "strengthen the links between the communities and promote social, educational and cultural exchanges".

Not to miss out, in November 2003, Lord Provost Lesley Hinds and Councillor Ricky Henderson from Edinburgh City Council charged the taxpayer £862 in expenses for the cost of a week-long trip to the Rugby World Cup in Sydney.

They at least cost less than former Lord Provost Eric Milligan’s trips. His three annual visits to the US to take part in Tartan Week set the capital’s residents back a cool £5,892, including a £1,573 bill for what is loosely termed "subsistence" - or feeding Milligan.

And the list goes on. Aberdeen Lord Provost John Reynolds spent 26 days out of the country during a remarkable globe-trotting spell between June and November 2003, when he took in a Cultural Festival in the German town of Regensburg, a Nations in Bloom competition in Holland to back Aberdeen’s entry, and a "symposium on parks and grounds" in Toronto.

Elsewhere, big-spending council North Lanarkshire paid for Provost Pat Connolly and Councillor Tom Maginnis to spend a week in France in August, attending the World Sports Forum in Paris for three days at a cost of £3,242.

Connolly was back on the plane to France soon after with two other councillors to enjoy a few days with the good citizens of Bron, near Lyon, which is twinned with Cumbernauld.

Dundee City Council charged its taxpayers £949 to send Councillor Fiona Grant to the Global Digital Cities Network conference in Australia’s Gold Coast. Then there was the £1,382 cost of flying Fife councillor Tom Dair and a "Mrs T Dair" to Tampa, Florida. The reason for that trip is not known.

In total, the figures suggest that over the past three years, councils spent £500,000 in total on foreign travel.

It is impossible to give a precise figure because of Glasgow City Council’s failure to respond to the request for information. However, Scotland on Sunday revealed last year that the council had funded several trips of dubious merit, including one by Lord Provost Liz Cameron to the Caribbean.

Even without Glasgow City Council, the results show that £345,735 was spent in three years on visits.

Our research also shows that councillors undertook a total of 163 visits in 2003-04, including 18 "twinning" visits, where councillors took advantage of a link with a foreign town to enjoy a brief holiday. Councils claimed last night that many of the visits would have valid reasons. For example, a visit to Kazakhstan by Aberdeen Provost Reynolds helped promote the two regions’ oil links. Almost all of Shetland Council’s foreign visits related to fishing issues, crucial to the island’s survival.

However, critics said that councillors should be careful not to abuse the system.

Bill Aitken, a former councillor and now an MSP, said: "Where there is a genuine benefit for the local authority and its electorate then there is no problem. However, councillors must exercise the greatest responsibility in where and when they go, and in particular how much they spend when they are there, otherwise the perception is one of a junket."

The top-spending council in the period, from 2001-04 was Aberdeen which spent £57,763 on foreign trips. It was closely followed by North Lanarkshire, which spent £52,634. North Lanarkshire Council was alone in demanding payment for producing its travel bill, insisting Scotland on Sunday contribute £72 to the £622.50 it claimed it would cost staff to produce.

The other top spenders were Shetland (£46,743), Highland (£41,882), Edinburgh (£39,945) and Dundee (£14,848). All the above council figures are for the cost of councillors’ travel only and are likely to be significantly higher when the costs for accompanying officials are added.