Kenneth Roy
Gongs too far

A national newspaper 'printed in Scotland', in its edition of 1 January 2010, wished its readers 'a happy Hogmanay'. In this brief notice in the Daily Telegraph there were only two errors: (1) Scots are not in the habit of wishing each other a happy Hogmanay, even on Hogmanay; (2) Scots are not in the habit of wishing each other a happy Hogmanay, even on New Year's Day. Otherwise, it was hard to take issue with the front-page message. Although we do sadness very well as a race, particularly on Hogmanay, the saddest day of the year for reasons that the Daily Telegraph's readers would find hard to fathom, it is possible that some Scots were indeed having 'a happy Hogmanay'. For example, a woman who manufactures bras – though not personally; she probably gets other people to make them for her – spent the whole of Hogmanay with a smile on her face. We have her word for that. She had just had the OBE conferred on her.
     The people responsible for promoting the honours list had put it about that the usual celebs and politicians had been overlooked in favour of 'local heroes'. The media decided this improbable fancy was indeed true – the media will believe simply anything put in front of them – and so it duly became the 'local heroes honours list'. Everyone was too happy, or too sad, or too comatose, to question this assumption. I suppose by now it has passed into received wisdom.
     Still –

It may be the case that there were fewer celebs and politicians than usual, but it would be wrong to imagine that they were replaced by local heroes. I looked mostly in vain for the people I would call local and heroic – inspirational teachers; hospice nurses; supporters of the outcast; rescuers of the injured; lovers of the unlovable (to borrow from the mission of the Salvation Army); the bus driver who got us through the icy Ayrshire countryside first thing this morning.
     On the other hand, if you have a close look at this list, there were rather a lot of people who spend most of the day on the 'phone before dashing off to the next committee meeting. What's new? The honours list is always packed with such people. It is the Establishment's way of rewarding its own. My friend Ian Hamilton asked me recently why he had never been invited to join anything. But then he answered his own question. He admitted he had never been what he calls 'a safe pair of lips'. Each honours list is a thousand pairs of lips, all of them safe, most glued with nigh-well imperishable adhesive. There is no point in being outraged by this official conspiracy. It is how it works. It is a national amusement.
     Yet I confess to irritation at one award. It was an OBE – not to the manufacturer of bras, who looked on television as if she had just been given the Crown jewels, but to the recently retired chair of NHS Shetland. I know nothing about her personally except her name, Elizabeth Fullerton. It may well be that she is a glowing exception to my disobliging theory about the honours list. It may well be that, in Shetland, she is not only local but a hero. She may be the nicest woman in the Northern Isles. But I am not concerned with Elizabeth Fullerton personally; only with her work for NHS Shetland.
     When she was appointed part-time chair of that board – a public office in the gift of the Scottish ministers – in 2001, her remuneration was £24,000 a year. Her seven colleagues, the other non-executive members, each received £4,000 a year. The board had at its disposal a budget of £26 million a year, equivalent to £1,200 for every man, woman and child on the Shetland Islands. In a Scottish Government press release, it was stated that the 'guiding principles' of NHS Shetland would be 'governance, transparency and accountability'. With this ringing declaration, a new era of decentralised health service management began.
     When she left the chair last summer, Elizabeth Fullerton's annual remuneration had increased to £26,364, a relatively insignificant hike of just under 10%. Her non-executive colleagues had fared very much better with an increase of 77% – from £4,000 to £7,100 a year. However, the chair had nothing much to complain about: in her eight years she had received from the public purse around £200,000. The budget of NHS Shetland soared under her chairmanship from £26 million in 2001-02 to £49 million in 2008-09, an increase of 88%. It is possible, of course, that the people of Shetland were not at all well during this period; considering that the annual spend of the local health board is now equivalent to £2,200 for every man, woman and child, it may be the likeliest explanation.
     As far as 'transparency and accountability' are concerned, the record is impressive. NHS Shetland's medical director is paid £180,000 a year, making him one of the highest paid executives in the Scottish health service, while the chief executive, Sandra Laurenson, refuses to publish details of her salary, even when challenged to do so by this magazine.
     Her reason for declining our freedom of information request is that publication of her salary would breach her rights under data protection law. Imagine, then, our astonishment to discover on 'happy Hogmanay' that the Scottish Government had taken the matter into its own hands and published Sandra Laurenson's salary on its own website. Questions inevitably arise. How did the Scottish Government get hold of this information? Did it come from the Auditor General, Robert Black, chief book-keeper of the nation, who insisted to the Scottish Review only a few weeks ago that he had no power to compel such a disclosure? If not, who was the source of the leak? Equally disturbingly, is the Scottish Government breaching the data protection rights of NHS Shetland's chief executive?

For all the reasons I have given, there was no case for awarding anyone in the bureaucracy of NHS Shetland an honour. In all the circumstances, it was a gong too far. But even if NHS Shetland had been a world model of governance, transparency and accountability, there would still have been no case for awarding anyone in its bureaucracy an honour. For the time being, the same no-honour rule should apply to all those who benefit financially from public work. Elizabeth Fullerton's £200,000 in eight years was modest compared to the sums dished out over the years to other beneficiaries of New Year honours, the servants of public bodies, executive as well as non-executive. They are 'local heroes' only in the credulous media's imagination. Most are, in reality, prosperous individuals who have done a job and been paid for it – far too much in many cases; salaries and fees well beyond what was necessary or appropriate.
     This is a stricken country. The poor suffer. The young suffer. Eight out of 10 newly graduated teachers in this stricken country cannot find work in their chosen vocation. Many are living on £50.95 a week – the dole paid to people under the age of 25. What are they expected to think of these honours?
     Of course there are genuine local heroes. There are people who do good work for no or very little financial reward. There are people who go beyond the call of duty. But there is no evidence whatever that the promoters of the honours list have the least idea who they are or the least interest in finding out. I confidently predict that, next time the Daily Telegraph idiotically wishes its readers a happy Hogmanay, another bunch of apparatchiks and bra manufacturers will be drooling over their OBEs.