Following on from last night’s oil leak on Scottish Government failings during the last CFPA STS consultation – the National ran the story today:
In the spirit of open-ness – here’s email 2. This clearly shows an intervention by the Head of Ports and Harbours, a division of Transport Scotland (Chris Wilcock) at an early stage – 8th January 2016, just after New Year. Someone from Marine Scotland forwards the consultation to Ports and Harbours. Mr Wilcock states that, he is broadly supportive of the plans, cites the proven track record for over 30 years (top prize for anyone who can tell us where we’ve heard that before). He then states that “we haven’t been to ministers of this”, goes on to cite that there has been a “bit of local opposition” (that’ll be us), then he goes on to suggest a need to discuss the collective Scottish Government position. He then suggests, a reasonable/neutral response, restating the safety record, starting the ball rolling with “its a devolved issue” – interestingly he goes on to say Scottish Ministers have been consulted and SNH will be responding – interesting, considering the official line is that the Scottish Government wasn’t consulted. He then goes on to air his concern of setting a precedent if this escalates.
Well, this has escalated and a precedent has indeed been set. For some reason the Scottish Government is intent on spreading the myth that they have not been consulted. Clearly they have – 6 more emails / 6 more oil leaks will show they were. If anyone is looking for something to do, Mr Wilcock’s number is on the email below – why not give him a call and ask him what he was trying to do by influence the Scottish Government line on this – did anyone put him up to this or was it all on his own initiative? Alternatively the Transport Scotland email format is :
first name.lastname@transportscotland.gsi.gov.uk
Interestingly he was also present at the CFPA’s annual meeting last November – a long way from Edinburgh. Given that Scottish Trust ports are autonomous bodies that look after themselves, why were Transport Scotland so keen to steer the Scottish Government line at this early stage?
EXHIBIT 2:
