Census lessons will only be learned if the Scottish Government goes back to school

FIRST Minister Nicola Sturgeon last week again assured Holyrood that “lessons would be learned”, this time over the hugely controversial and shambolic Scottish Census, which due to a lower than UK average take up rate, has again had its deadline for completion extended, from May 31 to this Sunday.

A lamentable parliamentary promise and placatory spin the Scottish Government now trot out every time they are rumbled and criticised for making a pig’s ear of policy and bungling their costly take-overs. State interference and micro- mismanagement, which all too often results in project delays and uncontrollable budget overspends.

For example, in March, the First Minister told parliament that the Scottish Government would “learn lessons” from the five-year delay and the eyewatering overspend of the two “CalamityMac” ferries, which are rusting away in dry dock at the government-owned Ferguson Marine shipyard.

Scandalous state mismanagement which, according to a scathing report from Audit Scotland, will see the eventual bill for those ferries coming in at over £240 million, two-and-a-half times the original budget of £97 million.

Now there are serious accusations surfacing, that £49 million from the Covid Business and Resilience support fund, monies intended to support other desperate businesses during the pandemic, might have been squirrelled away by the Government to help bail out this troubled yard. If true, that would be a tough lesson in the misappropriation of government funding for the public to take.

Ironically in 2016, following a series of problems on Scotland’s railways, the then Transport Secretary Humza Yousaf in an emergency statement at Holyrood apologised to rail passengers who had been affected by disruption and told MSPs that “ScotRail has learned lessons”.

Well, obviously not, given the travel chaos, disruption and damage to tourism, hospitality and business that our nationalised ScotRail has subjected us to. From taxpayers’ millions being ploughed into keeping the failed state-owned Prestwick Airport above ground to severe NHS staffing shortages and chronic ambulance waiting times, from the dreadful mishandling of our ferries, railways and public transport to our creaking justice system lessons, we are assured by our government, will always be learnt, yet in practice they seldom are.

Story continues

Despite the clock ticking down and the response rate falling well short of the 94% target required by the National Records of Scotland, in order that the findings are reliable, credible and stand up to scrutiny, the First Minister has insisted that a ‘high quality census data set will still be produced.’ A questionable statement that Professor Lindsay Paterson, an expert in data led social research, strongly disagrees with, warning that any returns of under 90 per cent will make planning local services “impossible because of the absence of reliable data”.

In echoes of Scotland’s crippling national lockdown and the initial botched attempts with the vaccine roll out programme, in what should have been a relatively straight-forward and cost-efficient process, the Scottish Government again decided to be different from the rest of the UK, by delaying the roll-out of the Census by over a year, going digital instead of posting out paper copies, and tinkering with the questions to make them supposedly more inclusive.

We will now have a Scottish census that will come in at least £10 million over budget, cost the taxpayer a whopping £148 million and ultimately may not be fit for purpose. In other words, a complete shambles and another colossal waste of public money. It might therefore be an idea that, instead of going on holiday during the forthcoming parliamentary recess, Scottish Government ministers instead spend that valuable time at a parliamentary summer school, if there is such a thing, learning about good governance and how to manage a nation’s cash flow wisely.

I also wonder if they still intend to issue £1000 fines to householders who haven’t filled out the census or is turning on your electorate a salutary lesson in politics they have already learned?

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