Senior civil servants in Edinburgh and London have been accused of serious breaches of their duty of impartiality by taking partisan positions during Scotland’s independence referendum.

In a stinging report naming two permanent secretaries, MPs on the public administration select committee said Scottish government officials wrongly allowed public money to be used for Alex Salmond’s white paper on independence, which had veered into becoming a party manifesto.



It said Sir Peter Housden, the Scottish government permanent secretary, should have asked Salmond for a written order to publish long sections which were actually the Scottish National party’s plans for after an election in 2016 – an election it had neither fought nor won.

“Civil servants should always advise against the appearance of partisan bias in government documents – and they should not be required to carry out ministers’ wishes, if they are being asked to use public funds to promote the agenda of a political party, as was evident in this case,” the committee said.

“At the very least, Sir Peter Housden, Scotland’s permanent secretary, should have required a letter of direction.”

But the committee also accused Sir Nicholas Macpherson, the head of the Treasury, of endangering the civil service’s hard-fought reputation for neutrality by publishing his advice to Treasury ministers warning against a currency union with Scotland in February 2014.

It brushed off Macpherson’s defence that the independence referendum was an exceptional case where the “very existence of the British state was at stake”. It said decisions on a currency pact were for governments, not civil servants. If currency and stock markets needed reassurance, other methods could have been used.

It stated: “The only purpose [for releasing his letter] was to use the impartial status of a permanent secretary to give authority to the advocacy of a political argument.”

The MPs concluded: “Sir Nicholas Macpherson’s advice should not have been published. Its publication compromised the perceived impartiality of one of the UK’s most senior civil servants. [The] decision to publish will have unintended consequences for advice given to ministers on future major issues – including referendums.”

Clearly worried about the risks of politically-directed bias in a forthcoming referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU, the committee urged the civil service to overhaul its code by applying the same rules which restrict public money being used on election-related issues to referendums. Explicit advice on civil service impartiality was needed for referendums, they added.

It said it was clearly a “constitutional fiction” that officials in Edinburgh and London were part of a single unified civil service since they were serving governments in conflict with each other. Even so, the principle of a single civil service was worth protecting.

It said the white paper Scotland’s Future, which was widely criticised when Salmond published it in November 2013 for its lack of candour and accuracy, was not well-enough controlled by the civil service in Edinburgh.

“This did not uphold the factual standards expected of a UK government white paper and raised questions about the use of public money for partisan purposes,” the committee ruled, before dismissing the Scottish government’s protests that officials are employed to enact policy.

“We conclude that parts of the white paper should not have been included in a government publication. Civil servants should not be required to carry out ministers’ wishes, if they are being asked to use public funds to promote the agenda of a political party, as was evident in this case.”

Both governments insisted their civil servants had behaved correctly. The Treasury cited Macpherson’s lecture to the Strand Group in January where he said it felt it was his duty to release his advice rejecting a currency union to George Osborne, the chancellor. It was an exceptional case, a spokesman said.

“The British state’s position was being impugned,” Macpherson said. “Demonstrating that the political and official state were completely aligned would further strengthen the credibility of the government’s position. And it was important that the arguments were exposed before the referendum rather than after it.”

The Scottish government insisted that Scotland’s Future “met the highest professional standards, that its contents were entirely appropriate for a government publication and was a proper use of public funds.

“[It] is the role of the civil service to work with the elected government of the day to implement its policies. It is not in any dispute that the Scottish government elected in 2011 stood on a platform of supporting independence and of holding a referendum.”

A spokeswoman argued that other recent UK government documents, including the Calman report on new powers for Holyrood in 2009 and the command paper on Smith Commission proposals for even more powers, had set out policies which relied on parties winning a general election.

In both cases, however, the proposals had been drafted by cross-party commissions which committed all their signatories to support them; the Smith Commission document in December was backed too by the SNP.