The SNP has failed in an attempt to kick a major child abuse whistleblowing initiative into the long grass, writes former Edinburgh councillor and Herald columnist John McLellan

As Nicola Sturgeon was preparing to bring down the curtain on her long parliamentary career with a speech about support for children in the care system, so too were her SNP colleagues up the hill in Edinburgh’s City Chambers intervening in a move directly connected to the vilest abuses of young people in care.

Except Edinburgh Council’s SNP group was not trying to strengthen systems to protect vulnerable youngsters, but attempting to water down support for a new national whistleblowing service, a move which stemmed from multiple failures to act on the sounding of alarms about child abuse and corruption within the authority going back decades.

In a motion by the Conservatives’ Phil Doggart to Thursday’s full council meeting, councillors were asked to support the petition to the Scottish Parliament to establish an independent whistleblowing office for education and children’s services, raised by former Edinburgh councillors Alison Dickie (SNP) and Bill Cook (Labour), and retired Edinburgh teacher and whistleblower Christine Scott.

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The Holyrood petitions committee judged the issue to be so serious that it was one of the few petitions it carried over for the new committee to consider after the May election, advising their successors to “rigorously pursue the most appropriate means to progress its aims.”

The petition also wants the new body to investigate mishandling of past and present child abuse and safeguarding issues, but the SNP argued for a review to set up a national standards system before any new office could be even considered, never mind established.

It would have kicked the can down the road for years, perhaps hoping the determined campaigners simply ran out of energy. It not only appalled the petitioners, but Edinburgh care home abuse survivor Holly Alex who made a social media appeal to councillors to support the motion.

In proposing the SNP’s preferred course of action, Cllr Kate Campbell, who chairs the council’s whistleblowing committee, was strangely muted, to the extent that it appeared, to me anyway, that her support for her party’s position was less than fulsome, as if it was something she had only agreed to propose under sufferance. Or perhaps, as she is hotly tipped to succeed Ash Regan as the MSP for Edinburgh Eastern, she was mindful of not upsetting future Holyrood colleagues by backing something the SNP government has resisted?

It didn’t stop the Greens backing the Nationalists, but for a group not short of opinions about issues with nothing to do with the council, none of them had anything to say about why the authority should not back something which should ultimately protect the institution as well as those to whom it owes a duty of care. They couldn’t admit it for such an emotive subject, but it was simply party politics at play, something councillors were warned to avoid in the 2021 report into the social worker and sex abuser Sean Bell.

The SNP-Green bid was defeated, but something dark is going on, judging by the stern warning before the debate by Lord Provost Robert Aldridge to avoid saying anything which might “prevent perpetrators being brought to justice” or compromise the safety of children.

“We can’t know what we don’t know,” said Cllr Doggart, adding that the Lord Provost presumably had access to information not available to other councillors.

City axes more short‑term lets – then moves to block new hotel

To more routine matters, every list of Edinburgh planning applications is dominated by the ongoing campaign against short-term lets, with dozens of retrospective submissions refused every fortnight under policies designed to return the properties to full-time residential occupation.

Last week, 14 short-term let applicants walked the plank, and this Wednesday 30 will go the same way, each one trousering up a minimum of £892.50 for the privilege, the biggest £2677.50. The 50p must be important.

The inevitable consequence in a city still keen to attract visitors to keep the economy going is to increase demand for hotel rooms, particularly those handy for popular attractions, and to that list will be added the new 8,500-seater AEG Edinburgh Park Arena, due to open in 2028.

Sure enough, next week a proposal for a new 200-bedroom hotel a few hundred yards away is up for discussion, but is likely to be rejected on the advice of officers because the site was originally designated for housing, and they don’t like the plan for 90 car parking spaces either.

The masterplan for the whole area by developer Parabola was approved five years ago and included a hotel just not on this particular plot, and what was originally earmarked for offices is now the arena site.

But the housing market has become so difficult that plans like this are being revised if better investment options are available. A hotel tucked away in the corner next to the railway and the tram line, doesn’t seem that bad an idea.

Edinburgh’s data centre freeze sends the wrong message to investors

Data centre phobia has taken hold in Edinburgh City Chambers, with councillors voting in favour of a Green Party moratorium on new developments until the Scottish Government defines what comprises a “green data centre”.

Whether this is legally competent is up for debate, but in a city hoping to build an economic future built on tech-driven universities, a bio science park  and financial innovation, councillors have just shot themselves in both feet and put up a big “closed for business” sign. Madness.

John McLellan is a former Edinburgh Evening News and Scotsman editor, now director of the Scottish news publishing trade association, Newsbrands Scotland. Brought up in Glasgow, McLellan has lived and worked in Edinburgh for over 30 years, and was a City of Edinburgh councillor for the Scottish Conservatives from 2017-22.

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