A former college principal who denied suppressing official advice to secure a massive pay-off will be called back to Holyrood after former paymasters and auditors confirmed that information appears to have been deliberately withheld.
John Doyle, the £116,000-a-year former principal of Coatbridge College who received a 30-month severance deal, said last week it was not funded with taxpayers’ money and he will not pay it back.
He accused Scotland’s top public spending watchdog of making an “inaccurate and vexatious” claim that he deliberately withheld Scottish Funding Council (SFC) guidance that no member of staff should receive more than a 12-month pay-off.
Auditor General Caroline Gardner today stood by her statement at Holyrood’s Public Audit Committee – backed by six members of the college remuneration committee who confirmed they felt misled.
Ms Gardner also suggested MSPs should look into creating a new offence after lawyers concluded the apparent obfuscation did not meet the legal definition of fraud.
Committee convener Paul Martin said: “The evidence the committee has heard to this point has led us to agree that John Doyle needs to appear before us again.
“We are determined to carry out a full inquiry into the governance of severance payments at Coatbridge College.”
Ms Gardner told the committee: “Mr Doyle, as principal and accounting officer for the college, had a responsibility to ensure the remuneration committee had the advice it needed.
“In my view, there was a deliberate withholding of information from the people who were charged with making the decision.”
She acknowledged the withholding of information for financial gain may meet “the dictionary definition of fraud” but may not meet the legal definition.
Lawyers have concluded “the likelihood of money being recovered from individuals concerned was very small”, she said.
She added: “If there should be a new offence or some other sanction available, I think that is a good question for the committee to consider.”
Today, Conservative MSP Mary Scanlon asked members of the remuneration committee whether the Auditor General’s conclusion that information was withheld was “a fair assessment”.
Ralph Gunn said: “With hindsight, yes, but at the time we didn’t know there was anything like that.
“If I had guidance in front of me that said something markedly different from what we eventually decided, I would not have made the decision we did make.”
Last week, Mr Doyle told the committee the SFC advice was available on the college intranet.
Thomas Keenan told MSPs today: “If Mr Doyle seriously thinks that to advise committees appropriately that we should go to the intranet, then quite simply that is absolute nonsense.”
He said he was “very concerned that we had been misled”, was “more than upset” and he sympathised with trade unionists who then went “absolutely ballistic” when they learned of the pay-off.
Last week, Mr Doyle told journalists: “Why would I pay money that is not due to anyone? It’s not taxpayers’ money … I have done absolutely nothing wrong.”
Today, remuneration committee member Paul Gilliver said: “My view of the income was it went into the common reserve which was applied to the charitable objectives of the college. It came from college resources.”
Liberal Democrat MSP Tavish Scott said: “If the money … only came from the SFC up to a certain level, and did not come from commercial income, it must have come from college resources which would normally pay for things that go on in classrooms to help the students.”