Dundee SNP administration leader Ken Guild has criticised his Labour counterpart for demanding publication of details of spying probes mounted against the authority’s own staff because most of them happened when the Labour member was leader of the city council.
As reported earlier this week (link), the authority spent £51,000 between 2006 and 2011 on hiring private detectives to investigate alleged improper behaviour by council staff.
Councillor Kevin Keenan, who headed the Labour-Lib Dem coalition until the SNP gained power in 2009, revealed he had written to chief executive David Dorward for an explanation after being left shocked by the outlay (link).
He said community projects could have benefited from the cash and asked for details of any ongoing investigations.
After hearing of the request, Mr Guild took his rival to task.
He said Mr Keenan should have known what the money had been spent on as 90% of it happened on his watch.
He said: “The great majority of this expenditure took place when Labour were in administration. Since 2010 there has been no expenditure on surveillance at all.’Dreadful'”The chief executive has made that very clear to elected members. What I cannot understand is he (Mr Keenan) is saying how dreadful this is.
“He was leader of the administration from 2007 to 2009 when the bulk of these investigations were going on and he claims he was unaware of it.”
Mr Guild said his opponent should at least have known about the use of private investigators during a probe into a number of housing concierges which ended in seven staff being sacked and two more resigning.
That case was dealt with at a meeting of the council’s personnel appeals sub-committee in 2008.
Mr Keenan said he approached then chief executive Alex Stephen after becoming aware private surveillance had been used on one occasion.
He said: “I was unhappy with the previous chief executive using private investigators and I believed it only happened once. It is very disappointing to hear it has happened more than that and I praise the current chief executive for never doing it.
“The strong message to come out of it is that councillors need to be kept informed about what spends go on. If it happened under my watch then, yes, it is an embarrassment, but officers did it off their own backs.”