The Herald can further reveal that the Scottish Government is already reviewing procedures around how they handle complaints in the wake of the row.
It comes after pensioners sent multiple complaints to the First Minister about the handling of the scandal, with one threatening legal action if heads do not roll at the Scottish Government’s pensions agency over the failures to deal properly with the debacle.
But while Mr Swinney was accused of ignoring their concerns by failing to respond to the scandal directly, those delegated to act as a result ended up sharing the details of Martin Gallagher with others, who heads the Job’s Forgotten group seeking police pension remedies. Mr Gallagher says it was an unlawful breach of privacy and the data protection act.
Mr Gallagher’s complaint was partially upheld by the Scottish Government’s directorate for internal audit and assurance and has led to a review of how ministers handle campaigns “to improve transparency for people who write to us around the sharing of the name of a lead campaigner”.
While the directorate still felt there was some lawful basis to the responses, the matter has been passed to the ICO which is responsible for enforcing data protection law.
If it decides that an organisation has seriously failed to comply with he law, it can impose fines of up to £17.5m but also has other remedies available including issuing orders to an organisation to fix issues which led to the breaches or stop certain activities altogether.
Mr Gallagher, a retired police superintendent, said: “People wrote to the First Minister and then got this letter. Basically, it was we cannot be bothered to reply, speak to this named private citizen! “They showed no regard for whether I wanted my name shared and adopted a wholly cavalier approach to sharing it. No permission was sought from me.
“They essentially presented me as a government information service without any notification, let alone consultation, that they were going to do so.
“You couldn’t make it up.”
Scotland is facing a £1.7bn bill in the scandal, which has led to up to over 200,000 Scots police, teachers, NHS staff including nurses, firefighters and local government workers, both pensioners and those close to retirement, being sought over an age discrimination court ruling by the Scottish Public Pensions Agency, which is responsible for providing each worker with potential compensation.
They have been affected by a High Court ruling in 2018 which found the UK government’s 2015 public sector pension reforms unlawfully discriminated against younger workers.
John Swinney was warned in a letter of complaint of potential legal action if heads do not roll in Scotland’s £1.7bn pensions scandal. (Image: Damian Shields)
Pensioners are still waiting – some for tens of thousands of pounds in compensation – because the SPPA has missed multiple legal deadlines for fixing the discrimination, a failure that is now piling on millions in extra interest costs at 8% a year.
That financial hit ultimately lands on Scotland’s taxpayer-funded bodies, including the NHS, all 32 councils, Police Scotland and the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, whose already rising pension contribution bills are being pushed even higher as a result.
The Pensions Ombudsman is already examining multiple complaints about how the SPPA has handled cases.
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Mr Gallagher’s complaint to the Scottish Government’s data protection office said that he had “grave concerns as to where else my details are being circulated and what conversations may be taking place in respect of my complaint”.
Martin Gallagher leads the Job’s Forgotten group. (Image: Martin Gallagher)
The SPPA chief operating officer, Christopher Nairns, was named in sample letters sent to pensioners, which said the First Minister had received a “high number of pieces of correspondence” regarding concerns and that finance minister Ivan McKee had written to Mr Gallagher providing a fuller update on the issues. He said: “Mr Gallagher has been asked to share the response with retired police colleagues.”
Mr McKee, who has portfolio responsibility for the SPPA, had defended the delays to Mr Gallagher in a letter on August 26, saying the original 18-month deadline was “ambitious”.
Video: John Swinney eventually responded to the concerns during First Minister’s Questions on October 31.
In response to Mr Gallagher’s belief that his name had been unlawfully shared by the Scottish Government with other people who had lodged complaints with the First Minister, the Directorate for Internal Audit and Assurance said that a data protection review of the process for handling campaigns had begun “to improve the transparency for people who write to us around the sharing of the name of a lead campaigner”.
They said in a response in September 24, which partially upheld his concerns that it would also “review and update the privacy information” on the Scottish Government website.
A directorate data protection officer said: “The Scottish Government has a lawful basis to process your information by sharing your name with people who write to us at the same time about the same issue. However, I believe we could be more transparent with people in this respect especially if the campaign is led by a private individual.”
The problems began with a 2018 court case in London called the McCloud judgment, which found that changes made to public sector pensions in 2015 were unfair to younger workers. Those reforms were designed to save taxpayers money, since people are living longer and pensions were becoming more expensive.
However, the government let older staff stay on the more generous old schemes, while younger ones were moved to less generous new ones.
Judges and firefighters successfully challenged this as age discrimination, and now every public sector pension scheme in Scotland — from teachers and NHS staff to police and council workers — must fix the unfairness and compensate those affected.
Of 215,000 people entitled to pension remedy statements, only around 59,000 had received them by the Scottish Government agency’s 18-month statutory deadline of March 31.
Mr Swinney finally responded to the scandal at First Minister’s Questions on October 30 confirming that action to end the scandal would not end before 2027.
A Scottish Government spokesman said: “The Scottish Government takes the privacy of citizens’ data very seriously and is committed to ensuring that the personal data we hold complies with data protection legislation.”