Rob Edwards

National park under fire for ‘cover-up’ of shares in £200m gold mine

from Sunday Herald, 02 August 2015

The Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park authority has been accused of a “cover-up” over the resignation of one of its leading members for failing to declare shares in a £200 million gold mining company for more than two years.

Internal documents seen by the Sunday Herald reveal that Owen McKee resigned as vice-convener and chair of the planning committee in December. This followed his admission that he had bought more than half a million shares for close to £12,000 in Scotgold, an Australian company that is planning to dig for gold under a hill at Cononish near Tyndrum in the national park.

After “serious concern” from fellow board members about the “reputational risks” to the park, he decided to sell his shares hours before a meeting due to discuss arrangements for considering the gold mine. He remains a member of the park board and planning committee.

Board members were repeatedly warned to keep what had happened secret, and were not given the full report of an internal investigation into McKee’s shareholdings. “This matter is highly sensitive and confidential and is not in the public domain”, they were told by park convener, Linda McKay, in December.

Outdoor campaigners allege that the park authority deliberately tried to hide the reasons for McKee’s resignation from the public, and have lodged a complaint with the ethical standards watchdog. The authority is “not fit for purpose”, its leaders should be suspended and a government investigation launched, they say.

Buccleuch accused of “breathtaking arrogance” over huge wind farm plan

from Sunday Herald, 14 June 2015

Buccleuch's North Sanquhar Moor wind farm

The Duke of Buccleuch lobbied the Energy Minister, Fergus Ewing, and government officials behind closed doors to fast-track a £1 billion plan for one of Scotland’s biggest-ever wind farms, according to internal documents obtained by the Sunday Herald.

In a “private and confidential” presentation last November, Buccleuch’s chief executive, John Glen, urged Ewing to “debottleneck” the approval process for building 140 wind turbines across a large swathe of moorland east of Sanquhar in Dumfries and Galloway. He also named the senior civil servant whom he thought should assist with the project.

If it goes ahead, the wind farm will reap multi-million pound profits for Buccleuch, the UK’s largest private landowner. But critics fear that it could damage the prospects for popular, smaller schemes that could bring more community benefits.

The Buccleuch estate has been attacked by politicians, community and environmental groups for using “insider influence” to try and get its way behind the scenes.

Joan McAlpine, the SNP MSP for the South of Scotland, accused Buccleuch of “breathtaking arrogance” and of acting covertly to avoid public scrutiny. “I have serious concerns about the secretive way in which Buccleuch operates,” she said.

“The Sunday Herald’s exposure of such behaviour by Buccleuch will anger many SNP members and supporters who want to see powerful landlords brought to heel.”

Glen denied being secretive and insisted that the estate had “acted in good faith and with the utmost propriety” to promote rural development.

We have lost freedom of information rights, warns watchdog

from The National, 19 January 2015

Freedom of information rights have been seriously eroded over the last ten years because governments have failed to ensure that the law has kept pace with privatisation, Scotland’s information tsar is warning. 

Rosemary Agnew, the Scottish Information Commissioner, criticises ministers for not applying freedom of information (FoI) legislation to housing associations, private prisons and many other organisations that have taken over public services. Powers to extend the law have been “woefully underused”, she says, and hundreds of thousands of people have lost FoI rights as a result.

She is so concerned that she has taken the unusual step of submitting a special report to the Scottish Parliament calling for FoI rights to be immediately reinstated. The report, which is published today, represents a direct challenge to the Scottish government. 

“It is quite simple really,” says Agnew. “If FoI law does not cover the right organisations we stand to lose more than access to information rights: we stand to lose the opportunities it gives all of us to have a say in how Scotland is governed and run on our behalf.”

Exposed: how the whisky and golf industries broke the rules on water

from Sunday Herald, 18 January 2015

Whisky and golf, two industries that help define Scotland around the globe, have been exposed as major environmental offenders by a government watchdog. 

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) has condemned the performance of distilleries and golf courses across the country as “poor” because they have broken the rules by taking more water than permitted. Farmers and other businesses have also come under fire. 

Sepa has further criticised more than 200 operators for failing to say how much water they used. They include more farmers, golf courses and distilleries, as well as Edinburgh Zoo, Scone Palace in Perth and the US property tycoon, Donald Trump.

Sepa regulates the removal of water from streams, rivers, lochs and the ground to protect wildlife, limit pollution and ensure that the precious natural resource is fairly shared. It will take legal enforcement action against businesses that persistently fail to comply, it warns.

When Sepa published its 2013 assessments of the environmental performances of Scottish businesses last November, it kept the names and ratings of 961 water operations secret “for reasons of national security”. But it has now released a list of the assessments to the Sunday Herald in response to a request under freedom of information law.

Revealed: 316 nuclear safety blunders, 71 fires and a drug problem at Faslane

from Sunday Herald, 26 October 2014

There has been a sharp rise in the number of safety blunders at the nuclear bomb and submarine bases on the Clyde, according to internal reports from the Ministry of Defence (MoD).

In the last five years there have been 316 “nuclear safety events”, 2,044 fire alarms and 71 fires at the Royal Navy’s controversial facilities at Faslane and Coulport near Helensburgh. There have also been over 3,000 “near miss” industrial accidents, a positive test for illegal drugs and a series of difficulties with wild animals.

The revelations have been described as “chilling” by the Scottish National Party’s leader at Westminster and defence spokesman, Angus Robertson MP. He is planning to raise them urgently in the House of Commons, and is demanding action from the MoD.

The new figures showed that nuclear safety breaches at the Clyde bases were “widespread”, he said. “Wherever nuclear weapons are concerned safety must be paramount. We need to know exactly what is being done to address these breaches and tighten procedures.”

The panoply of problems at the home of the UK’s Trident nuclear weapons system has been disclosed by the MoD’s last four annual health and safety reports covering 2009-10 to 2012-13. They were requested by the Sunday Herald under freedom of information law in January and released last week.

Millions of pearl mussels wiped out by sewage pollution, say scientists

Exclusive, 12 September 2014

Millions of freshwater pearl mussels have been killed by sewage pollution of the River Spey in northeast Scotland over the last 15 years, according to scientific reports released under freedom of information law.

Experts from the James Hutton Institute in Aberdeen have revealed that the number of mussels in the river has halved from 10 million in 1998-9 to five million in 2013. They blame high levels of phosphorus and other pollutants in sewage discharges for the decline, along with other factors.

Freshwater pearl mussels, a globally endangered species that can live for more than 100 years, are among the UK’s most protected wildlife. They hide at the bottom of clean, fast-flowing rivers and have long been victims of illegal fishing for the pearls they sometimes produce.

But the mussels are also under threat from pollution, the scientists warn. In detailed draft reports for the Cairngorms National Park Authority in May and June, they argue that the environmental standards set for the Spey are far too lax. 

Concentrations of phosphorus in the Spey "are generally too high and of greatest immediate concern,” they say. Standards under the European Union’s water framework directive "have been set considerably higher than they should be, possibly by 1-2 orders of magnitude”.

‘High risk’ of water pollution from drilling for underground gas, says Sepa report

from Sunday Herald, 16 March 2014

An internal report from Scotland’s environment watchdog warning of a “high risk” of water pollution from drilling for underground gas has been seized on by objectors in the run-up to a major public inquiry opening this week.

The report, written by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) in September 2012, reveals that a flawed and potentially leaky gas borehole was planned at Cumbernauld close to exploratory water wells dug by the maker of Irn Bru, A.G. Barr, and the international sausage skin manufacturer, Devro. There was also “poor borehole construction” at Canonbie, near the English border.

Environmentalists and community groups say that the food industry’s reputation is under threat from the dash to exploit unconventional gas in Scotland. They are preparing to fight plans, at a public inquiry starting on Tuesday, for the UK’s first commercial drilling for coalbed methane in Falkirk and Stirling.

But Sepa pointed out that it has toughened its regulatory oversight and that the Cumbernauld borehole hasn’t yet been drilled. A.G. Barr and Devro both stressed that they are using mains water for their products. 

The Sepa report, marked “internal only”, was written by experts for its Water and Land Policy and Regulatory Support Group and released under environment information law. “The construction of deep boreholes presents a high risk to the water environment,” it says.

50 universities are helping to develop nuclear weapons, says study

from The Guardian, 11 February 2014

Britain’s secretive nuclear weapons research organisation gives over £8 million a year in research funding to more than 50 universities, according to documents released under the Freedom of Information Act.

The Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE), a private consortium that runs nuclear bomb plants at Aldermaston and Burghfield in Berkshire for the Ministry of Defence (MoD), puts most of the money into five of the UK’s leading universities with which it has formed “strategic alliances”.

They are Imperial College in London, and the universities of Cambridge, Bristol, Heriot-Watt in Edinburgh and Cranfield in Bedfordshire and Wiltshire. The money helps fund research into plasma physics, high performance computing, materials science and hydrodynamics, all of which are important for designing and making nuclear weapons.

The report, which is being launched on 12 February at University College London, claims to be the first to expose the extent of AWE’s links with universities. It is based on responses under freedom of information law from the MoD and universities.

It is being published by two groups campaigning for nuclear disarmament, Nuclear Information Service (NIS) and Medact, which brings together health professionals. They accept that not all of the research will directly help the UK’s nuclear weapons programme, but say that much of it will.

Stores of anti-radiation pills to be kept secret

Exclusive, 30 January 2014

The numbers and locations of the anti-radiation pills meant to protect tens of thousands of people against cancer after major nuclear accidents are to be kept secret.

The Scottish Information Commissioner, Rosemary Agnew, has backed the Scottish government’s refusal to reveal how many potassium iodate pills were stored, and where.

Potassium iodate tablets are an established way of preventing people exposed to radiation from contracting thyroid cancers. They prevent radioactive iodine, like that released by the 1986 accident at Chernobyl in the Ukraine, from contaminating the thyroid gland. 

In a decision to be published next week, Agnew has ruled that Scottish ministers were right to withhold the information on grounds of national security. They had argued that publishing the numbers and locations of the pills would reveal the UK’s capability to respond to a radiological attack by terrorists.

Revealed: the £1.4 billion that the public sector pours into pollution, tobacco and weapons

from Sunday Herald, 19 January 2014 

More than 430 public bodies in Scotland are investing over £1.4 billion in pollution, tobacco and weapons despite the dangers posed to the planet, human health and life around the world.

A major investigation by the Sunday Herald reveals that public sector pension funds are supporting more than a hundred big corporations blamed for wrecking the climate, causing cancer and profiting from conflict. 

Amongst the groups backing major climate polluters is the government’s Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa), which champions moves to cut climate pollution. Amongst those funding big tobacco are health groups, cancer hospices, schools and universities.

Two public pension schemes are putting millions of pounds into an electronics company that has been shunned by other public investors because it makes controls for US military drones accused of illegally killing more than 400 civilians in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.

The revelations have shocked trade unionists, pension-holders and campaigners, who are now calling for a major overhaul of public investments. “Many people work in the public sector because they want the world to be a better place,” said Dr Richard Dixon, director of Friends of the Earth Scotland.

“They will be appalled to find out the scale on which their money is being used to fund climate change, big tobacco and arms companies. Whether it is health workers or those working for the environment, in many cases funding these companies directly conflicts with the aims of the organisations offering these pensions.”

Exposed: the £200m hole in the funds for cleaning up old coal mines

from Sunday Herald, 08 December 2013

Local authorities are missing a massive £200 million from the funds they need to clean up the mess made by 32 opencast coal mines across central Scotland, a Sunday Herald investigation has revealed. 

According to informed industry sources, the cash set aside by two major coal companies before they collapsed this year only amounts to a quarter of the sum now needed to restore scarred landscapes as local communities were promised.

As a result most of the mines that are disfiguring large areas of East Ayrshire, Lanarkshire, Dumfries and Galloway, Fife and Midlothian are likely to remain derelict, or to be cleaned up on the cheap. 

The revelations have prompted furious reactions this weekend from leading politicians, environmental groups and local communities. It’s a “national scandal” and a “betrayal”, they say.

The falling price of coal forced Scottish Coal into liquidation in April, and another opencast company, ATH Resources, to wind up in May. Their collapse threw the future of 32 opencast sites in six local authorities into doubt.

Nuclear bomb factory ‘played down’ fire, says safety watchdog

02 December 2013

Britain's nuclear bomb factory "played down" a fire that could have caused "numerous fatalities", according to an internal investigation by the government’s Health and Safety Executive (HSE).

AWE, the private consortium that runs nuclear weapons plants at Aldermaston and Burghfield in Berkshire for the Ministry of Defence, was guilty of a “disturbing” catalogue of safety blunders in the handling of explosives, the HSE said. “The failings of AWE were comprehensive and basic,” it concluded.

HSE has released the report of its 10-month investigation into the fire at Aldermaston on 3 August 2010 under freedom of information law. AWE’s actions “fell far below the standard expected in an explosives manufacturing company,” it said.

The investigation discovered that explosives were stored in breach of a safety order, a key risk assessment was no more than a “cut and paste” job, and staff were poorly trained. “This was an incident waiting to happen,” the report said. 

The fire broke out just after 9 o’clock in the evening when workers were making nitrocellulose lacquer for explosives. One worker was left with burns to his face and arm, a building was damaged, local residents were evacuated and roads closed.

Scottish ministers accused of being ‘in bed’ with the fish farming industry

from Sunday Herald, 01 December 2013

Scottish ministers have had more than 30 meetings with leaders of the fish farming industry in the last three years, prompting accusations that they are “in cahoots” with the industry and failing to protect the environment. 

Public agencies have also disclosed that they gave the go-ahead to more than 750 fish farms in recent years, but only refused consent in six cases. The farms are being “rubber-stamped”, allege critics, to help boost production 50 per cent by 2020 in line with the government’s target.

In response to a request under freedom of information law, the Scottish government has released a list of meetings between ministers and the fish farming industry. It shows that since January 2011 successive environment ministers have met with fish farm companies 26 times, including eight site visits, four dinners, two awards ceremonies and an industry exhibition at Trondheim in Norway. 

Three meetings with the enterprise minister, Fergus Ewing, in 2012 and 2013 are also on the list. And it says that in June this year, the First Minister, Alex Salmond, opened a fish hatchery run by the Norwegian-owned company, Marine Harvest, at Lochailort in Lochaber.

According to an official press release, Salmond also met with Marine Harvest bosses in Oslo in May 2012 - but this was not included in the list released by the Scottish government. Officials admitted that this was due to an “administrative oversight”.

Scottish watchdog labelled ‘lapdog’ after agreeing to keep fish farm deaths secret

from Sunday Herald, 20 October 2013

Scotland’s environment watchdog has bowed to pressure from the salmon farming industry to keep the number of fish killed by diseases secret, according to internal correspondence seen by the Sunday Herald.

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) agreed to delete information on millions of fish deaths from a public database on fish farming launched this month because the Scottish Salmon Producers’ Association (SSPO) argued it would be commercially damaging.

An anti-fish-farm campaigner has accused Sepa of acting like the industry’s “lapdog”. Because the database also omits crucial information on sea lice, it is no more than “spin”, he claimed.

In February the Sunday Herald revealed that the number of farmed salmon killed by diseases had leapt to over 8.5 million in 2012. This compared to 6.8 million deaths in 2011 and 5.5 million in 2010, and was blamed mostly on the spread of amoebic gill disease.

A few days after the report appeared, SSPO’s chairman, Phil Thomas, wrote to Sepa’s chief executive, James Curran. He accused Sepa of “fundamentally poor regulatory practice”, arguing that it had “no justifiable need” to collect and make available information on the numbers of fish mortalities.

Edinburgh University pulls funding from lethal drone firm

from The Guardian, 29 September 2013

A leading UK university is ending its £1.2 million investment in a defence company that makes components for lethal US drones because it says the business is not “socially responsible”.

The University of Edinburgh has bowed to pressure from students and campaign groups and is withdrawing all funding from Ultra Electronics. The company, headquartered at Greenford in Middlesex, makes navigation controls for the US fleet of Predator and Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles.

Armed with Hellfire missiles, they are sent on covert “targeted killing” missions against suspected terrorist cells in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. But according to the Bureau for Investigative Journalism at City University in London, over 430 strikes since 2002 have killed at least 428 civilians, of whom 173 were children.

Human rights lawyers argue that the attacks breach international law because they take place in countries with which the US is not at war. The strikes were declared to be war crimes by the Peshawar High Court in Pakistan in May, and are under investigation by the United Nations (UN).

Edinburgh University Students Association (EUSA), the student environmental group, People and Planet, and the human rights charity, Reprieve, launched a campaign for the university to disinvest in June. A response under freedom of information law from the university had revealed an investment of £ 1,244,672 in Ultra Electronics at the end of 2012.

The day Britain’s nuclear warheads got a shock

04 September 2013

The exact time is unknown, the precise place is uncertain and what really happened remains unclear. But at least we now know that Britain’s Trident nuclear warheads had a shock.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has been forced by the UK Information Commissioner to release a few more details about one of the most serious crashes in the history of nuclear-armed submarines. There is much, however, that the ministry is still keeping secret.

Sometime in the night between 3 and 4 February 2009, somewhere in Atlantic Ocean, the Royal Navy’s HMS Vanguard collided with the French navy’s FNS Le Triomphant. Both boats usually carry nuclear weapons.

Ministers were privately briefed on the crash investigation by MoD officials on 23 March 2009. “The shock received and logged by the strategic weapons system in this incident were within normal tolerable limits,” they were told.

“As a department, we should be consistent and robust that this was an unfortunate and highly unlikely accident involving two vessels operating totally independently as they conducted national deterrent patrols.”

Revealed: how the police planned to downplay Trump film

from Sunday Herald, 18 August 2013

The police privately planned a concerted public relations strategy to try and play down the impact of a television documentary that showed two filmmakers being arrested near Donald Trump’s golf resort on the Aberdeenshire coast.

Internal emails obtained by the Sunday Herald reveal that police officers agreed to manage the broadcast of the film on BBC2 last October in a “low-key” way in an attempt to dampen public interest. They also prepared to receive complaints from the public.

The multiple award-winning documentary, ‘You’ve Been Trumped’, featured dramatic footage of its director, Anthony Baxter, and producer, Richard Phinney, being forcibly taken into custody while filming at the Menie estate near Balmedie in July 2010. All charges were subsequently dropped, and the police made a partial apology.

After being screened in cinemas across Scotland and at film festivals internationally, the film’s television premiere on 21 October 2012 prompted a storm of protest about the police action. But emails released by the police under freedom of information law show that they were doing their best to contain any damage the documentary might do.

Five days before the broadcast, the then assistant chief constable of Grampian Police, Simon Blake, emailed colleagues to say that he was co-ordinating a response to the film. “The force should manage this issue in a low-key and proportionate manner,” he said.

“I would not seek to take a high-profile approach that would serve to escalate the matter.” He proposed the preparation of a police statement that would only be provided to the media “if asked”.

Three of Britain’s nuclear warheads are being dismantled every year

from The Guardian, 11 August 2013

Quietly, slowly and without any fuss, Britain is dismantling its nuclear weapons. Three Trident warheads a year are being moved from the Clyde to the home counties to be taken to pieces, according to evidence seen by The Guardian.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has revealed that it is overseeing a programme “to disassemble Trident warheads” at Burghfield in Berkshire, in a way that will prevent them from being put back together. This fulfills a government promise to cut the number of the nation’s nuclear weapons from 225 to 180 by the mid 2020s.

The latest monitoring of nuclear bomb convoys by activists suggests that in 2012 five warheads were sent by road to Burghfield from the Royal Naval Armaments Depot at Coulport on Loch Long near Glasgow. Two were refurbished and returned north, they said, while three stayed at Burghfield to be dismantled.

Ministers announced in June 2011 that Britain’s stockpile of nuclear weapons was being reduced by 45 to “no more than 180” over about 15 years to comply with international disarmament obligations. Until now it’s not been clear what was happening to the warheads, with critics suspicious that they could just be disarmed and stored ready to be rearmed if necessary.

But in response to a freedom of information request the MoD has made clear that the weapons are being dismantled at Burghfield. There is a secretive and heavily-fortified weapons disassembly plant on the site operated for the MoD by a private consortium, the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE).

The MoD's private plans to buy more of Cape Wrath condemned as 'arrogant'

from Sunday Herald, 11 August 2013

A fierce war of words has erupted between the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and the Scottish government over plans to expand a big bombing range at Cape Wrath in the far northwest of Scotland.

Internal emails obtained by the Sunday Herald reveal that the MoD has not abandoned its ambitions to buy more land at the cape, despite a competing bid from the local community. Its attitude has been condemned as “laughable” and “arrogant” by the Scottish environment and rural affairs minister, Richard Lochhead MSP.

The MoD announced publicly on 13 May that it had decided “not to proceed” with the purchase of land around the cape’s famous lighthouse, built in 1828 by Robert Louis Stevenson’s grandfather. But a private MoD memo the same month makes clear that the Royal Navy is still “interested” in buying the land.

If the local community bid fails, officials suggest that the MoD’s interest could be “rekindled” and it could try again. One email on 4 July notes that that the MoD may have the “political clout” to fight the Scottish government for the purchase “on grounds of national security needs”.

But Lochhead yesterday derided the MoD's stance. “It’s beyond belief that the MoD think that the local community becoming owners of the land at Cape Wrath is a threat to national security,” he said.

“Perhaps they might like to explain if it’s tourists enjoying the views, locals having tea and cakes in the café, or walkers completing the Scottish National Trail that pose the greatest threat. It’s this sort of arrogant Whitehall attitude which could have stopped the community getting the chance to buy the land at Cape Wrath.”

Aberdeenshire police accused of acting like Trump’s ‘private security force’

from Sunday Herald, 04 August 2013

Police in Aberdeenshire were “understandably” seen as biased in favour of the New York property tycoon, Donald Trump, and against local residents, an internal police investigation seen by the Sunday Herald has concluded.

Maintaining a neutral stance in the prolonged and bitter arguments over Trump’s plans for a golf resort at Menie on the northeast coast was “an impossibly hard task” because the “majority of our calls” came from Trump’s staff, the investigation report said.

Residents and campaigners accused the police of acting as Trump’s “private security force” instead of protecting the interests of local people. Trump’s spokesman, however, dismissed the accusations as “absolutely pathetic”.

Police Scotland has released 26 pages of correspondence and reports about fiercely disputed events at Menie three years ago. This follows an investigation by the Scottish Information Commissioner, Rosemary Agnew.

Police officers were present on 3 August 2010 when Trump’s representatives used mechanical diggers to move a boat and other equipment belonging to Michael Forbes, one of the billionaire’s highest profile local opponents. They then watched as a fence was erected on what Forbes claimed was his land.