New Statesman Scotland
One of the undoubted successes of the new Scottish Parliament - so far, anyway - is Britain's first and only Green parliamentarian, Robin Harper. Among the ranks of the Labour, Lib Dem and SNP faithful, Harper is one of the few back-bench MSPs whose name and face the public can recall. This is a distinction he shares with those seasoned men of the left, Tommy Sheridan and Dennis Canavan. Individualistic to the point of eccentricity, Harper is a one-time Edinburgh schoolteacher (modern studies) who is remembered by his pupils with real fondness. He is also remembered by his student contemporaries at Aberdeen University for the stunts he pulled. One of them was sailing down the River Dee (or was it the Don?) in a tin bath, naked but for a bowler hat.
But these days Robin Harper is a serious man. As the voice of Greenery he is no longer joking. His "soapbox" column in the Edinburgh Evening News should be required reading for the First Minister, Donald Dewar, and his coalition chums.
Harper's recent assault on the private car makes lively reading. He points out that 30 per cent of the private car's contribution to global warming is made in the manufacturing process. They pollute before a wheel touches the road. The time has come, he argues, to force auto-makers to build cars that can do at least 100 miles to the gallon. And to ban the sale of any machine that can do upwards of 100mph. None of which will endear Robin Harper to his fellow MSPs. They have just voted themselves far more parking spaces in the new parliament building than Edinburgh's planning regulations allow.
The recent flurry of synthesised outrage about those Soviet spies and British traitors who contrived to evade MI5 got this diary thinking. When MI5 agents (or their Special Branch helpmates) get round to applying for warrants to tap our telephones or steam open our mail, who do they ask? Is it John Reid, head honcho at the Scottish Office? Or is it the First Minister, top dog at the Scottish executive? Is it the justice minister Jim Wallace? Or can the London spooks ignore them all and acquire a go-ahead from the Home Secretary whose writ hardly runs in Scotland?
We ask, because the acts that regulate spookdom - the Security Service Act of 1989 and the Intelligence Services Act of 1994 - were written before the advent of Holyrood and do not say. Inquiries in government circles met a stone wall: among lawyers it induced much scratching of heads.
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