HIE chairman also ran consultancy at centre of plagiarism row
By Jonny Muir Press and Journal
Highlands and Islands Enterprise is to carry out an internal audit of contracts worth almost £100,000 that were awarded to a consultancy firm run by the agency’s chairman.
The investigation will examine 15 contracts awarded to Edinburgh-based Rocket Science, which is run by William Roe, who is also the chairman of HIE.
The announcement of the audit, which will be overseen by Audit Scotland, comes a month after Mr Roe’s company repaid HIE an £8,000 consultancy fee following an allegation that Rocket Science plagiarised information from two academic studies.
The audit will establish whether there was any further plagiarism in another 14 contracts – worth a combined £95,494 – that were awarded to Rocket Science between 2005 and this year.
The decision to investigate was revealed in a letter from Audit Scotland to Highlands and Islands MSP Mary Scanlon, who has lobbied for an audit.
Last night, Mrs Scanlon said she was pleased the audit would be carried out but called on Audit Scotland to carry out a further inquiry into the number of contracts awarded to Rocket Science that did not go through a tendering process.
She said an investigation was necessary to reassure the public that “contracts awarded by any quango are completely transparent”.
In the letter to Mrs Scanlon, Audit Scotland portfolio manager Bob Leishman said: “Contracts should only be awarded following appropriate procedures, including tendering action, and approval.
“In response to inquiries from other elected representatives, HIE has asked its internal audit team to review the contracts awarded to Rocket Science. Audit Scotland will monitor the outcome of that review on behalf of the auditor general.”
Conservative MSP Mrs Scanlon said: “Concerns were raised with me when it was discovered that Rocket Science had received some £117,000 of contracts from HIE while both organisations had the same chairman in William Roe.
“Not only were concerns raised about the propriety of these transactions, it has now been revealed that one of the reports dealing with skills utilisation was full of plagiarised comments from two other reports.”
She added: “Audit Scotland state in their response that there are no specific restrictions in terms of bidding for contracts but they say, ‘Contracts should, however, only be awarded following appropriate procedures, including tendering action’.
“The fact is that of the 15 contracts Rocket Science won from HIE, only two went to tender. I have now written again to Audit Scotland to ask if this additional information will lead them to investigate the situation with HIE and Rocket Science.
“The public must be sure that contracts awarded by any quango are completely transparent. Stricter guidelines may be a way of restoring public confidence.”
An HIE spokeswoman said: “As soon as plagiarism of the skills-utilisation study was identified, Rocket Science notified HIE and refunded our fee.
“In the light of this, our head of internal audit and compliance is now reviewing all previous reports submitted to HIE from Rocket Science to ascertain whether the example recently publicised is a one-off occurrence.”
The audit is expected to be completed by the end of the month.
