| Speaking in Dundee, Mr Wallace, who is bound by collective responsibility to support his colleagues in the Executive, said an application to make a late appeal over the decision would now be made.
He said, “There was a human error made quite a distance from the minister. We have got to make sure such failures — such errors — are minimised and limited, but as long as there is a human system there will be errors.
“We have instructed our lawyers to argue the case for a late appeal to be accepted.”
Meanwhile, as the Minister for Enterprise and Lifelong Learning, he told Dundee’s economic and business leaders to “persevere” in their efforts to attract more civil service posts from the Central Belt.
At a breakfast meeting organised by the City of Discovery Campaign and Dundee and Tayside Chamber of Commerce at the Apex City Quay Hotel today, Mr Wallace said he was aware of the perception that Dundee was getting a raw deal over decentralised posts.
However, he said the fact the Office of the Scottish Charities Regulator and the Care Commission had already been awarded to the city was evidence that Dundee’s case was being heard at Holyrood.
He said, “Certainly I am aware this is an issue that is important here and your parliamentary representatives don’t miss an opportunity to raise it.
“We annually look at what is up for review and just because Dundee has got some jobs in the past, doesn’t mean that it precludes Dundee from getting jobs in the future.
“The fact we have relocated so many SNH jobs to Inverness in the face of quite considerable political fire shows the commitment (to decentralise posts) remains and I would encourage people to put in bids when particular opportunities come up.”
Chamber of Commerce Chief Executive Mervyn Rolfe, a leading voice in the civil service jobs campaign in the region, said the Executive had to do more for Tayside.
He told the meeting that since devolution there had been a 25% increase in the number of civil service posts created, but there had been a proportional drop in the number based in Dundee.
He said Edinburgh was already beset by problems such as soaring property prices and congestion and instead of relieving some of the pressure on the capital by outsourcing some of the main governmental departments, the Executive was actually “fuelling the fire” by just tinkering at the edges.
He said, “We have bid for every single civil service job we have been told about or found out about. Already there are problems in Edinburgh on a massive scale and this is just fuelling the fire.
“The jobs we have had in Dundee are very welcome but when you look at the top governmental departments they are well and truly locked into Edinburgh. They (the Executive) are playing at the peripherals and that is not going to help at all.”
* A new exhibition highlighting cutting edge research being conducted at Dundee’s Abertay University was opened today by Deputy First Minister Jim Wallace.
The Research@Abertay display covers the institute’s work in computer games technology and digital arts, carried out through the IC CAVE research centre.
It also features the SIMBIOS centre for bioinformatics and the recently launched ACE (Abertay Centre for the Environment), both of which promote Abertay’s work in environmental science research, an area in which it is amongst the UK’s leading universities.
Other highlights of the exhibition were the university’s rapidly developing strengths in psychology and forensic science and health sciences research being carried out at the new Tayside Institute for Health Studies (TIHS).
The exhibition, a celebration of Abertay gaining the right 10 years ago to use the title of “university”, also covers Abertay’s MIST centre (Manufacturing and Intelligent Systems Technology) and its SER (Scottish Economic Research) unit.
Running in tandem with the launch was a seminar at which six leading academics discussed those areas in which the university now features prominently. Presentations covered complexity theory from Professor John Crawford; digital arts and computer games from Professor Peter Astheimer; intelligent systems from Professor David Bradley; health sciences from Dr Sue Cowan; psychology from Professor David Heeley, and environmental sciences from Professor Iain Young.
Abertay principal and vice-chancellor Professor Bernard King said, “Research, both pure and applied, is an essential academic activity.”
The exhibition will be open to the public this month in the university’s foyer in the Kydd Building. |
