Commonwealth crisis: Westminster was warned about Scotland

There were numerous warnings about Patricia Scotland's propensity to milk the public purse when she was appointed Commonwealth secretary-general in 2015. She had been proposed by Dominica, the country of her birth. However, she had spent most of her life since the age of two in the UK and it is clear that the new majority Conservative government raised no objection; indeed, Cameron and company may actually have promoted the candidacy of Gordon Brown's favourite lawyer. If Cameron and then Foreign Secretary Phillip Hammond paid no attention to the occasional negative reports from Private Eye magazine, they should have heeded the frequent warnings from a former UK ambassador, Craig Murray.

The BBC news website reports:

The questions about Lady Scotland's future leadership of the Commonwealth come after she was criticised by internal auditors last November for awarding a lucrative consultancy contract to a company run by a friend.

The BBC revealed last week that the Commonwealth's Audit Committee accused her of "circumventing" usual competitive tendering rules by awarding a £250,000 commission to a firm owned by fellow Labour peer, Lord Patel of Bradford.

Lady Scotland's lawyers insisted the decision to award the contract was fully justified. But New Zealand has since confirmed it put its £1.5m annual contribution to the Commonwealth Secretariat on hold as a result of the "significant weaknesses" in managing procurement identified in the KPMG auditors' report.

Commonwealth high commissioners in London are due to meet on Thursday [today] to discuss the challenges currently facing the Commonwealth Secretariat, including the KPMG report.

Diplomatic sources suggested some developing countries could shift their support to an alternative candidate if they fear they could lose Commonwealth revenue streams under the current leadership of the Secretariat.

It is to be hoped that the Commonwealth ambassadors will agree on a person who can restore the standing of the secretary-general's office. Now that we are officially outside the EU, we need the support of the Commonwealth more than ever. This message needs to be drummed into the ears of the Prime Minister, who should be active in helping to find a successor of substance to take the Commonwealth forward.