Lady Scotland stands in the centre of a small, downstairs loo, looking aghast. I’m standing a few feet away, half bent down over the toilet itself to examine the plastic, white and completely unremarkable seat. The reason for the strange scene is that this Mayfair townhouse, provided for the holder of one of the world’s most senior diplomatic roles, has been at the heart of a year-long media storm that has seen Scotland branded “Baroness Brazen” and “Baroness Shameless”.
The central allegation is that the Labour peer and QC, who has served in the cabinet and is now Commonwealth secretary general representing 2.4bn people, signed off on a lavish refit worth hundreds of thousands of pounds at this grace-and-favour mansion, making extravagant decisions over paint, curtains, bathrooms, chandeliers and even the loo.
“Baroness Shameless blew £300 of taxpayer money on a toilet seat,” said one story based on leaked documents from within the secretariat, with a further report claiming the Labour peer was so embroiled in controversy that she had been “snubbed” by the Queen.
As the first journalist to enter the house under Scotland’s stewardship, I can’t help but flick my eyes up to the ceiling to seek out a chandelier, and then glance across to what I assume is a downstairs toilet, wondering if it could be the location of that seat. To my surprise, there is no sign of anything that could reasonably be described as an extravagant upgrade.
In fact, the ground floor is fairly sparse, with wooden floors, old-fashioned curtains (detailed in the refurbishment because they were stored and dry-cleaned), plain off-white walls (Dulux magnolia, according to a list of the jobs carried out) and no paintings. There are, admittedly, two smarter rooms on the first floor, which have a marble fireplace, chandeliers and a polished wood table for meetings, but Scotland says these have long been features of the diplomatic home. The only new purchase in terms of furniture was beds, she says.
“I’ve been absolutely traduced and I think there has been a campaign to do that – it is quite extraordinary,” she says, leading me to the next bathroom and another controversy. This is where Scotland has been accused of a luxurious refit of her personal bathroom, although the bath and Ikea vanity unit are hardly plush. Did her male predecessors ever face this type of scrutiny, I ask?
“No,” she says, flinging out her arms in frustration. “I am amazed they think this is a proper issue for a secretary general of an international organisation to be consumed by.”
It feels as if she has come to slightly dread the property; the sight of just one lived-in bedroom suggests she stays here by necessity, but has not made it her home. “It’s unfair to refer to me as Baroness Brazen on a false premise that I have been profligate,” she says.
Patricia Scotland was born in Dominica in 1955 as the 10th child in a family of 12, and raised in Walthamstow, east London, where she attended state schools. From that modest background, she became the first black female QC (at just 35, the youngest person to take the silk since William Pitt the Younger), before being elevated to the House of Lords in the New Labour years for a political career that included a cabinet post as attorney general. Now she is the first woman to become secretary general of the Commonwealth with a brief to drive forward development, economic success and democracy in 52 countries.
And yet it is impossible to avoid the controversies that have at times overshadowed her career. In government, Scotland was forced to pay a penalty of £5,000 for hiring an illegal immigrant as a housekeeper (who sold her story to a newspaper), and she has since been dogged by allegations about her Commonwealth role – including claims, which she denies, of corruption linked to her election to the post, a consultancy contract given to an old friend, and, of course, the house upgrade.
Scotland is visibly twitchy about the accusations against her, which have unquestionably damaged her reputation. As we wander around the property she talks about her decision to take the Daily Mail, the Mail on Sunday and Mail Online (which are editorially separate) to the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso), the industry-led newspaper regulator, which recently concluded that in almost every case the editors’ code had not been breached.
The decision has shocked her, not least because Ipso conceded the stories did include some factual inaccuracies and conjecture although it did not consider the points significant enough to constitute a breach. When I ask why the regulator did not come and see the refurbishment, she simply shrugs.
Scotland stresses that this vast house, to which the 52 high commissioners are invited for regular meetings, belongs to the secretariat, and is only given to the secretary general for use during their term. She points out that regular refurbishment is required as part of the lease, and most of this job was signed off by her predecessor.
“The lease states that the house has to be maintained outside and inside to the satisfaction of the landlords,” she says. “A periodic review takes place before each secretary general finishes their term of practice so the last secretary general [the Indian diplomat Kamalesh Sharma], in accordance with his duty, set out what needed to be done. All that happened, with the work commissioned and signed off, before I became even a candidate.”
Still, it is true that, while Scotland says her predecessor signed off £276,000 of work, the final bill was £338,000. One story suggested that Scotland was prepared to spend £450,000 based on a leaked memo from the interior designer Nicky Haslam, who had been asked to offer pro bono advice on the refurbishment. The document obtained by the Daily Mail suggested the secretariat had found funding to cover the inflated cost, although Scotland insists that she decided it was unaffordable and it did not go ahead. Scotland’s office argues the bill was large because it was a vast Mayfair townhouse and a diplomatic home worth several million pounds that needed heavy refurbishment. After much persuasion, it provides a further breakdown of what the money went on, with the original cost including, for example, £10,000 on the exterior, more than £17,000 for paint, £21,000 for timber frames and £30,000 for carpets (which don’t look fancy at all).
Scotland says she doesn’t understand how a £307 toilet seat could have been listed, and her staff suggest the figure may have covered the costs of toilets throughout the house. They say the builders added contingency costs that pushed up the final bill, including the need to line the ceiling of the dining room, remove excess paint, repair leaks, place a new pump in a bathroom, have curtains stored and cleaned, fix the floors and change all the locks. There was a bill of £24,000 for labour on one bathroom, which – having seen the room – seems excessive; certainly, there is nothing about the house that could justify describing her as “shameless” or “brazen”.
A spokesman for the Mail on Sunday says it “published a series of articles that raised questions about the Baroness’s conduct and were entirely in the public interest”. A spokesman for the Daily Mail said it received leaks from “several whistleblowers” who had serious concerns about Scotland’s fitness to run the Commonwealth – and stressed that there were several allegations about differing issues. They claimed that it was unsurprising that the refit plans were scaled back after the revelations, and noted the Ipso finding.
So why does Scotland believe she has been targeted by a number of different publications? Is it because she is a successful black woman? “I think that is for others to say,” she says. “I’ve always been really focused on my career, doing what I can and allowing other people’s sexism, racism and prejudice to be their problem and not mine.”
She says she has no control over the motivation of others, only her response, and she says she won’t allow it to change her commitment to the role. “There have been times when I think, ‘Why am I doing this?’, and then I think about the 2.4bn people I am serving and that is what makes it worth it,” she says.
Among her priorities in the Commonwealth job is securing a regenerative model to reverse climate change, and she maintains that the world doesn’t need Donald Trump to get this right. “I think it is doable,” she says. “Climate change poses an existential threat to many of the small states.” She warns that some Commonwealth countries could disappear completely if the oceans rise further, and that migration flows are already resulting from the changes. Scotland says the Commonwealth has a big role to play, and argues that the Paris accord had been “prefigured in Malta” in 2015, during the Commonwealth heads of government meeting, which will next be held in the UK.
What then of Trump’s decision to withdraw one of the world’s biggest polluters from that deal? “America can’t unravel that, because the world made that consensus,” she says, adding that most US states were ignoring Trump and pledging to deliver on Paris anyway. Scotland argues that the key crossover point will come when renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels and the economic case will be made for action.
I ask about whether there have been uncomfortable conversations with member states about controversial practices such as the death penalty or a lack of rights for LGBT citizens. Scotland nods but makes clear that she is not criticising anyone in public. “We’ve been doing it by working with them,” she says. “We’ve had five countries in two years that have changed laws in relation to criminalisation of homosexuality. We are working alongside countries, making an economic case for inclusion.”
The London-based secretariat has been heavily criticised in the past, and on taking up her post, Scotland immediately set out to reform it. Some suggest that her decision to shake things up may have ruffled feathers and contributed to the leaks. The Conservative MP and former international development secretary Andrew Mitchell says Scotland faces a daunting task, “Because there are so many entrenched vested interests. And they will be out to get anyone who is serious about reform.”
He says that a previous review of the organisation during his time in Cabinet “found serious problems which have still not been addressed”. It’s a view echoed by Lord Mandelson, another politician with experience of the secretariat. “Patricia Scotland has been given a tough time, unwarranted and undeserved,” he says. “You expect it to be difficult when reforming something like the Commonwealth secretariat, but she has received a barrel load of prejudice and backstabbing. She will see it through, though.”
Her attempts at reform led to the controversial award of a £180,000 contract for a review to an old colleague, Lord Patel. This did appear to involve bypassing the normal process, although the Commonwealth secretariat has provided paperwork to show that it was not a breach of the organisation’s procurement rules. Scotland says she did not have the funds to spend the £1.8m quoted by major consultancies. “I was in the House of Lords for 20 years, and you get to know the brightest and best,” she says, although I wonder if it is a decision she would think twice about in the future.
Scotland hasn’t always helped herself. She could have provided a list of the work carried out much earlier, or invited journalists in (even for my visit, a request to publish pictures taken inside the house was refused). She could have also released earlier an email from her office sent on 2 June – six days before the Daily Mail first contacted the secretariat about the allegations – insisting on her desire for any refurb to involve “no extravagance; one bathroom that she can use; no costly kitchen”.
Scotland says the suggestion that the Queen snubbed her on Commonwealth Day is not true. Ipso concluded that, while there was no particular evidence for it, the comment was fair conjecture by a newspaper. That is despite an on-the-record denial by Buckingham Palace at the time, stating that the Queen had been heavily involved in the day and was represented by the Prince of Wales in the evening.
Evan Harris, joint executive director of Hacked Off, argues that the Scotland finding was a good example of why he branded the group a “fake regulator”. “Ipso classed many examples of misleading information, errors or distortions as each being ‘not significant’ when set against the whole article, without considering the effect of all the distortions taken together,” he says. He also points out that the corrections that were demanded were “buried” in print and on the Mail Online homepage.
It is little comfort to Scotland, but after our interview she’s off for a tour of African countries, determined to push on with the job.
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