by Robbie Dinwoodie
JEANE FREEMAN only joined the SNP in 2015, but within a year had been selected as a Holyrood candidate, won her Ayrshire seat, and promptly been appointed Minister for Social Security, charged with the daunting task of setting up a new agency to handle eleven benefits paying out £2.7 billion a year to 1.4 million Scots.
Let the scale of that task sink in and then ask yourself, why on earth would it be handed to a rookie MSP? And then you look into her background and you see that she probably had more political experience than most of the rest of the new 2016 intake combined, having been senior policy adviser to Labour First Minister Jack McConnell and before that a top civil servant charged with negotiating the McCrone Agreement on teachers’ pay and conditions.
Nor was she a Civil Service career plodder. She came to that role late, having spent more than a decade founding and building up Apex Scotland which looks to find work for ex-offenders, an achievement which saw her honoured with an OBE. From that flowed roles with the Parole Board, the Scottish Police Authority, the Judicial Appointments Board and the National Waiting Times Centre.
Labour for Independence Conference, Glasgow, November 2012
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About iScot Magazine
iScot Magazine April 2017 - issue 28
116 quality pages from THE ONLY TRULY INDEPENDENT PRO SCOTTISH MAGAZINE PUBLISHER HQ'd IN SCOTLAND.
"The one with 'Blaze the mountaineering dug' front cover"
Featuring the best writers in Scotland today
Robbie Dinwoodie, Tom Morton, Derek Bateman, Will MacLeod, Wee Ginger Dug, Jennifer Harper, Grousebeater, Major Bloodnok, Zoe Weir, Vivien Martin, Dave Bowman, Mary Edward, Alyn Smith MEP, Peter A Bell, Dr Steve McCabe, Ann MacKinnon, Angela Robb, David MacKenzie, and Jason Michael McCann