It is worth shedding some more light on the Mail’s recent extraordinary revelations about Baroness Scotland, the new Commonwealth Secretary General. The allegations are very serious – Scotland is essentially accused of using her position to hand out huge sums of taxpayers’ money to her staff and friends. An internal probe is looking at claims her advisers, including the Blairite spinmeister Matthew Doyle, were each being paid £16,000 per month, something they deny. Guido understands that the allegedly excessive salaries were queried by civil servants and raised at a higher level, with Scotland accused of an inappropriate use of public funds. And it doesn’t end there…

The Mail also revealed that Scotland had contracted a company owned by her friend Lord Patel to conduct a review of her department, paying KYA Global an astonishing £30,000 per month. Scotland and Patel are close friends, why on earth is the taxpayer funding this arrangement? Guido has done some more digging – KYA Global has no online existence and its only directors are Lord Patel and his wife. This is hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money per year we are talking about and the whole arrangement stinks. One to watch…

UPDATE: A spokesman for the Commonwealth Secretariat said:

“Lord Patel and the advisers were part of a transition team brought in by Secretary-General Patricia Scotland. As we have said continually, they were asked to carry out specific work during a short period of time on a fixed term contract. They have now completed that work, their fixed-term contracts have ended and they are no longer employed by the Secretariat. Secretary-General Scotland would like to thank each of them for their invaluable contribution and wishes them every success for the future.”