Business secretary Vince Cable has received a public ticking off from the Crown Office, after asking Scotland’s top law officer when he would decide on whether or not to prosecute former RBS directors – or ban them from sitting on company boards.

The Crown has had the case under review since January 2012. In a letter, Cable urged Scottish Advocate General Lord Wallace to reach a verdict “as quickly as possible”, while maintaining that he is “not seeking to influence the outcome of [the] process”. However, Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland, head of Scotland’s public prosecution service, said that he was “disappointed” with Cable, adding that public confidence in the case “is best maintained by thorough independent investigation … and not communicated through the media”.

It is likely that Cable knew his course of action would result in a prickly response from the Crown: Lord Wallace is a former Liberal Democrat deputy first minister – therefore a political ally – and has had little personal involvement with the investigation. With that in mind, Cable would have viewed the letter as a means of achieving three things:

i) keeping the investigation in the news;

ii) being seen to be doing something to quell ongoing public anger about the lack of action against bankers; and

iii) his stated aim of speeding up the process.

Cable is also reportedly mulling the scope for exercising his department’s powers to carry out banning orders – but would nonetheless be unable to do this while a Crown Office investigation is in progress.

By writing the letter, Cable is almost certainly trying to push things along in efforts to give the public what they want. Those responsible for the disaster at RBS, including Fred Goodwin, have had very little concrete action taken against them – the removal of Goodwin’s knighthood being largely symbolic – and Cable seems determined to ensure that they do not escape. Few would blame him for playing a few political games to try and make it happen.

Vince Cable image courtesy of Flickr via Wikipedia, and licensed under the Creative Commons agreement