Meeting of the Parliament 17 February 2026 [Draft]
It would not be a Richard Leonard speech if it did not begin with a quotation from a great philosopher. If I am lucky enough to be returned in the election I will miss those kinds of comments. I hope that somebody else will take up that tradition for him.
When discussing freedom of information, we sometimes suffer from a perception that FOI is still a new system or a new regime. It is clearly of the modern age but, as Katy Clark pointed out in the opening speech, it is nearly a quarter of a century since the system was designed. It was designed for an earlier era, both in terms of how public services are delivered and in terms of how modern data collection happens. I suspect that no one designing the FOI regime at the time would have been able to conceive of the sheer volume and breadth of data that public services now collect and have to manage—data that is now open to FOI.
The case for reform is therefore not new either. As Katy Clark mentioned, there were comments at the tail end of the previous session from the Public Audit and Post-legislative Scrutiny Committee, demonstrating
“clear weaknesses with the current legislative framework.”
Referring to the work of the Parliament in this session, the committee recommended
“that the next Parliament robustly pursues the Committee’s recommendations to ensure that the Scottish Government makes the necessary changes.”
Well, the Scottish Government did not make those changes, so I strongly commend Katy Clark for the work that she has done in introducing her member’s bill to try to move things along. I will certainly vote in favour of the general principles.
I thank Katy Clark for her work, and I thank the Government for engaging with me. As a member of a party that does not have a member on the lead committee, I took the time to engage with the member in charge and the minister. I thank the committee for its work, as well.
It is regrettable that a member’s bill was necessary to try to achieve progress; there was a general consensus that reform is needed, and it would have been better delivered if Government legislation had been introduced. However, the Government has been slow to act, both in bringing forward reform and in exercising the powers that it already has to extend FOI to other bodies. Of the various elements of the bill, the granting of that power to the Parliament, in addition to the Government, is one of the most important, along with the shift in focus towards proactive publication and measures to take action against the destruction of information.
As far as the amendment goes, I recognise the lead committee’s concern, particularly in regard to where we are in the past six weeks or so of the parliamentary session. We all understand why we have got to where we are and—I repeat—part of that is due to the Government’s slowness to act. However, I understand the Government’s concern about the need to have a system that balances the potential conflict of different legal duties. We would not want to pass legislation that made organisations unable to respect confidentiality, for example, or that would create a conflict between those duties and FOI duties.
We are where we are. I think that this will be a missed opportunity. It is fairly clear that the amendment is likely to have the majority of support in the chamber. I and my fellow Greens will abstain on it, but we will vote in favour of the motion, whether or not the amendment passes. It will be a missed opportunity, as the bill could have gone forward for scrutiny, if only to save time in the next parliamentary session.