Meeting of the Parliament 21 June 2017
I love taking such interventions, because they remind me of when I was about eight years old and I was in the playground. If I got criticised for doing something wrong, I ran to the teacher and said, “It wasn’t me, miss—it was them.” The Scottish Government needs to stop doing that, take responsibility and deal with the issues that it has.
In their open letter, the journalists explain that their experiences raise concerns about whether journalists’ freedom of information requests are being “treated and managed differently”. As members of the Parliament, we all know that, when we raise tricky questions, they are often met with smokescreens, mirrors and diffusion. Many find it tempting, as I have, to make FOI requests so wide ranging that there is no way to dissemble about the answers. Delays and withholding information are not acceptable. It is no surprise that former Scottish Information Commissioner Rosemary Agnew ordered ministers to improve their performance.
I know that Richard Lochhead, who I am glad to see in the chamber, agrees with that position on freedom of information. He is reported as having said that “dithering and delaying” are unacceptable, as are the months and months that it takes Governments to respond to freedom of information requests. He made that comment about the United Kingdom Government, but any comments about the UK Government must apply to the Scottish Government, too. Maybe that helps to answer the minister’s point.
During the debate, I am sure that we will hear many examples of how the Scottish National Party-led Scottish Government avoids scrutiny. There are meetings with no agendas and certainly no minutes, and people are hiding behind thin veils of commercial confidentiality. That points to a code of secrecy and a Government that is defending the indefensible and fuelling the lack of trust that the public have in politicians.
Only a week ago, we heard the Government rebut such allegations. Joe FitzPatrick, the Minister for Parliamentary Business, provided a long list of statistics. In his long and disjointed speech, which he did not have time to finish, he made assertions that paint only half the picture, according to my research.
Assertion 1 was that the number of freedom of information requests has spiked; assertion 2 was that the Scottish Government achieved a consistently better level of responses than the 61 per cent that was achieved in the last full year of the previous Administration; and assertion 3 was that the Scottish Government was better than the UK Government—there we go again.
I will respond to those assertions. There have been more FOl requests but, in 2016-17, the Scottish Government answered only 38 per cent of them in full whereas, in 2014-15, 46 per cent were answered in full, which is a clear drop. In 2016-17, 21 per cent of the answers were late.