Meeting of the Parliament 20 June 2018
The intervention report from the Scottish Information Commissioner exposes the utter contempt in which this Scottish National Party Government holds the freedom of information law. In publishing that damning report, the Scottish Information Commissioner has done the principle of openness and transparency a great service, and I truly hope that the report is a wake-up call for the Scottish Government.
FOI legislation was enacted to make Government more transparent and to improve scrutiny, yet this Government has done the opposite. It refuses to be held to account and it refuses to be scrutinised. In the Scottish Parliament, questions—particularly written questions—get poor and evasive answers, so members are forced to use the FOI legislation to get the answers that they should have been provided with in the Parliament. However, the Scottish Government seeks to block that as well. It singles out journalists and MSPs and their researchers for special treatment. FOI requests are subject to greater scrutiny and sign-off and are less likely to get answers, and those answers that are provided take longer to receive.
The report states:
“by creating and applying a process based on requester type rather than the nature of the request, not only is the spirit of FOI legislation offended, but trust between those groups mentioned in the policy and the Scottish Government may also be damaged.”
This is not just important to those of us in the political bubble. It is important to hold the Government to account and to understand how and why decisions are made and who influences why they are made. Meetings that Government ministers have taken part in are matters of public interest and national importance. We are calling, therefore, for an independent review of how the Government handles FOI requests and its overall record keeping, which is another area in which it has fallen short.
For example, we have a transport minister meeting the chief executives of both Stagecoach and FirstGroup with no minutes being taken, nor any agenda being prepared. We have a First Minister, alongside her finance secretary, her education secretary and her economy secretary, inviting a host of business figures to dinner at Bute house, including SNP donor Brian Souter, again with no minutes or agenda. It is outrageous that Scottish Government ministers think that they can have such covert meetings and ride roughshod over FOI legislation and indeed the law.
That means that even the Scottish Information Commissioner is unable to track the Government’s behaviour and decision-making process. The report states:
“Where data was absent or unclear, it was excluded from our analysis.”
Therefore, the report is based only on the findings from the Government’s better record keeping. We can only guess what is being covered up by its worst. Whether by intent or negligence, poor record keeping in the very process that was enshrined in law to make Government more transparent makes it less so, and that is extremely disappointing.
The Scottish Information Commissioner’s report states that he cannot be clear what role special advisers have with regard to FOI. Their involvement varies between departments, and he states that there is little guidance on their role and whether it impacts on responses that are given. We all know that special advisers have a more political role in helping Government, but that should not allow them to evade the law or indeed the spirit of the FOI legislation.
If information that is requested is available and is not subject to any legal exclusion, it must be provided. That is the letter and the spirit of the FOI legislation, and it must be adhered to. It is simply wrong that a Government that should be leading the way and providing a good example has behaved in the way that it has, and it must stop now.