Meeting of the Parliament 20 June 2018
Like other members, I welcome the debate and its generally serious tone because, as has been said already, the transparency of the Government, public agencies and, indeed, private companies matters to us all. It is in the public interest that appropriate information can be obtained, analysed and considered. Media scrutiny of the Government is an essential part of our democratic process.
I welcome the report and remind members that we should be proud that Scotland has the most open and far-reaching freedom of information laws in the UK, and that the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 was passed by a previous Administration and has been enhanced by the SNP Government.
The report calls for greater clarity on the processes and procedures relating to FOI requests. I welcome the fact that it recognises that the Scottish Government has already taken steps in the past 12 months to improve its freedom of information practice.
The minister said that the Scottish Government accepts the commissioner’s recommendations in full—I very much welcome that, as we all should—and that it will develop an action plan, as required by the commissioner, to be published in September this year. In welcoming that action plan, I suggest that members vote for the Government’s amendment, which makes that clear.
We have today’s debate and the report’s recommendations should be taken forward—which the Government will do in full—but it is important to recognise that our freedom of information legislation is widely recognised as being robust. The Scottish Government is better at responding to FOI requests than previous Administrations and the UK Government. In 2017, 2,441 requests were answered on time, which was 83 per cent of total requests. In comparison, in the last years of the previous Administration, only 61 per cent of requests were responded to on time. Furthermore, in the first four months of 2018, the Scottish Government responded to 93 per cent of requests on time—more than the 90 per cent target that was agreed with the Scottish Information Commissioner.
That effective performance should be recognised in the context of the steady increase in freedom of information requests to the Scottish Government: 3,046 requests were received in 2017, which was 41 per cent more than the previous record of 2,155 in 2015. It is also worth noting that the Scottish Government responded last year to more than 5,000 requests—