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COVID-19 Committee 19 May 2020

19 May 2020 · S5 · COVID-19 Committee

Item of business

Coronavirus (Scotland) (No 2) Bill: Stage 2

Lennon, Monica Lab Central Scotland Watch on SPTV

Neil Findlay has asked me to give his apologies; he wanted to speak to his amendments himself, but he has had to go to the chamber for other business. I fully support the minister when she says that Government should be open and transparent and that that is in essence about trying to get good governance. For that reason, I will speak to Neil Findlay’s amendments on his behalf. Amendment 48 proposes that, if a Scottish public authority has failed to comply with a relevant period, the Scottish Information Commissioner must take into account the public interest test. I will explain briefly. A designated body needs to be held accountable for operational and staffing decisions that have resulted in poor management of information during the period of the emergency, and have made it difficult for staff to respond promptly, within the normal 20-day response time. That could include, for example, deploying staff to other roles, or actively advising them that the duty could, in effect, be suspended. In the making of such decisions, the public interest—in requiring public bodies to diligently deliver FOI rights—should have featured large in its decision-making process. The Scottish Information Commissioner, when hearing appeals about delays in the answering of requests, needs to consider the public interest test in relation to the designated body’s compliance with the time limits. That is what Neil Findlay would have said in support of his amendment. Amendment 45 would put a duty on the Scottish ministers to lay reports in Parliament, during the emergency period, about how many requests they have not complied with, how many requests have been received, and what the backlog is, notwithstanding what the minister has said. The rationale behind amendment 45 is that, as the public face of the Covid-19 emergency response, it is appropriate for the Scottish Government to be seen to deliver on its daily commitment to transparency and accountability. In addition, being willing to report on progress and compliance with FOISA duties sets a very good example to the rest of the public sector about how the Scottish Government is performing. The Scottish Government is still subject to formal intervention by the Scottish Information Commissioner, due to poor practice, so we are looking for MSPs to have additional reassurance about FOI performance. In addition, a robust reporting regime is important for MSPs because of outstanding business from 21 June 2017, resulting from Scottish Parliament motion S5M-06126, with which I am sure the Minister will be familiar: “That the Parliament condemns the Scottish Government’s poor performance in responding to freedom of information requests; calls for an independent inquiry into the way that it deals with these, and agrees to undertake post-legislative scrutiny of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002, and welcomes commitments by the Scottish Government to adopt a policy of pro-actively publishing all material released under FOI to ensure that it is as widely available as possible.”—Official Report, 21 June 2017; c 100. Since the minister has said that she wants to respect the will of Parliament, I hope that she will take that reminder in the spirit in which it is intended. In recent days, the public have been quite alarmed, for example about the Nike outbreak at a hotel in Edinburgh, which they were not informed of—we have had to rely on journalists to provide that information. While the committee has been sitting today, I think that there have been further questions about that to the First Minister at her daily press briefing. In order to try to restore public confidence and trust, it is important that we have full transparency. In the main, MSPs have tried to avoid unnecessarily burdening our public authorities during the pandemic. We have tried to use the channels available to us, including urgent written parliamentary questions and oral questions in the chamber. In response to written questions, particularly with regard to health data, we are being given a holding response or are routinely being told that the Scottish Government does not hold the information. That is why we do not support amendment 7. We want the 20-working-day deadline to be restored, because of the importance to the public interest and good governance that we have as much access to information as possible. 14:30

References in this contribution

Motions, questions or amendments mentioned by their reference code.

S5M-06126 Freedom of Information Requests Motion

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COVID-19 Committee 19 May 2020

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