Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 12 November 2020
Official statistics are important in all democracies, enabling us to hold our Governments to account, no matter what party we are in or who is in power. It is vital that the bill is passed so that those Governments that we seek to hold accountable are not given the opportunity to spin their way out of politically difficult publications. I therefore thank Gordon Lindhurst, on behalf of the Economy, Energy and Fair Work Committee, for introducing the bill.
It has been a long time coming. A decade ago, the UK Statistics Authority argued that there should not be a widespread expectation that ministers will comment on data as soon as it is made available publicly and that equality of access to statistics should be a central principle of good statistical practice. Specifically, it stated that the five-day pre-release access period in Scotland was far too long and recommended that a three-hour maximum period should be the norm, as that is long enough to allow ministers to understand what will be published but short enough to prevent the data from being influenced, exploited or—as we see so often in Scotland—spun for political advantage.
That is evident in the spin that we have seen from the SNP in recent years—as always, with one aim: its obsession, independence. In 2019, the former Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Economy and Fair Work tried to claim that a notional deficit of £12.6 billion was, in some way, a boost for independence. Although Derek Mackay has faded into history and become yet another statistic of SNP shame, the reality was very different—and it is still very much with us. Scotland’s deficit accounted for more than 50 per cent of the £23.5 billion difference between tax income and spending across the whole of the UK, despite Scotland having less than 10 per cent of the UK’s population.
Just a few months ago, the current Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Kate Forbes, did not even acknowledge the increased fiscal deficit, instead claiming:
“An independent Scotland would have the power to make different choices, with different economic budgetary results.”
However, plans to produce the economic case for independence have been shelved, and the question from my colleague, Murdo Fraser, still stands: how much does that exercise in SNP spin cost the Scottish taxpayer?
It was no surprise that all SNP members of the committee opposed the introduction of the bill, as the SNP Government uses the pre-release of official statistics to give itself time to manipulate the information to its advantage—as it did when it turned a 43,000 drop in the employment figure into a 0.3 per cent reduction in youth unemployment. It has to stop. The bill is not to disadvantage the Scottish Government but simply to place it on an equal footing with the UK Government. It aims to take a moderate approach to resolving the issue while not taking away from the SNP Government any pre-release access privileges that the UK Government would retain—although SNP members may claim that ministers need to be able to comment on important statistics at the earliest opportunity—[Interruption.]
However far education standards have dropped and however incompetent SNP ministers are, that does not justify five days of analysis. Even the Royal Statistical Society has said so and that the current privilege is an anomaly to the whole developed world. A minister said earlier that “pre-release improves the information” as it allows ministers to explain figures to us—that line is simply patronising. The Government can be better than that, but whether the SNP chooses to be better remains to be seen.
16:45