Meeting of the Parliament 17 February 2026 [Draft]
When trust in politics is pretty much at an all-time low, we should all be doing everything that we can to gain back that trust. It is a really bad look for any party, Parliament or Government to vote against extending freedom of information rights.
The stage 1 report on the bill concluded by saying that, although the committee agreed on the need for such reform—reform that should have happened years ago—it did not consider the bill to be the most effective way of achieving it. It also stated, as other members have, that we just do not have the time to do so. I completely disagree.
Scottish Liberal Democrats will be voting for the bill at stage 1. Why? It would provide a long-overdue and much-needed opportunity to make Scotland’s public bodies more transparent. Those bodies too often hide behind redactions and bureaucratic points about what is or is not covered under the current, out-of-date legislation. Last year, the Information Commissioner received nearly 600 appeals after members of the public were refused the information that they had asked for in FOI requests. Thirty per cent of those were because the public body chose to withhold information. A further 35 per cent were because the body failed to respond to the request at all, and 10 per cent were because the public body claimed that it did not even hold the information. That is ridiculous and disgraceful. Therefore, the new crime of destroying records that would be introduced by Katy Clark’s bill is much needed and would be very welcome.
The bill would resolve many of the outstanding issues with FOI legislation, not least because it would require public bodies to appoint a freedom of information officer who could be held to account for the openness and transparency of their organisation. This all matters, because FOI legislation gives the public, journalists and even we politicians the tools that we need to scrutinise public bodies in a way that no other method can, if we are honest about it, particularly when the parliamentary questions that we submit are responded to with one-line answers.
Mr Leonard spoke about the work of the Public Audit Committee. Some of the things that FOI requests have helped us to uncover have been on the front pages of newspapers for months. Those include the improper spending at the Water Industry Commission for Scotland, the golden goodbyes at Ferguson Marine and Caledonian MacBrayne, the cost overruns at the Cairngorm Mountain Railway and the credit card spending sprees at Historic Environment Scotland. All of that was uncovered under FOI, and Katy Clark’s bill will strengthen the ability of all committees and all members to properly scrutinise decisions, not least through its creation of a presumption in favour of disclosure.
I am not saying that FOI requests always give us good data. Pages 1 to 10 of the response to my latest FOI request about CalMac payoffs are all redacted. FOI is not the be-all and end-all, but underneath that black ink is information that we ought to have access to.
I am surprised by the Conservatives’ reasoned amendment, because all that it has done, whether they meant it or not, is hand the Government a get-out-of-jail-free card.