Scottish Government has shown contempt for transparency, says Labour

The Scottish Government has been accused of showing “contempt for transparency” over its Freedom of Information (FOI) responses.

Rules for the FOI process mean answers are expected to be issued within 20 working days – but Scottish Labour has said one in seven responses from the Government are in breach of this.

Figures released by the party show that since June 2021, 666 responses from the Scottish Government to FOI requests were issued late.

One response during this period was issued after 269 days – nearly nine months later.

It comes after the Scottish Government said it will improve its FOI request performance over the next year, in response to the highlighting of “systemic” concerns by the Information Commissioner.

The commissioner, Daren Fitzhenry, released a report back in May which said there were significant failures in record keeping, in addition to delays and bottlenecks.

As part of its improvement plan, the Government has set a target of improving FOI response rates to 90% this year.

Scottish Labour MSP Rhoda Grant said: “Freedom of Information is one of the only ways we can shine a light on the dodgy dealings of this secretive SNP Government, but they are riding roughshod over both the spirit and the letter of these laws.

“This shoddy performance betrays a blatant and routine disregard for these legally binding timescales.

“The SNP’s contempt for transparency is fuelling a growing culture of secrecy across Government.

“We need a total overhaul of culture and procedures to restore openness and accountability to the Scottish Government.”

The delays were also criticised by the Scottish Liberal Democrats, with Willie Rennie calling it a “joke”.

The North East Fife MSP said: “In the SNP’s secretive world, reasonable requests for information from journalist and the public are treated as hostile attacks.

“Long waits for a response are a complete joke. By then any information revealed is likely long out of date.

“Freedom of information requests should be handled in a way that is swift, efficient and out of the hands of meddling special advisers.”

A Scottish Government spokesperson said: “The Scottish Government recognises that Freedom of Information plays a critical role in ensuring that openness and transparency underlies effective governance.

“We publish information about our FOI performance on a monthly basis and are now handling 40% more requests each year than three years ago; 4,200 in 2021.

“Our response rate of 86% over that time is around the Scottish average but we want to do better and our Improvement Plan, published earlier this month, sets out how we are going to achieve that.”