Following a series of highly critical public interventions from the country’s information commissioner, Scotland’s most senior politician has said that almost all requests received by the government are handled compliantly
The head of the Scottish Government has insisted that freedom of information requests are “handled with the highest standards of impartiality and integrity” after the national data watchdog said it could no longer trust ministers with sensitive info relating to ongoing ethics probes.
Scottish information commissioner David Hamilton recently said that ministers had failed to publicly release information on legal advice the government had received concerning a decision made by his office in 2024.
This lack of cooperation with his directives demonstrated that the Scottish Government had “tried to conceal this breach of trust with unjustified delays and a wall of silence”, the commissioner said.
But when asked about these comments in parliament, Scotland’s first minister John Swinney (pictured above) said the publication of the material was not “simple or straightforward” and required the government to “navigate complex legal issues”.
He added the government had released “thousands of pages of material” despite the complexity.
The material in question concerns events related to an independent investigation into then-first minister Nicola Sturgeon – a probe which cleared her of misleading parliament during a parliamentary inquiry into the handling of harassment claims against her predecessor Alex Salmond.
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After the refusal of his initial request for the publication of legal documents, Hamilton ordered the release of information and went on to threaten legal action after a series of deadlines were missed. The government finally published a large tranche of documents last month.
But the commissioner said he had sought further reassurances that the government had complied with an order to release other legal advice relating to a previous appeal.
After receiving a response from the Scottish Government’s permanent secretary, Hamilton said the government had failed to comply and that he was considering legal action.
He added: “I can no longer trust the government to handle this information unsupervised and will explore more intrusive options to ensure compliance.”
Labour MSP Katy Clark urged Swinney to “commit to providing the information required by law”, warning that refusing to do so made it look as if the government was “engaged in a systematic cover-up”.
Swinney said the vast majority of FOI requests made to the government were responded to on time, with the commissioner only raising issues with two cases.
He added: “One relates to a delay in compliance of just over four weeks due to the need to adhere to court orders and the scale and complexity of material involved. The other is about the interpretation of the scope of the request. The permanent secretary has assured the commissioner that all FOI cases are handled with the highest standards of impartiality and integrity.”
