Govt transparency is like Fool’s joke
Paisley’s SNP MSP George Adam last week put his name to something called “Scotland’s Open Government Action Plan”.
The 47-page jargon-laden government document boldly states that Scotland aims to be “world-leading” in “transparent and accountable governance”.
When I read Mr Adams welcoming a “continued focus on financial transparency” I thought he was maybe having some premature April Fool’s day fun.
Because transparency is the last word you associate with Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP.
Just last week Scotland’s auditor general Stephen Boyle – the man tasked with examining the nation’s accounts - revealed that he could not find key documents relating to the CalMac ferry scandal.
These are the two ferries ordered by Sturgeon’s government in 2015 which are at least five years late and whose £97million price tag is £240million and rising.
Audit Scotland boss Boyle revealed a “a lack of transparent decision-making, a lack of project oversight, and no clear understanding of what significant sums of public money have achieved”.
An aversion to transparency is the SNP’s default position.
Last year their MP Douglas Chapman quit as party treasurer, claiming that he was not given enough information to do his job.
They have transplanted that rotten secrecy culture into the machinery of government.
When Covid struck in 2020,
SNP ministers launched a brazen attempt to curtail people’s Freedom of Information rights.
At a time when public scrutiny was rarely more important, the
SNP’s grubby scheme was shot down by Scottish Conservative
MSPs and others.
World-weary journalists will regale you with tales of ministerial meddling in their requests for basic information.
I share their pain, having forced the release of documents only to receive reams of pages redacted with black ink.
One of the most extreme outbreaks of SNP secrecy came during the war between Nicola Sturgeon and her former mentor turned nemesis Alex Salmond.
Salmond proved that a government complaint process he was subjected to was unlawful.
When a cross-party Holyrood committee attempted to secure basic government records to establish the facts, they were repeatedly blocked.
It was only when Sturgeon’s human shield John Swinney faced the very real prospect of losing a no confidence vote that the information was finally handed over.
Taxpayers were left picking up a bill of around £600,000 and the committee found that Sturgeon mislead parliament - but like other SNP farces no-one was held to account.
It is an affront to the intelligence of Scots for SNP ministers to systemically withhold information while claiming to be champions of openness.
The Scottish Conservatives want to tackle this insidious culture,
which corrodes trust in politics and public bodies, with an “Open the Books Bill”.
The bill was announced by Douglas Ross after Audit Scotland warned of ‘gaps in data’ relating to nearly £5billion of emergency Covid cash given to business.
There are similar unanswered questions around disastrous SNP forays into industry including Prestwick Airport, Burntisland Fabrications and, of course, the ferries along the M8 in Port Glasgow.
We would enshrine financial transparency into law.
This would mean quarterly public updates on the budget, monthly publication of data on governmentrun finds.
And up-front transparency about the risks before public ownership of any private enterprise.
Surely self-styled transparency champion Mr Adams, and his SNP colleagues, will back our bill.