How Sturgeon and the SNP became addicted to secrecy
SECRECY, it used to be said, was the British disease. With repressive libel laws, one of the world’s most comprehensive regimes of official secrets protection, and no freedom of information act, the UK used to be notorious for its closed government.
He never gets the credit for it, but it was John Major who started to turn this around. Picking up the pieces, New Labour then enacted a Freedom of Information Act into law in 2000, but
Tony Blair recorded in his memoirs that he felt duped into it. It was, he said, his greatest single mistake in Downing Street – not the Iraq War, but letting a little daylight into the inner workings of government. Poor, deluded man.
The SNP usually like to portray themselves as the government that does differently. If the UK points one way, the SNP will attempt to steer Scotland in the opposite direction. If the Chancellor talks about cutting income tax, the SNP put it up. If the DWP talks about freezing welfare benefits, the SNP parade the Scottish Child Payment. If the Prime Minister announces the end of Covid restrictions, the SNP find a few to keep in place, just for a few weeks more, just to be different.
The UK’S dismal record when it comes to open government could and should have been another area where the SNP went out of its way to be different. There is a Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act to accompany the UK’S freedom of information legislation. Enacted under the Labour/lib Dem coalition of the first Holyrood parliaments it is, in some respects, more liberalising than the UK’S law.
In part this is because those most secretive corners of government – defence, national security and international relations – are all reserved to Westminster, and not devolved. But there was, nonetheless, an opportunity here for the SNP to show how in a modern, progressive, forward-looking Scotland, government could be done in the open and not locked away behind closed doors. Modern, liberal Scotland could have been compared once again with backward, conservative England. Isn’t that the script?
Yet the very opposite has happened. In recent years the SNP administration in Holyrood has become the most secretive government in Britain. They were alone among the governments of these islands to seek to use emergency coronavirus laws to immunise themselves from freedom of information rules altogether. Opposition MSPS put a stop to that, back in the days when the Greens thought that some principles were not worth sacrificing on the altar of doing everything Nicola wants.
Since then, however, things have got ever worse. The SNP has become a party of government that is so confident of winning that arrogance has taken over.
Not for nothing did the First Minister launch her party’s local government election campaign without the press being invited. As others have noticed, she loves the publicity of the selfie but loathes the transparency of having to answer awkward questions (like, for example, “why have you slashed local government budgets when your own budget has gone up?”).
Or: “why are local government budgets increasingly ring-fenced so that councils have to spend to fulfil the Scottish Government’s priorities rather than the priorities of their own areas?” Perhaps I’ve missed it, but I’ve not noticed any SNP minister answer either of these questions in this year’s local government election campaign.
It is not just local government: wherever we look in Scottish politics we see ministers scurrying for cover, hiding from scrutiny, evading questions, and covering up. Take ferries. The fiasco of “multiple failings”, “cost overruns”, “delays and spiralling costs” (all quotes from Audit Scotland) has been damned – £240 million of public money has been spent and no ferries have been put into operation. Audit Scotland found that there was no transparency in decision-making, no project oversight, and no clear understanding of what public spending has achieved. These are damning, extraordinary indictments. And whose head has rolled? No one’s.
Or take the astonishing £586 million of public money that was used by Scottish ministers to back Liberty Steel’s purchase of an aluminium smelting plant in Fort William. Of the 2000 jobs this was supposed to generate, it has been reported that only 50 have actually been created. Meanwhile, the offices of Liberty Steel’s owner, Sanjeev Gupta, have been raided by the Serious Fraud Office and allegations are flying about in all directions that the Scottish Government acted in flagrant breach of EU state aid rules, which were in force in the UK at the time the murky deal was done. Who in the Scottish Government is responsible for this mess? No one, apparently.
Spending on drugs and alcohol services is so opaque that it cannot be tracked, the auditors have found. At this rate we will never know what works, and what public money is just thrown away. As things stand there is neither transparency nor accountability. Likewise business support during the Covid lockdowns: the government’s data lacks both the quality and the completeness that would be needed for its effectiveness and efficiency to be properly assessed, Audit Scotland have said.
In the end, all this will hurt the SNP more than it helps them. The history of political scandal tells us it’s the cover-up that gets you, not the original sin. Perhaps a corner is about to be turned. Last week, the information commissioner ordered the Scottish Government to disclose the legal advice that had cleared the way for its officials to work on a fresh push for independence. Perhaps Scotland’s watchdogs have had enough of the secrecy and the cover-ups.
Not before time, battle lines are emerging between those who want to hold ministers to account for their actions and decisions, and ministers who have for far too long been able to get away with running for cover. Secret Scotland needs to be blown open. Sooner or later, it will be.
In recent years the SNP administration in Holyrood has become the most secretive government in UK