Who polices the redactions?

FREEDOM of Information legislation has been one of the most important pieces of legislation in our democracy, although I doubt political parties in power would fulsomely agree, certainly not the current Scottish Government given its reluctance to comply on multiple occasions.

That aside, I think there is now another tool in the Government armoury to avoid scrutiny; redaction of documents. Clearly some redaction is necessary to protect an individual’s privacy and the like. However, as has been seen this week on the ongoing ferry fiasco, you would seriously have to question just why that level of redaction was necessary other than to protect the Government. We saw this repeatedly during the Salmond inquiry and we meekly accepted it.

This begs the question: just who polices these redactions? Surely there needs to be some independent scrutiny of these redaction decisions? Does this come under the remit of the FOI Commissioner? If not it probably should, because we need to know this system is not being abused by anti-democratic forces.

Redactions should be kept to an absolute minimum for a very short list of exceptions and not left to politically motivated individuals wielding their big black pens.

Ian Mcnair,

Cellardyke.

HOW inspired was I by the drama of the missing email being held high in the Scottish Parliament? It brought back memories of Chamberlain’s visit to Herr Hitler.

Now, perhaps, the missing documents of the Salmond inquiry will also be found after enthusiastic raking with baying hounds. I fear there is no need for the Devil to turn up the thermostats just yet.

Peter Wright, West Kilbride.