STEPHEN DAISLEY’S latest unmissable column: SNP’s shameful addiction to secrecy and cover-up would make Mafia blush

We are approaching a crisis point for open and transparent government in Scotland. In recent days it has been reported that Nicola Sturgeon and many of her Cabinet colleagues declined to use government-issued mobile phones.

Only one-quarter of Scottish Government ministers are said to have used an official device between 2020 and 2022, which covers the timeframe of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Ministers have already come under fire for failing to provide all WhatsApp messages from that era to the public inquiry into how those in high office responded to the virus. It has been alleged that Sturgeon deleted her messages; however, the former First Minister has neither confirmed nor denied that this is the case.

A Sunday newspaper added to already mounting public and opposition anger by claiming the Scottish Government’s communications storage policy was changed in 2021 so that mobile conversations, such as those conducted via WhatsApp, no longer had to be retained in full. This is said to have seen ministers’ messages deleted every month, potentially meaning that exchanges that could have been of relevance to the Covid Inquiry have been lost for good.

Damnable

It comes against the backdrop of questions about ministerial candour after Health Secretary Michael Matheson misled the public about how an £11,000 data bill was racked up on his parliamentary iPad during a family holiday to Morocco. He continued to feign ignorance even after learning, he has since claimed, that his teenage sons incurred the charges while streaming football matches.

Health Secretary Michael Matheson misled the public about how an £11,000 data bill was racked up on holiday in Morocco

The opposition parties say there is a culture of secrecy at the heart of government. Yet calls for greater transparency, such as Labour MSP Katy Clark’s demand that freedom of information (FOI) laws be beefed up, have fallen on deaf ears. Every attempt to secure modest accountability from this government is resisted fiercely. These people simply do not believe in your right to know.

This is a damnable state of affairs. After 16 years of the SNP in power, the most fundamental precepts of honesty and transparency have been worn down to bare threads. The proper conduct of national affairs has given way to the convenience and preferences of a clandestine political clique.

An entire apparatus set up to address a ‘democratic deficit’ has left Scottish democracy in arrears, unable to keep pace with the determination of a bureaucratic aristocracy that it should be free to act as it pleases and the public should content themselves with whatever scraps of transparency are tossed their way.

Instead of open government, we have government by cloak, dagger and burner phone. Instead of process, we have political expediency. Instead of accountability, we have an untouchable ruling class.

This is not how public servants are supposed to behave. This is how a mafia behaves. Some in the Scottish Government seem to have mistaken The Sopranos for an instructional video.

We need a Cleaning Up Government Bill to drag Scottish politics out of the mire. Something with the statutory teeth to tighten standards and compel ministers to stick to them.

What might a Bill like that contain?

The Scottish Information Commissioner and the Ethical Standards Commissioner do vital work in upholding FOI laws and sound conduct in public life, respectively. But there may be a need for their work to be supplemented by a Transparency Commissioner whose job it is to specifically review government policies, guidelines, actions and results in relation to openness, with the power to recommend changes.

There should be a presumption in favour of publishing ministers’ and officials’ written communications on the government website within a reasonable timeframe and with exemptions for data protection, privacy, confidentiality, proprietary information and legal privilege. Using auto-delete functions, such as WhatsApp’s disappearing messages, or manually erasing communications about government business should be a violation of the ministerial code and deemed gross misconduct in the case of civil servants.

Discontent

The use of non-government email accounts to conduct government business should be strongly discouraged. There may be legitimate grounds in some cases, such as back-up accounts for when government emails are experiencing technical difficulties. To prevent misuse, these email accounts should come within the purview of FOI legislation.

Given the strong public interest in open and accountable government, and in discouraging behaviour which undermines this, there might be a case for a new criminal offence of conducting government business through non-government channels, or through oral communications, with the intent of evading FOI laws or government record-keeping policies. That would be a severe move but it should at least be considered.

Maybe these changes would make things better, maybe they wouldn’t. But MSPs should realise the simmering discontent among the general public.

When I used to bump into readers out and about, they always wanted to talk about independence and whether the SNP would get its second referendum. Now it’s a mish-mash of topics – the SNP police inquiry, missing WhatsApps, iPads on expensive holidays – but they all boil down to the same topic: accountability.

What is happening in the corridors of power? Who is keeping the powerful honest? Why is it so hard to get a straight answer out of the Scottish Government?

People don’t expect saintliness from elected officials, and nor should they. We’re all grown-up enough to understand that politics is a life of skullduggery and that with government entwined in a thickets of rules, one or two of them will get bent now and then to get things done.

What the public objects to is the impression that there are no rules at all. That the government is bound by nothing beyond its will to power. They have grown frustrated by the habitual secrecy, the institutional impunity, the arrogance of a self-policing, know-it-all elite unresponsive to the Scottish parliament or voters.

Cynicism

The longer this situation is allowed to fester, the more disenchanted the public will become. Political elites love nothing more than scolding voters whenever turnout drops at an election, but it is the behaviour of these self-same elites that risks driving up apathy. The public wants honesty, transparency and accountability. If instead it continues to see deceit, secrecy and government without consequences, it will conclude the whole enterprise is rotten and sink into cynicism.

That would do much damage to public life and MSPs of all parties should strive to avoid it. It’s easy to forget that the Scottish parliament is, in historical terms, a mere infant and not as rooted in the national consciousness as the system of government at Westminster. Give people reason to lose faith in these institutions and the devolution settlement could begin to become unsettled.

Politics is a grubby business the world over but it can be better than it is in Scotland today. But it will only get there if parties across the Holyrood chamber acknowledge the problems and commit to fixing them. Governments are seldom eager to place limits on themselves and opposition parties are always mindful that the exacting standards they impose on ministers will one day apply to them.

That is why partisan politics needs to be set aside to build a consensus for reform. But the lead cannot come from ministers or party bosses or the usual on-message civil society groups. It must come from the voters themselves. It is their confidence in the political process that is on the line. It is they who must be convinced that things are going to get better.

If Holyrood cannot rise to this challenge, if it cannot re-tether the Scottish Government to rigorous process and good practice, the entire endeavour will be viewed by the voters as nothing more than a charade. A chimera of democracy deserving the public’s contempt and no longer meriting their participation.

MSPs should be in no doubt: not only the political fortunes of the current government but the future of devolution itself is on the line.

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