To read some of the coverage of No. 10’s parties, you’d have thought Boris Johnson’s government was a uniquely mendacious, duplicitous and scandalous regime. Fortunately, just north of the border, Nicola Sturgeon’s administration is doing its bit to prove it’s every bit as secretive, flawed and contemptuous of standards.
Today’s Scotsman on Saturday reveals that the Holyrood government broke Freedom of Information laws in its battle to keep its Covid modelling secret. Ministers were found to have unlawfully kept second wave death and case predictions hidden during a 16 month transparency battle with the newspaper, according to the Scottish Information Commissioner Daren Fitzhenry.
Such was the strength of the public interest argument in favour of disclosing the modelling used by the government at the time, the commissioner said, officials should have released the information when the initial request was made in September 2020, just as ministers began the move to reintroduce restrictions.
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