Rogue officials must be brought to heel

Is a technical report from a quango available on its website or not? This sounds like the kind of question which few but political anoraks could be interested in, and yet it is another indicator of a deep and serious malaise in the practice of government in Scotland.

The story itself is fairly unremarkable; an official from Qualifications Scotland (formerly the Scottish Qualifications Agency but another instance of the practice of rebranding an organisation in crisis and pretending that is the same as reform) says that a National Ratings report did not need to be handed over to a parliamentary committee because it was on the organisation's website – and this appears not to have been true, or not in spirit at least.

The issue here is not just the extent to which this story again reveals the instincts of quangos are to withhold information from democratically-elected politicians, but that once misleading information has been given, other staff at the quango appear to have pushed for a proper letter of clarification to be sent to the committee – but they seem to have been overruled.

That represents two layers of obfuscation (the first decision to deny the original information, the second to overrule a proper correction being made). The third is in the generous use of the redaction pen in the Freedom of Information responses, which reveal the lack of candour. One email, which appears to contain the text of a draft correction, has been more or less redacted in its entirety.

So what is this deeply contentious report whose suppression appears to be the subject of such significant efforts in Qualifications Scotland? It is a basic technical report which attempts to compare the relative academic difficulty of different Higher subjects (to assess whether it is easier to get one qualification than another).

This is a public document. Qualifications Scotland is obliged to make it public, as is evident from the fact that it has been revealed by a Freedom of Information request (and that this request showed that the only chance the document actually is on the website is if it is buried in previous Freedom of Information dumps).

The reason this reveals a deep malaise in government is not the document itself (relevant though it was) but what this affair reveals about the mindset of public sector leaders. Their instincts, over and over, are to close off the possibilities of democratic scrutiny to protect the interests of their own organisation and enable it to continue to govern largely in secret.

It is no coincidence that the reason the SQA was 'reviewed' (and rebranded as a substitute for reformed) is because it had a record of withholding information and providing misleading and even false statements. It appears nothing has changed.

Most Scots would be unhappy to hear that unelected officials can withhold public documents from MSPs without consequence, or that people who object to this can be silenced so easily. It is important to remember that none of this would have been uncovered if not for a FoI request from a journalist. How much of this goes on without our knowledge?

There are steps that should be taken. Over the summer, Common Weal is working on a binding code of conduct for public officials, which will set out minimum expectations of candour. These will be based on a statement of principle – that a reasonable person would agree that every effort has been made to provide all information to which a democratically elected representative is entitled, promptly and in full.

This would also include a no-discretion to immediately, fully and publicly correct any false information given to a democratic oversight body. We are exploring whether there should be defined sanctions for officials who do not meet those standards.

Another issue we are looking at is the redaction process. We will explore whether there ought to be an independent redaction agency (like the Information Commissioner). Officials could then not redact their own work but would have to make requests to the 'Redaction Commissioner' if they wanted redactions made. The purpose of that role would be to ensure they are kept to the absolute minimum.

And there are loopholes which should be closed; data protection laws were never intended to be misused as an excuse to hide information which would otherwise be public, and it must be made clear that senior staff working in the public sector are publicly accountable for their work. The public realm is not an excuse to work in secret.

The power balance between quangos and agencies and the bodies which are supposed to hold them to account is badly out of balance, and it has clearly led to abuses of the system. There is no excuse for allowing this to continue.