ERRORS by ministerial staff and the office of the Scottish Information Commissioner, which mean a key briefing document on increased fiscal powers for Holyrood will now be kept secret until after the election, have exposed a major loophole in the system.
The SNP's Christine Grahame has condemned what she described as the "supposed error" which will now delay any ruling for several months as "extremely convenient" for ministers, and claims that rewarding a failure on the part of those withholding information with further delay is a major loophole in the freedom of information regime.
The executive briefing document, known as a "BriX note", was requested by Ms Grahame's staff 11 months ago and disclosure was quickly rejected as being against the public interest. The document is titled Fiscal Autonomy - Full Fiscal Powers - Financial Independence.
On May 3 last year, exactly a year before the Holyrood elections, the executive agreed to instigate the review process into the refusal to release the document. When the 20-day period passed with no further word, the MSP's staff treated this as a "mute refusal" and took it to the Information Commissioner, Kevin Dunion.
In January Ms Grahame's office asked the commissioner for an update and was promised a ruling by March, which would have been in time for the election campaign. However, last week it was told the application was back to square one because it had emerged the executive never carried out the promised "substantive review" of its initial refusal.
"I can only apologise for this error and the fact it has been detected at this late stage of the investigation," wrote a member of Mr Dunion's staff.
"The commissioner would be unable to enforce a decision that went beyond requiring the executive to carry out that review and that addressed the executive's original refusal to supply the information."
Ms Grahame, justice convener at the time freedom of information legislation was scrutinised, said yesterday: "At a time when we are seeing a steady increase in the number of vexatious exemptions applied by Scottish ministers, this latest, supposed error, will only serve to undermine the Freedom of Information Act further.
"The timing is interesting to say the least and comes only a month after I wrote to the Information Commissioner, encouraging him to reach a decision on this case in light of the intense political and public interest in the related costs of independence."
She said that views of ministers would not be known until after the elections.
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