New Statesman Scotland
Holyrood and the Scottish executive seem to be preening themselves over the prospect of Scotland getting a freedom of information measure passed before the rest of the UK. Not only that, but we are told that the Scottish measure will have more and sharper teeth than anything the Home Office and Westminster will create. Our freedom of information commissioner will be a stern figure with powers to instruct ministers, civil servants and quangocrats to open their files to the public gaze. As a result Scotland will be the most open, best-informed, democratic and excitingly modern part of the realm. Or so they say.
Which raises an intriguing question: what have the Scottish executive and its civil servants got that is worth hiding? The fact is, the really tasty stuff - spying, counter spying, high-level international wheeling and dealing, counter terrorism, defence expenditure, waging war, big-time business deals, government relations with the royals - all that remains firmly with the various departments of Whitehall. And they control what is and is not available at the Public Record Office at Kew in west London.
But this diary would like to make a suggestion: there are thousands of records that have to do with Scotland but that are available only at Kew. This is particularly true of things to do with the second world war, but also of, for example, the siting of nuclear power stations. The Justice Minister, Jim Wallace, could earn himself a few handy points by demanding that these records (or at least copies of them) be installed in the Scottish Record Office in Edinburgh.
Last week's "Glasgow Debate" (funded by the Glasgow Development Agency) was a distinctly odd affair. Staged in the chilly ambience of the old fruit market in the Merchant City, the motion was "In the information age only cyber cities can survive". It was addressed, pro and con, by a small clutch of cyberthinkers and a couple of sports from Glasgow University's renowned debating society, and moderated by Alan Ruddock, editor of the Scotsman (standing in for Andrew Neil).
On the face of it, this should have been one for hard-charging web wizards, e-mail entrepreneurs and dot com divas. But it was public sector Scotland that turned out in strength. According to the attendance list, the huge majority of the audience was from our public agencies: Renfrewshire Enterprise, the Castlemilk Development Agency, Lothian & Edinburgh Enterprise, Forth Valley Enterprise, Enterprise Ayrshire and so on. Scottish Enterprise sent no fewer than 36 of its well-paid employees. This diary cannot help wondering what such a preponderance of tax-funded folk says about Scotland.
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