Alice in Wonderland
Scotland’s Freedom of Information Illusion
By William MacLean, The Lid Files
Scotland’s Freedom of Information system is broken.
In an age where transparency should be automatic, public bodies across the country are routinely hiding even the most basic information. They are doing so behind a smokescreen of legislation that was meant to shine light on power - not bury it deeper underground.
The Mirage of Compliance
Public bodies claim near-perfect FOI compliance rates. But these figures are statistical theatre.
The Scottish Government points to the Scottish Information Commissioner (SIC) as the body responsible for oversight, insisting that it monitors compliance and publishes statistics on performance. But here’s the catch: those statistics don’t track the truthfulness or substance of the answers.
A Section 17 response (“information not held”) counts as compliant - even if the body is clearly in possession of the data or has failed to look. This creates a warped reality in which a council could answer every FOI with “we don’t hold that information” and still score 100%.
Worse still, when challenged, the Scottish Government washes its hands. It claims the SIC is the guardian of FOI, while it controls the budget that keeps the SIC starved of capacity. In correspondence with The Lid Files, the SIC openly admitted that 100% of its staff are currently handling a backlog of appeals. This backlog exists because of the flood of denials, obstructions, and redactions that now define Scotland’s FOI landscape.
It’s a self-perpetuating dysfunction.
FOI is now a system where public bodies mark their own homework. The Commissioner is under-resourced and overwhelmed. And the Government - the one body with power to act - does nothing.
Truth Denied by Default
Public bodies are no longer weighing the public interest in disclosure. They avoid it at every turn.
In hundreds of requests submitted by The Lid Files, not a single council or public agency has concluded that the public interest lies in release - not even for basic, uncontroversial information like which software they use.
In one case, a council used Section 30(c) - legislation designed to protect national security or the effective conduct of public affairs - to withhold the fact that they use Microsoft 365.
This is not secrecy to protect the state. It’s secrecy to protect themselves from scrutiny.
This isn’t just about hiding data. It’s about a system now culturally engineered to deny, delay, and deflect by default.
Structural Failures - Laid Bare
The Scottish Government’s recent FOI response to our concerns captures the problem perfectly.
It asserts that FOI standards and oversight are not its responsibility, but the Commissioner’s. Yet it withholds the resources required for the Commissioner to do that job. It is a government that controls the purse strings of the very body it claims is in charge of transparency.
The result? A watchdog without teeth, drowning in appeals that exist solely because public bodies routinely break the spirit - and often the letter - of the law.
These structural failings are not accidents. They are features of a system designed to appear transparent while operating in darkness.
Transparency Abroad: The Nordic Gold Standard
Scotland likes to compare itself to the Nordic countries - often citing them as models of fairness, equity, and governance. But on transparency, the contrast could not be sharper.
In Sweden, every citizen has a constitutional right to access government emails, draft reports, meeting records, and official diaries. Journalists routinely request entire ministerial inboxes - and get them. Deleting an official record is a criminal offence.
In Finland, citizens can see internal memos and the minutes of informal meetings. In Norway, draft legislation, correspondence, and background documents are released while decisions are being made - not years later.
In Scotland, you can’t even get a list of software systems used by your council without being stonewalled by exemptions or cost refusals.
The Cost of Secrecy: £Millions Wasted, No One Fired
Why does this matter? Because secrecy breeds impunity. It destroys culture.
When was the last time you heard of a Council Chief Executive being fired for failure?
Or an NHS director being dismissed because patients died waiting for treatment?
Or an Enterprise Agency CEO sacked for losing millions in taxpayer investment?
When private sector CEOs fail, they’re removed, gone. When public sector leaders fail, they get promoted - or quietly retire with a publicly funded pension. There is no accountability mechanism. No transparency. No public reckoning.
Why FOI Matters in Scotland
Scotland has one of the largest public sectors in Europe - public spending accounts for more than 50% of GDP. Around one in five jobs is in the public sector.
Health, education, housing, and care - nearly every aspect of life is shaped by publicly funded institutions. That means FOI matters more here than in almost any other developed country.
But this isn’t some Scandinavian nirvana.
1 in 4 children in Scotland is born into poverty.
People are dying waiting for operations.
Ambulances queue outside hospitals with no beds.
Education attainment is falling.
Councils are technically insolvent.
Universities are begging for bailouts.
And we lead Europe in drug and alcohol deaths.
This is not a system that can afford to hide from scrutiny. This is a system in crisis - and it needs to be exposed.
Who Hides the Truth?
The truth doesn’t hide itself. People do.
Nobody joins the public sector to lie. So what happens to them? What culture turns decent professionals into bureaucrats who redact facts, deny data, and bury information under a cloak of 'legality'?
Are they afraid? Do they fear for their jobs? Do they see it as their role to protect the institution - no matter the cost?
Whatever the cause, the outcome is clear:
Scotland has become a country where even the simplest truths are withheld.
And this is not just a problem of information.
It is a crisis of democracy.
The public deserves the truth.
Our job is to bring it back.
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