Scottish Information Commissioner: "our system's better than yours"

Scottish Information Commissioner: "our system's better than yours"

Scotland's Information Commissioner has criticised "disingenuous" MPs over the withholding of details from their published expenses. Kevin Dunion said he was concerned that blame for the level of blacked-out information on the claims had been laid with the House of Commons authorities. However, it must be remembered that many of the outlandish claims submitted by MPs were validated by these authorities. They are not known for their openness.

Dunion told BBC Scotland's Politics Show that some of the details which were witheld, or redacted, would have been disclosed under the Scottish Parliament system. But the question that must be asked is just how sanitised is the information that is eventually disclosed to the public through the Freedom of Information regime? Luckily, in the case of MPs' expenses, documents were leaked and then published in the press. This allowed us to see what we would have been prevented from seeing if it had been left to the FoI authorities to decide what should have been disclosed.

MPs 'disingenuous' over expenses (BBC News, 21 June 2009)