UNISON Scotland is very disappointed about Scottish Government action on extending FoISA. There has been far too long spent on discussing and consulting about extending the legislation and far too little listening to important voices, including the Scottish Information Commissioner Rosemary Agnew and her predecessor Kevin Dunion, calling for a wide range of further bodies to be included.
It is our longstanding view that the public should be able to access information about the public services they use and about public and political decisions that affect them, whatever type of body holds the information or provides the service. This does not happen in Scotland and the current proposal goes nowhere far enough, given the extent to which information rights have been lost because of the number of public services delivered by private companies and other bodies not covered by FOISA…