Tom Gordon: The SNP’s culture of secrecy is self-defeating

The Scottish Labour leader said this “corrosive” and undemocratic problem deserved a “comprehensive investigation” by the government’s new Permanent Secretary, John-Paul Marks.

When Mr Marks goes to ask his SNP masters if they’d like him to catalogue and publish all the times they’ve glossed over their blunders and buried their shame, I can guess the response - although I couldn’t print it in a family paper.

Obviously Mr Sarwar’s goal was not to secure an inquiry, but to be denied one, thus reinforcing his ‘culture of secrecy’ claim - but it was not a trivial point.

This government, like every government, makes bad calls and mistakes and tries to keep them out of public view. It would be a weird administration - or person - who advertised their shortcomings.

But few governments are as old as this one. Over 15 years it will have racked up a considerable body of embarrassments.

Its age, and the knowledge that all governments lose their electoral appeal eventually, is also likely to make this one particularly thin-skinned, as it frets about the potential backlash to scandals.

But this government is also unlike most others. It is doing more than simply taking its turn on the electoral merry-go-round, flitting between opposition and power.

This government is not just the first of its kind in Scotland, it is the guardian of a singular project - Scottish independence.

Its competence today is a proxy for the credibility of independence tomorrow.

If it makes a hash of something, it will be seen through a constitutional prism.

Mistakes cast long shadows.

And this government knows if it loses power without securing independence, it may not get another shot for a generation or two, as its successor would trash its reputation, and hence trash the cause.

And because a stain on this government is also seen as endangering the project, the temptation to suppress information for the sake of the cause is all but irresistible.

Take the Holyrood chamber on Tuesday.

Labour’s Daniel Johnson had tabled a topical question about missing documents from the CalMac ferries fiasco, files that should have set out why ministers pushed ahead with the order for two boats from the Ferguson Marine yard in 2015, despite stark warnings about the financial risks.

The rationale for a decision which has since cost taxpayers an extra £150million was either not recorded or the documents have been destroyed or gone walkabout. It is a clear matter of public interest, and a clear source of nervousness for ministers.

So who did the government put up to answer this important question?

Not the transport minister or finance secretary, who have been dealing with the issue, but trade minister Ivan McKee, who has answered one written question about Ferguson Marine (not about the ferries), and spoken about the CalMac fiasco just twice before in the chamber.

On March 15, in response to an urgent question from Tory Graham Simpson, he was so wooden and unhelpful, Mr Simpson complained about him not even attempting to answer a basic question about the delivery timescale for the boats.

On April 20, in a Liberal Democrat debate on ferries, Mr McKee was asked about the missing documents, but refused to discuss them, boasting about other ones which had been published instead.

And on Tuesday, when asked again about the missing documents, Mr McKee stunned MSPs by saying the government had been “absolutely transparent about the decision-making process”, with a “clear audit trail”, despite the Auditor General for Scotland highlighting the shocking hole in the audit trail where the missing documents should have been.

After Mr McKee refused to say who was in charge of the dire record-keeping, Mr Simpson again complained out loud.

“What is the point of members coming to the chamber and asking straight questions when the minister completely ignores the questions and answers something else?” What indeed?

Barely raising his eyes from his script, Mr McKee was awful. But also perfect.

Mulish, distant from the subject matter, he was an ideal choice to play a dead bat.

The same day, the SNP accused Boris Johnson of treating the Commons with disrespect for sending a junior minister to answer questions for him. But if sending a catatonic sphinx to block questions about a genuine scandal isn’t disrespecting Holyrood, I don’t know what is.

The final thing that happened this week was reading a forthcoming paper about the steps needed to set up key economic institutions for an independent Scotland, as well as moving to a new currency.

It was positive without being starry-eyed, breaking down the process into manageable parts. The timing and long influence of the UK would surely disappoint some Yes voters, but the goal was presented as eminently achievable.

Why aren’t we getting anything like this from SNP ministers, I wondered.

Yes, they can cite the White Paper of 2013, but that’s a political curio these days, a memento of the time before the UK refused to share the pound, before Brexit, Covid, the cost of living crisis and the economic shockwaves from Ukraine.

If the SNP is to sell independence it needs to get its ideas for the currency and other key issues out there early. Springing them on the electorate at the last minute certainly won’t inspire confidence.

The SNP’s secrecy - and despite all the bureaucratic litter it leaves on its website each day, it is secretive about the big stuff - is ultimately self-defeating. It erodes trust.

Nicola Sturgeon waving away fair questions about independence with a promise to tell the public when it suits her, not them, isn’t helping herself either.

Knee-jerk secrecy can only make it harder to sell independence if the time comes, because the party is failing to roll the pitch. Where is the groundwork?

The SNP is right to worry that its project is in jeopardy, but wrong to think that transparency is a weakness to be avoided.

Its sulky lack of openness is only hurting its own chances in the long run.