A COUNCIL has been urged not to risk hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers' money in an unprecedented court case aimed at keeping potentially damning papers about sex discrimination and unfair pay under wraps.
Campaigners called on South Lanarkshire Council, which recently warned 120 jobs were at risk in a £12 million cuts round, not to press ahead with a costly legal challenge at the UK Supreme Court today.
The Labour council is the first public body in Scotland to contest a Freedom of Information (FoI) ruling against it at the Supreme Court.
Scotland's highest court, the Court of Session, has already thrown out the council's case.
If it loses in London, the local authority is likely to face a legal bill of around £200,000.
The case centres on equal pay campaigner Mark Irvine, who asked South Lanarkshire for details of its pay scales under FoI law in 2010.
Mr Irvine was trying to discover if, like many other councils, South Lanarkshire had been paying men in manual jobs such as gravedigging and gardening more than female staff in jobs requiring the same or greater skill levels.
Councils have had to pay out millions in compensation in recent years after it emerged they had paid male staff special bonuses denied to their female counterparts.
South Lanarkshire, which is currently being taken to a tribunal by 1500 female workers who say they are owed £10m, claimed Mr Irvine had no legitimate interest in the data and that revealing the number of staff on various pay grades would breach data protection law.
When the Scottish Information Commissioner rejected these arguments and ordered the council to release the information, it then appealed to the Court of Session, where three judges also ruled in Mr Irvine's favour.
The council then appealed to the Supreme Court.
The Information Commissioner has engaged one of Scotland's most feared lawyers, Richard Keen, to argue its case.
Mr Irvine said: "Three years ago South Lanarkshire argued that my original FoI request was 'vexatious', yet this case has gone all the way to the UK Supreme Court, which makes the council look completely ridiculous.
"The question on everyone's lips is, 'If South Lanarkshire has nothing to hide, why doesn't it just publish the pay information requested?'
"Even at this stage it's not too late for the council to pull back and do the right thing."
A spokeswoman for South Lanarkshire Council said: "Our decision to refuse the Freedom of Information request was to protect the sensitive personal data of employees.
"We believe this is an important issue that's worth defending.
"If we released the information that was requested, we believe we would be in clear breach of the Data Protection Act."
A spokesman for the Scottish Information Commissioner said: "I can confirm that the case is going ahead on Monday."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article