The Department for Exiting the European Union has been accused of hiding the "unpleasant realities" of Brexit from the public, as new analysis suggested it only answered a fifth of Freedom of Information requests in full.
Research by the People's Vote campaign for a second referendum found DExEU refused to release any information for more than half of all requests, and only answered 21% in full between July 2016 and June 2017 - the lowest percentage of FOI requests granted in full across all of Whitehall.
The Cabinet Office, Department for International Trade, and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which all also deal with Brexit, answered 26%, 25% and 23% respectively of requests in full.
People's Vote found the Whitehall average to be 44%.
Labour's Peter Kyle, a supporter of the People's Vote campaign, said: "The Government's astonishing lack of transparency around Brexit is a national scandal, and is part of the reason why we've ended up in the mess we're in now.
READ MORE: Jeremy Hunt: The EU must provide further assurances over the Irish border backstop
"The Government departments charged with dealing directly with Brexit are deliberately obfuscating and hiding the many unpleasant realities of the process from the public.
"The truth they're trying to hide is that the Government's proposed Brexit would severely harm our economy and is much worse than our existing deal inside the EU.
"I have written to the chief executive of the Civil Service to demand urgent answers, because the British public deserve to have all the information about Brexit available to them.
READ MORE: Jeremy Corbyn urges Theresa May to cut short MPs' Christmas break for Brexit vote
"Because of the failure to be open and transparent, the public have lost confidence in the Government's ability to handle the Brexit process properly. That's why more and more people are rallying behind the calls for a People's Vote, to give the people the final say."
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 hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel