MSPs want to end the practice of Scottish ministers and officials getting privileged early access to some official statistics to stop them ‘spinning’ the numbers.
Holyrood’s economy committee has proposed introducing a Holyrood Bill to limit “pre-release access” (PRA) to Scottish economic growth and retail sales index data.
Its majority view was that PRA should end entirely for both data sets, and the standard five working day PRA for other economic data sets should be reduced to one.
Labour said curbing PRA was standard in the rest of the UK, but SNP ministers wanted to keep it to buy time to “bury bad news” and spin their “multiple failings”.
All four SNP MSPs on the nine-member committee, including deputy convener John Mason, opposed the Bill, however the Tory, Labour and Green MSPs backed it.
If the LibDems also supported it, the Bill, which would update regulations on PRA from 2008, could become law.
Tory convener Gordon Lindhurst said: “Equal access and earliest release are the principles at the heart of this proposed Committee Bill.
“The collection of data is a fundamental cog in the decision making in government, in business, in social policy, in the press, and in the public mind and that is why the Committee has come to this decision.”
The Bill would not remove anything from the Scottish Government that the UK Government retained, affect other kids of data, such as health or education statistics, and would not “call into question the integrity or professionalism of Scottish Government statisticians”.
Labour’s Jackie Baillie said: “Access to economic statistics should be considered a public asset, not a privileged right.”
The SNP Government said: “UK Departments provide PRA to their statistics in a similar way to the Scottish Government.
“PRA is a matter for the Chief Statistician and the independence of his role is crucial. Pre-release access is consistent with the Code of Practice for Official Statistics which state that it should be in line with the rules and principles set out in legislation.”
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