For fourteen years, former detective Iain Mckie waged a campaign to seek the truth in the name of his daughter Shirley, whose hounding by the police led to an inquiry into the whole debacle conducted by Rt Hon Sir Anthony Campbell. The inquiry, now concluded, despite ostensibly being conducted in an open and transparent fashion, was denied sight of over 500 potentially crucial documents held back by the Crown Office, a “secretive and closed organisation that apparently places little value on openness and accountability,” he says, despite scrutiny by the Information Commissioner, Kevin Dunion.

Mckie says opposition to the release of the information had prevented it being scrutinised by the judicial inquiry into the fingerprint office and police conduct. Dunion said that as the Shirley McKie case affected the lives of many individuals and called the Scottish fingerprint service into question, there was “significant public interest” justifying the release of the 131 documents. But why, despite the clear public interest and claimed openness, are 500 such secrets still able to be kept by those whose conduct may be criminal?

“I requested 650 documents. Of that we got 151. The government claimed ten exemptions, including legal confidentiality. It makes it utterly impossible for a commissioner to make any valid judgement on a case. Its very, very difficult for him,” Mckie told The Firm.
“I haven’t seen any of this paperwork. I asked for all the documents, and got a list of documents they wouldn’t give me. I don’t know what is in those documents. I don’t know what the other 131 documents will bring, and I may yet not see them because they still have the right to appeal, and knowing them, they’ll use it to avoid this. They have managed to delay it for five years, and they have been responsible, not the commissioner, for delaying sight of these documents until after the inquiry has finished. I’m naturally suspicious.”

Despite Dunion’s partial clearing of some items, Mckie is not hopeful that the key information will ever see the light of day, and he is concerned that it proved possible to delay the release of documents until after the inquiry had concluded.
“I was trying to get this information for the public inquiry, and I now find out that they don’t get that information. That’s 650 documents the judicial inquiry have not examined. In my opinion, that doesn’t help the judicial inquiry. I was trying to get as much paperwork out there on the table.”

At the root of the process described by Mckie are a cohort of personnel whose names, whilst known to The Firm, do not make the papers and whose actions are not open to public account, despite their involvement in decisions ranging from media management to ministerial prison visits, and critical influence on a wide variety of policy and action beneath the radar of political control.
“What’s very noticeable is to a great extent the civil servants have been involved here,” Mckie says.

“There was a vast array of emails and messages passing from civil servants to government, and they have been ruled as confidential. How in the hell can you ever get to know what is going on if you can’t get access to information like that?

“Civil servants are paranoid about secrecy in this country, and until that changes, everything else falls into place behind that. The Crown Office are paranoid, the Lord Advocate is paranoid. They talk about disclosure, but they just talk it. They haven’t any idea about accountable government. Until that is sorted out, Freedom of Information is being defeated by the systems.

“The culture is wrong. Until you change the culture, forget about it. Working in the culture we have, the system will never operate. Until we change the culture of secrecy in Scotland, we’re going to get nowhere. No matter if its. Labour, SNP or Tory. It’s the same. The civil servants run the show. It is all civil servants dealing with the commissioner. I don’t think we have any political interference in that process. I don’t think we have any government intervention. They rule the roost in there. They decide what gets released. It’s a crazy situation.

“The judicial inquiry has been denied access to these documents. If they didn’t get those 650 documents, I don’t see how they could do their job properly. The government promised to be totally open with the inquiry and to give them any documents they want, and the Lord Advocate echoed that, and here we have the same old thing. They don’t want disclosure, they want secrecy, and I don’t know how you tackle that. We don’t seem to have open and accountable government. They seem to want to protect themselves.”