Political parties in Scotland love Freedom of Information.
You might have noticed FOI Friday regularly features FOI news from Scotland. And that quite a lot of the stories come courtesy of Scottish Labour, Scottish Tories, Scottish Lib Dems or Scottish Greens.
All the political parties in Scotland (apart from the SNP as they’re in government) make enthusiastic use of the Act. Mostly to highlight failings they can point to while campaigning to be in charge instead.
It would, therefore, be interesting to see how keen on FOI political parties are if they were subject to it.
(The answer is probably not very. Political parties have a habit of making regular use of FOI in opposition and then failing to defend or trying to restrict it once in government.)
Reportedly, the Scottish Information Commissioner is set to suggest making political parties subject to the Act at a Festival of Politics event in Holyrood. He’ll apparently call for a debate around whether parties impact on policy and governance should involve more transparency around their inner workings.
And on the subject of FOI requests by Scottish political parties…
Breaking rules
Scottish Conservatives have called for prisoners caught breaching jail rules to be barred from seeking early release, as data showed a rise in those breaking the rules. It increased from 6,017 in 2022 to 6,659 in 2023, before peaking at 6,904 in 2024.
In the first seven months of this year alone there have also been 4,556 prisoners who have broken the rules, figures obtained by the Tories under under Freedom of Information showed.
One individual prisoner is responsible for 143 rule breaches, the statistics showed, with other inmates having accrued 111 and 105 breaches while in custody.
Taxi to A&E
Growing numbers of patients are making their own way to A&E instead of taking ambulances with nearly 2.7 million people taking alternative transport to emergency departments last year.
The figure is a 14% increase from 2.36 million in 2019 and highlights the number of people losing faith in ambulance
The numbers obtained by the Lib Dems through freedom of information requests to NHS trusts showed the highest rise in Sandwell and West Birmingham, where there was a 320% increase in the number of people arriving at A&E without an ambulance compared to 2019.
Football matches
Police fears that a football fan will be killed by pyrotechnics at a match have been revealed in government documents released through freedom of information.
The minutes of a meeting of ministers, police officers and football authorities also claim increased drug taking is driving violence and antisocial behaviour at stadiums.
The documents state: “We’ve seen an escalation in dangerous misuse of pyrotechnics in football grounds, and violent and antisocial behaviour in the streets before and after matches.
“Concerns that the misuse of pyrotechnics will lead to someone in Scotland being maimed for life or killed are real.”
Failed drug tests
Four train drivers and conductors working for ScotRail failed drugs tests in the last three years.
Figures released under freedom of information rules showed that since 2022/23 there had been almost 600 tests undertaken. One failure came in 2023-24. And three more happened in 2024/25.
ScotRail said it randomly tests at least five per cent of their safety critical staff.
Prison assaults
Statistics uncovered by a Freedom of Information request from The Greenock Telegraph to the Scottish Prison Service (SPS) show that between 2020 and 2024, officers at HMP Greenock have been assaulted 23 times, with 11 incidents reported in 2022 alone.
The Old Inverkip Road facility had five incidents take place in 2024, the last full year available, with two having already been carried out in the first six months of this year.
Alongside assaults on staff, the data also shows that 2024 was the worst year since 2020 for attacks on prisoners with 17 being reported.
Unspent funds
More than £300m given to English councils to help house Ukrainian refugees still sits in council bank accounts, a Freedom of Information Act (FOI) request has revealed.
FOI responses from 150 councils found that £327m – about a third of the £1bn budget – has gone unspent, while thousands of refugees face homelessness.
Pests
Pest controllers have had to tackle over 3,000 reports of mice, rats, insects and birds in Parliament, data from the House of Commons and Lords shows.
During the first two years of the Covid pandemic, there were fewer than 400 pests reported in the Lord’s and shared spaces.
But in 2022, that was at 578, and by last year it had hit 773. In the first six months of 2025, pest controllers have already tackled 516 reports.
The pest control data was uncovered through Freedom of Information requests filed by Metro.
Uninsured
Wakefield Council’s headquarters and the city’s Grade-I listed County Hall were among ten buildings without insurance cover during 2024, the authority has confirmed.
Earlier this year, it emerged the council had been exposed to a £370m financial risk after it was found a number of its properties had not been insured for almost three years.
Following a Freedom of Information request, the council has named the properties that were uninsured during 2024.
Missed bin collections
A Freedom of Information request, seen by the Barnsley Chronicle, shows the number of missed collections for each of the four bins from April 2024 to March this year.
A total of 214,370 grey bins were missed, 176,168 brown bins, 226,958 blue and 169,065 green.
That equates to a total of 786,561 missed collections.
Chauffeured
A freedom of information by EV outlet Fast Charge has found that the Cabinet Office made 83 red despatch box journeys between 18 June 2024 and 31 March 2025 using the Government Car Service (GCS). This came at a total cost of £14,095.02 using taxpayer money.
The trips, known as ‘despatch box movements’, involve chauffeuring government documents securely between locations, even though no Minister is present.
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