28. Transparency in Government 🟢

In 2025/26 auditors examined 253 sets of accounts covering £58.6 billion of devolved spending. Twelve statutory reports, 17 national performance audits and nine Best Value reports were published. Scotland’s 2023 Open Budget Survey score was 91 for oversight and 60 for transparency. The machinery is already independent and statutory. The remaining work is enforcement, coverage at the edges, and whether a citizen can use what is published.

Current reality

Legal and institutional position

The Public Finance and Accountability (Scotland) Act 2000 created Audit Scotland and set out the Auditor General for Scotland and the Accounts Commission. The Auditor General is a Crown appointment on the Parliament’s recommendation, removable only by a two-thirds resolution. Stephen Boyle has held the office since July 2020. His remit covers the Scottish Government, agencies, NHS bodies, colleges and most NDPBs. The Accounts Commission holds local government and integration joint boards to account. The bodies they examine do not appoint the auditors.

The Code of Audit Practice requires a true-and-fair opinion and a wider-scope look at financial management, sustainability, governance and Best Value. Section 22 reports bring public-interest issues to Parliament. The Public Audit Committee takes evidence in public.

FOISA 2002 is the reactive right. The Public Services Reform (Scotland) Act 2010, section 31, requires listed bodies to publish annual statements on public relations, overseas travel, hospitality, consultancy, payments over £25,000 and staff paid over £150,000. Procurement transparency sits under the Procurement Reform (Scotland) Act 2014 and Public Contracts Scotland.

Reserved UK bodies in Scotland follow different primary routes. Contracted providers are not automatically within FOI or the same audit perimeter.

The latest official numbers

Audit Scotland 2025/26.
253 accounts: 123 local government, 87 central government, 23 NHS, 20 further education. £58.6 billion of devolved spending (the same report also speaks of about £60 billion). 12 statutory reports; 17 national performance audits; 9 Best Value reports; 68 parliamentary engagements. 90 per cent of financial and performance recommendations fully or partially accepted. 94 per cent of 2024/25-year audits delivered by 31 March 2026; 55 per cent to internal target times.

Correspondence: 349 items, up 38 per cent. 48 whistleblowing disclosures, up from 26.

FOI 2024–25 (Scottish Information Commissioner).
98,605 information requests; 74 per cent produced some or all of the information. 593 appeals (81 per cent from the public). 784 cases closed (a record). 335 decision notices (a record); 71 per cent wholly or partly for the requester. 255 interventions, 29 of them more detailed.

Open Budget Survey 2023 (Scotland assessment).
Oversight 91/100 (highest of jurisdictions assessed). Transparency 60/100 (“limited information”). Participation 43/100.

How it is experienced in daily life

A statutory report on Historic Environment Scotland or an NHS board is public and is taken in committee. A FOI request is answered late, or appealed. A section 31 statement is on a website, or it is not. Budget documents and accounts exist in volume. A non-specialist still has to know which PDF, which year, and which body.

How it got here

Devolution moved spending; the 2000 Act moved independent audit with it. FOISA followed in 2002. PSR 2010 added proactive spend statements. Open-government work later tried to join budget data into a single public view. The portal reached prototype and was paused.

What has already been tried, and what that showed

Section 22 reports have named procurement and governance failures (including Historic Environment Scotland’s 2024/25 audit: purchasing-card and hospitality weaknesses, a cancelled archive project already costing £2.9 million, and a period without an accountable officer), NHS board deficits and loans, and college budget-setting failures. Recommendation acceptance is high; implementation is slower. Commissioner interventions have lifted some authorities’ FOI times. PSR statements remain uneven. Oversight scores well; everyday budget accessibility does not.

What needs to happen

The improvement in measurable terms

Complete, in-year section 31 statements from listed bodies. FOI on-time rates that do not depend on a special intervention. Time-bound audit recommendations with published follow-up. Spend and budget data in open, linked formats—a clearer map of long-term private-finance liabilities and of major contracted services.

Sequence

Enforce duties already on the statute book. Resource the audit institutions. Then improve usability. A portal on incomplete data repeats the pause.

Workforce, capital and standards

Audit delivery already missed internal time targets for nearly half of 2024/25-year audits. Correspondence volume is rising. FOI appeal times averaged 8.5 months in 2024–25 while older cases were cleared.

What would count as success in twelve months?

A published compliance list for section 31. No new backlog of the kind the Commissioner previously had to clear in Government. Audit reports that state dates for recommendations and then report against them. One further increment in budget documents that links planned spend, outturn and a National Performance Framework outcome without a new strategy.

What can be done under current powers?

Who holds the lever

The Parliament (appointment, removal threshold, Public Audit Committee). The Auditor General and Accounts Commission. Scottish Ministers (PSR guidance, designation for FOI, budget presentation). The Scottish Information Commissioner. Listed public bodies themselves.

The statute, budget or direction

2000 Act; FOISA; PSR 2010 ss.31–33; Procurement Reform Act 2014; Audit Scotland’s budget via the Scottish Commission for Public Audit.

What is already possible and unused

Systematic public reporting of which bodies have not published section 31 statements. Extending FOI designation where contractors deliver public services, using existing designation machinery. Open-data publication of spend already collected—time-bound recommendations as standard.

What would still be true if management improved tomorrow

Reserved functions would still sit under UK audit routes. Commercial confidentiality would still limit some contractor disclosure. Dense accounts would still require some specialist reading.

Where the limits are

Law and reserved powers

UK-wide bodies and reserved spending. FOI and audit do not automatically follow a public pound into every private provider.

Money

Audit and Commissioner capacity are budget lines. Under-resourcing them is a choice that weakens the system without changing the statute.

Workforce and capital

Timeliness of audits and appeal closures.

Time, geography, UK-wide systems

Legacy finance systems and fragmented datasets. PFI/NPD/hub payment streams that are in the accounts but hard to read as a lifetime cost.

Political difficulty, kept separate from legal impossibility

Defensiveness about disclosure is cultural. It is not a reserved-power problem. A two-thirds removal rule exists so that dislike of a report is not enough.

What is not yet known

Whether the paused fiscal portal will return. The next Open Budget Survey score. A complete official list of PSR non-publishers for the latest year. How far a 2025 private member’s FOI bill will proceed.

Honest summary

Achievable now. Keep audit independent and funded. Enforce section 31 and FOI times. Publish what is already collected in usable form. Use time-bound recommendations.

Only partly achievable. A single citizen portal that is both simple and complete. Identical scrutiny of every contracted service.

Would require reserved change. Full audit and FOI coverage of reserved UK functions operating in Scotland.

Colour mark: green. The core of independent audit and FOI for devolved spending is already law. Green is not a claim that £58.6 billion is easy to follow, or that every listed body publishes on time.

What this item does not settle. It does not create a new auditor. It does not treat high recommendation-acceptance as the same as improvement. It does not make reserved spending Holyrood’s to open.

The test is whether a statutory duty is met without a prompt, whether a section 22 finding has a date attached, and whether a voter can move from a Budget line to an audited outturn without already knowing the system.

Connection

Item 18 is parliamentary standards sitting beside, not instead of, external audit. Item 25 is the reserved tax and constitutional perimeter that this audit system does not reach. No other item in 28 substitutes for published accounts.

People’s Future Scotland