Another pat on the back for Sunday Herald journalist Paul Hutcheon for revealing the undisclosed practice of some of our MSPs in issuing "access all areas" passes for the Scottish Parliament to lobbyists and party friends.
Mr Hutcheon reports, "Around one in five MSPs has given a "regular visitor" pass to either an interest group, a party colleague or an organisation that has given money to their party ... Twenty-four MSPs have given individuals or organisations regular visitor passes, nearly 90% of which have gone to lobbyists, party colleagues or donors."
Amongst those MSPs and individuals named in the article are some rather interesting ones, but suspects there are many more names still to be published by Mr Hutcheon which go beyond the "usual suspects."
Mr Smith is reminded that the founding principles of the Scottish Parliament at its establishment were that it was to be "open, accessible, transparent and accountable." Nice to see that at least some MSPs are getting the "accessible" bit right then, but then again perhaps some are allowing too much access by the wrong people?
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