The data in this Scottish Government reply to an alert reader this week pretty much speaks for itself, so we’re not going to add too much to it.

The number of FOI requests submitted to the Scottish Government by the BBC in the past three years (112) is more than 25% higher than the total number submitted in the previous seven years (89).

The number submitted by Labour in 2017 was more than TEN TIMES as many as it submitted in 2008, and twice as many as any other year.

The number submitted by the Tories in 2017 was a third more than the total number submitted in the previous NINE years (92). They’ve also exceeded that total in the first seven months of this year alone.

And as the highlighted passage notes, the true numbers are considerably higher.

The response noted, for example, an interesting trivia fact:

That means that in 2017, out of a total of 3,046 FOIs sent to the Scottish Government, over 1,000 came from the two main opposition parties or the BBC.

That total represents a dramatic increase in workload:

A further 159 were submitted by newspapers in the first eight months of the year. (The most recent full-year total for newspapers is 216 for 2016.)

Despite this avalanche the number answered within the 20-day target has increased from 61% in 2007 to 83% in 2017, even though the volume has almost quadrupled.

All we’d say is that it’s perhaps worth keeping these figures in mind the next time you hear either (a) newspapers howling blue murder about a “culture of secrecy”, or (b) opposition politicians screaming at the government to “get on with the day job”.