Scottish Water may have misled Government over PFI, UNISON claims

Trade union UNISON, which requested the information, also claims the decision reveals that Scottish Water conceded it may have misled a Scottish Parliament Committee over the documents.

Commissioner Kevin Dunion has now ordered Scottish Water to provide UNISON with full financial information on its PFI wastewater contracts, overruling the company's objections that this would substantially prejudice confidential commercial information.

"Scottish Water did not provide any reasoning as to why the disclosure of particular information in certain contracts appears not to have damaged its interests while the disclosure of similar information in other contracts would, or would be likely to, prejudice those interests substantially," said Mr Dunion.

UNISON had requested the full details of nine wastewater contracts funded through Private Finance Initiative (PFI) and Public Private Partnership (PPP) projects, which allow private companies to fund public infrastructure projects. It also requested the Full Business Cases (FBCs) for two other projects.

An FBC is supposed to provide justification for proceeding with a PFI contract, however critics such as UNISON argue that the figures in such documents are often massaged to support PFI over conventional financing methods.

However, the Commissioner found that Scottish Water does not in fact hold any FBCs for the contracts and therefore does not have to release them to the union.

Scottish Water told the Commissioner that, because all of the contracts were entered into before the company was formed in April 2002, responsibility for the production of business cases and other contract-supporting documents lay with its three predecessor water authorities.

UNISON claims that the Commissioner's decision shows that Scottish Water admitted to in effect misleading the Scottish Parliament's Transport and Environment Committee. The company told the Commissioner that "it was possible a document had been liberally referred to as an FBC when it was not actually an FBC.

The nine contracts, most of which run for 30 years, cost around £130 million annually.

UNISON said it was "scandalous" that the decision showed Scottish Water either had no FBCs which could be scrutinised to see if the projects were value for money, or that these documents had been lost.

"For too long commercial confidentiality has been used to keep the true cost of PFI from the public. This decision shows how important it is for Freedom of Information legislation to be extended to cover private companies providing public services as so many are not covered, including the privatised English water companies," said the union's Scottish organiser Dave Watson.