Things in Holyrood might have looked calmer this year, but below the surface a corrosive culture of secrecy created by the SNP is doing lasting damage to standards in public life and trust in politics. After 15 years in government, the SNP are increasingly convinced that the rules don’t apply to them.

They act as if any form of scrutiny is an affront, treating parliament and press with contempt and riding roughshod over Freedom of Information laws. Investigations into bullying have been buried, key documents lost, and scandals covered-up. Parliamentary votes are ignored, committees are palmed off, and journalists are locked out of events.

We see the same pattern time and time again, from the fiasco at Ferguson Marine to the tragedies at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital – no transparency, no accountability, and no real change.

Never in the history of devolution has there been a single party with so much power and time which has done so little with it. They are a tired government with the same answer to every question. They are trying to drag people back into the arguments of the past because they don’t have any ideas for the future.

Want to see more SNP fails? – Health Matters