Taxi for McLetchie!

The press release from the (Orwellian-sounding) Information Commissioner reveals the real scandal over Mr McLetchie's taxis at public expense:

"The Scottish Information Commissioner today (Friday 7 October) announced his decision that the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body (SPCB) should release further details of the travel expense claims made by David McLetchie MSP, the leader of the Scottish Conservative MSPs. The decision was issued following an appeal by Paul Hutcheon of the Sunday Herald newspaper, which queried the SPCB’s decision to withhold details of the destination of Mr McLetchie’s taxi journeys.
Mr Hutcheon requested details of Mr McLetchie’s annual travel expense claims from May 1999 to March 2004. While the SPCB provided him with copies of the claims, it withheld certain information, including Mr McLetchie’s taxi destinations. In doing so, the SPCB argued that the release of this information could compromise Mr McLetchie’s safety and security. Mr Hutcheon appealed the decision to withhold these destination details.
Following detailed consideration of the disputed information, the Commissioner was not satisfied that releasing the destinations of taxi journeys undertaken by Mr McLetchie would endanger the MSP. While Mr McLetchie’s safety could potentially be endangered if the release of the information would allow third parties to predict his movements, the Commissioner’s investigating staff painstakingly extracted the information from almost 800 taxi journeys and found that there was no pattern evident from the expense claims which would allow such predictions. The Commissioner also noted that much of the information was now out of date. Furthermore the SPCB had not indicated any specific reasons as to why Mr McLetchie may be at risk. "

Why were the parliamentary authorities so keen to withhold the details of Mr McLetchie's taxi destinations? The security argument did not hold water, as the Commissioner has pointed out. I can't believe that it was an attempt to protect Mr McLetchie (or am I being naive?). Maybe it is just an ingrained pavlovian response on the part of civil servants to deny access to information...