The Freedom of information Act is currently under attack from all sides. While the government attempts to ‘emasculate’ the Act by increasing the likelihood of information being denied on ground of cost, MPs are also threatening the Act through a private members bill passed by a Commons committee on 7 February. The two-clause bill, which proposes to exempt MPs, Parliament and the House of Lords from inquiries made under the Act, has been condemned by freedom of expression groups such as Article 19, English PEN and Index on Censorship. Report by Hayley Dixon from Index on Censorship
Index, A19 and English PEN wrote to David Maclean, the Conservative MP who issued the proposals, stating that the bill represents ‘a serious attack on the public’s right to know and the scrutiny of the democratic process’. Since the Freedom of Information Act was introduced two years ago it has been used to access information about a variety of issues from controversial lobbying by drug companies to the safety of Britain’s nuclear plants to school performance across the country. But according to Bob Satchwell, the director of the Society of Editors, the changes ‘have the potential to destroy the Act and the progress’ it produced.
MPs aim to exempt themselves from scrutiny
David Maclean’s proposed Freedom of Information (Amendment) Act 2007 aims to ‘amend the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to exempt from its provision the House of Commons and House of Lords and correspondence between Members of Parliament and public authorities’. The bill received an unopposed second reading in the Commons on the 19 January, and was passed by a committee chosen by Maclean himself on 7 February, and will now return to the chamber for its report stage. The amendment would mean that not only letters regarding constituents but in fAct all correspondence between MPs and public authorities become exempt from the Act. If passed, authorities will not be able to confirm whether or not they have received a letter from an MP. To clarify the release of correspondence guidelines, the government provided to 100, 000 public authorities, Maclean’s amendment proposes to make all letters confidential and to exempt all correspondence between MPs and public bodies from the Act. If passed into law, this will effectively exempt MPs, the House of Commons and the House of Lords from the FOI Act. The exemption will also be ‘absolute’, therefore not requiring justification on grounds of public interest. In turn the government has refused to block the private members bill, claiming that it will remain ‘neutral’ and leave it up to MPs to decide. The Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer says he expects the new measures to be implemented by the end of April but warns that it will add to the perception ‘of being an increasingly secretive government’.
Government ‘deliberately sabotaging’ its own Act
Maclean’s proposals, which will give members of parliament ‘special status’ and has the support of, among others, Jack Straw, Margaret Beckett and Peter Hain, represents the second attack on freedom of information, after, on 14 December, the Government opened a 12-week consultation on changes proposed under the draft Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2007. Originally announced in October, the proposals will restrict the amount of information available on the grounds of cost, and are likely to affect local and national news organisations and campaign groups if passed. This lead to allegations from freedom of information advocates that the government is ‘deliberately sabotaging’ its own freedom of information laws and tightening its control on the media. The government has defended the proposals, stating that ‘existing provisions need to be amended to allow public authorities to provide the right balance between access to information for all and the delivery of other public services’. Lobby groups claim that if the changes are implemented, ‘the Act would remain useful to casual requesters, making occasional requests, while becoming almost unusable for those seeking to use the Act for public purposes’.
Information will be ‘denied with impunity’
Government bodies are already able to deny applications for information on the grounds that the cost of providing the information will exceed an appropriate limit, £600 for central government and £450 for any wider public body. But the proposed changes will increase the likelihood of information being denied because the factors included in the aggregation of costs will increase. Frontier Economics predict this will increase the amount of information denied on grounds of cost from 5% to 8% for central government and from 5% to 6% for the wider public sector. Political, editorial and regulatory affairs director of the newspaper society Santha Rasaiah claims this means that ‘central government and local public bodies will be able to refuse to give information with impunity, simply because they think it would take too long for them to decide and consult on whether the requester does indeed have a right to it’. The amendment concerning the aggregation of costs for multiple but unrelated requests will also hinder the amount of information available for those who use the Act for public purposes. Media and campaign organisations, for example, would be limited to one request to a certain government body per organisation during a 60-day period. The aggregation of requests alone is expected to double the percentage of information denied, and the cost limit, unlike the other exemptions in the Act, would not be subject to public interest testing.
-UK out of step with the most fragile of European democracies
Both sets of proposed amendments have been almost unanimously denounced by news organisations and freedom of expression groups. While the Commons passed the second reading of Maclean’s bill without debate, freedom of expression groups claim that the exemption of MPs’ correspondences and Parliament from the FOI Act will ‘put the UK out of step with even the newest and most fragile European democracies, such as Bosnia and Serbia, who have recently legislated to open up their parliaments to public scrutiny’. The Newspaper Society claims that if the changes are implemented the Act ‘will become a useful tool for any public body which does not wish to provide information that it would be otherwise obliged under the Act to release, perhaps because the disclosure could embarrass the body or officials or members, elected or otherwise’. The Press Gazette has launched campaigns against the changes claiming ‘unless we Act fast, this could be the generation of journalists which won a long hoped-for Freedom of Information Act only to let it slip through our fingers.’ ARTICLE 19, Index on Censorship and English PEN argue that in the ‘two years since the Freedom of Information Act was implemented, the UK has at last begun to enjoy a more open democracy. This should not be surrendered.’
