Katherine Gundersen

The Freedom of Information (Designation as Public Authorities) Order 2011 was debated and approved by both Houses of Parliament this week. The Order was made under section 5 of the FOI Act, which provides for the Secretary of State to extend the Act to bodies with public functions or to contractors providing public services on […]

On 17 October, MPs debated the e-petition signed by over 140,000 people calling for full disclosure of documents relating to the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, in which 96 Liverpool fans died.

The quarterly FOI statistics for central government have been published for the period April to June 2011. The figures show that the Cabinet Office, which, along with Ministry Defence, was required to sign an undertaking by the Information Commissioner earlier this year to improve compliance, answered less than half of requests within 20 working days.

News release: 28 September 2011 ‘Transparency is not just about what the authorities choose to reveal to citizens; but what citizens have a right to ask to see,’ Information Commissioner, Christopher Graham, said today, in a speech to mark International Right to Know Day 2011.

The Information Commissioner has ordered the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to disclose extracts from a note of a telephone conversation between Tony Blair and George Bush on 12 March 2003, shortly before the decision to go to war against Iraq (Decision Notice FS50341647). The Commissioner found that the exemptions for international relations (sections 27(1)(a) and

The Information Commissioner has again considered whether minutes of meetings of the cabinet sub-committee on devolution from 1997/8 should be disclosed under the Freedom of Information Act. These minutes were the subject of an earlier FOI request made in 2005. The Commissioner had ordered them to be disclosed (Decision Notice FS50100665). The Cabinet Office appealed this decision to

The Campaign for Freedom of Information has written to the Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley, expressing concern that the public’s rights to information about the NHS are likely to be “increasingly constricted” by the reforms in the Health and Social Care Bill.

The freedom of information request made by the tobacco company Philip Morris to the University of Stirling for information relating to a survey on the smoking habits of teenagers has received a great deal of media attention. It has been extensively covered by The Independent and was discussed on a number of radio shows last week.

The House of Commons’ Public Accounts Committee has called on the Government to extend the Freedom of Information Act to public companies providing public services. In a report examining the lessons from the private finance initiative and other projects, the Committee states:

BBC Radio 4 will broadcast the first in a series on ‘Secret Britain’ on Tuesday 16 August at 9.00 am.