Universities ‘pressured students to inflate league table’ – The Guardian 27/4/10
“Eight British universities have been accused of putting undue pressure on students in an attempt to boost their position in crucial national league tables. Documents released under freedom of information show the universities were reported to the higher education funding body in the last two years over allegations they tried to persuade students to give their institutions high scores in the National Student Survey…The documents obtained by the Guardian show Hefce received complaints about each institution and asked seven universities to carry out an internal investigation. The funding body investigated Anglia Ruskin but decided there was not enough evidence to request an internal inquiry. Hefce excluded the results from the psychology department at Kingston from the 2008 survey but in every other case it accepted the universities’ findings and no further action was taken.”

Shell drafted letter Tony Blair sent to Gaddafi while Prime Minister – The Times 27/04/10
“Tony Blair lobbied Colonel Muammar Gaddafi on behalf of Shell in a letter written for him in draft form by the oil company, documents obtained by The Times reveal. The correspondence, written while Mr Blair was Prime Minister, bears a striking resemblance to a briefing note by Royal Dutch Shell weeks earlier promoting a $500 million (£325 million) deal it was trying to clinch in Libya. While it is common for government ministers to champion British interests abroad, Shell’s draft reveals an unusual assurance in its ability to dictate Mr Blair’s conversation with the Libyan leader. It also raises questions about the motives behind Britain’s improved relations with Libya and the subsequent release of Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber.”

Two women every day ‘being turned away from overstretched maternity units’ – The Telegraph 22/04/10
“Almost 750 heavily pregnant women were forced to travel to other units, up to 100 miles away, to give birth last year. Almost half of the women who were sent to other units were in Greater Manchester, where four maternity units are facing cuts, the figures show. The figures have been uncovered by the Conservatives using the Freedom of Information Act. They also show that many maternity units had been forced to close to new patients more than 10 times in 2009.”

Fines double for illegal workers – The HR Director 21/04/10
“Fines have almost doubled from £11.2m to £22.1m in a year. UK Border Agency Issue 2,210 civil penalties in 2009 up from 1,164 in 2008. Recruiters and employers need to carry out more thorough checks of job candidates as the number of fines for employing illegal workers doubled in 2009, according to data obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by giant precision, the web based back office solutions provider to the recruitment industry…The Government introduced a new system in March 2008 to try and reduce the number of illegal workers in the UK. This new system gave the UK Border Agency the power to issue civil penalties of £10,000 to employers for every illegal worker.”

NHS hospital sold cancer drugs ‘now in short supply’ – Daily Telegraph 15/4/10
“The Royal Surrey County Hospital Foundation Trust was criticised in February for selling more than £4 million of drugs abroad. It confirmed it had made £300,000 profit from the trade during the previous year. A request under the Freedom of Information Act has now uncovered the drugs which the trust sold and when it ceased trading in each. Of 33 products sold by the trust, 13 were cancer drugs and four were for HIV, the Health Service Journal has found. Four of these drugs were listed in November as being in short supply, including Glivec, used for leukaemia patients. The Trust said it ceased trading in Glivec in October and did not contribute to the shortages…The practice of buying drugs in Britain at a lower price, due to Government deals and the weak pound, and then selling them in Europe for profit is not technically illegal but has been criticised by the Department of Health and ministers have said it is ‘wholly unacceptable’.”

Millions wasted on treating mentally ill away from their communities – The Guardian 14/4/10
“George (not his real name) was one of anything up to 10,000 people with mental ill-health who are subject to “out of area treatments” (Oats). It is often assumed that since the closure of long-stay mental hospitals, users of mental health services are all treated in their own communities. This is emphatically not so. In a rising trend that has evaded policy-makers’ radar, NHS primary care trusts (PCTs) and local authorities in England are spending an estimated £330m a year on placements elsewhere…Some placements are justified on clinical grounds and are the right choice for the individual. Many, however, are not. And new research suggests that substantial sums – perhaps as much as £100m – could be saved by reviewing Oats and returning service users to their home areas.”
Novartis and Roche threaten to quit UK. The Guardian 11/04/10
“The pharmaceutical firms Novartis and Roche have threatened to pull out of Britain and relocate thousands of jobs abroad, in an ongoing row over pricing for the NHS and rules surrounding safety trials. The Swiss drug companies made their threats known in personal meetings with a government minister, according to Whitehall documents seen by the Guardian… The net effect, according to the minutes of the meeting obtained by the Guardian under the Freedom of Information Act, is “a price squeeze on Roche products which Mr Melville called a major issue because UK drug prices act as reference prices for many developed countries including most of the EU. He said it may even make sense to pull out of the UK, losing 3% of business, so as to safeguard pricing levels at the remaining 97% of sales sources.”

Criminals evade efforts to seize millions of pounds of assets – The Times 09/04/10
“Efforts to seize millions of pounds from fraudsters and tax evaders are failing because criminals are managing to hide their gains from the authorities. Only £30 million of £174 million ordered to be repaid in England and Wales since 2005 has been recovered so far. Figures released yesterday show that seven years after David Blunkett, the former Home Secretary, promised to go after the “homes, yachts, mansions and luxury cars” of crime barons, criminals are holding on to their assets. The returns call into question a cornerstone of efforts to control organised crime. Dozens of specialist staff were recruited by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to lead the effort.”

Taxpayers’ money given to corrupt charities – The Independent 08/04/10
“The Government department in charge of Britain’s £5.6bn aid budget has been accused of “unjustifiable secrecy” because it is refusing to disclose the names of charities and developing countries found to have fraudulently obtained money donated on behalf of UK taxpayers. Figures obtained by The Independent under the Freedom of Information Act show that the Department for International Development has lost nearly £720,000 over the past five years as a result of “fraud, corruption and abuse” by governments in the developing world or NGOs using British funds. But DfID has refused to release a detailed list of the projects and countries where fraud has been uncovered, saying that to do so would jeopardise the UK’s relationship with foreign governments and risk further abuse by detailing the nature of the offence. And it has also refused to give details of exactly how much money has been misused.”

Scientology ‘has branch in every English prison’ – Daily Telegraph 8/4/10
“Scientology has obtained a foothold in every prison in England and Wales, a spokesman for the religion claims, despite official figures which show only three prisoners acknowledge following the religion…An arm of the religion called Criminon says it now has followers in all of the 139 prisons in England and Wales and many of the 16 prisons in Scotland. However Ministry of Justice figures show just three inmates are scientologists, compared with 23,000 Church of England members, 14,000 Catholics, 366 Pagans and 340 Rastafarians. A spokesman for Criminon said that it had delivered its crime and drug rehabilitation programme to every single prison in the UK…In a Freedom of Information request, The Ministry of Justice admitted that Criminon tried to ‘recruit prisoners’ by writing to them in jail and encouraging them to sign up to the programme.”

Lib Dems reveal police pension costs up 50% in five years – Money Marketing 06/04/10
“The Liberal Democrats are calling for an independent commission on public sector pensions after research revealed that the cost of police pensions has soared by 50 per cent in the last five years. Figures uncovered by Freedom of Information requests to British police forces show the annual cost of pensions in 2008/09 was £2bn, compared to £1.3bn in 2004/05. The figures also reveal that the annual cost of police pensions is projected to rise by 14 per cent in the next three years.”

Half a million houses are lying empty, Guardian research shows – The Guardian 04/04/10
“Charities are demanding an urgent rethink of government housing policy after a Guardian investigation found that almost half a million homes are lying empty in the UK – enough to put a roof over the heads of a quarter of the families on council house waiting lists. The startling picture of neglect – we estimate that more than 450,000 properties have been empty for at least six months – at a time when there is an acute housing shortage was pieced together using information gathered from local councils under the Freedom of Information Act.”

FSA sees whistleblowing activity surge – Financial Times 03/04/10
“The number of whistleblowers passing on allegations to the authorities about malpractice in the financial markets has more than doubled since the start of the credit crunch. The Financial Services Authority said calls to its dedicated whistleblowing desk jumped from 835 in 2007 to 1,890 last year, in response to a Freedom of Information request submitted by the Financial Times.”

Gordon Brown accused of ‘cover-up’ over sale of Britain’s gold – The Telegraph 01/04/10
“The Prime Minister has been accused of a “cover-up” over the sale of Britain’s gold reserves after Treasury documents indicated that the Bank of England had refused to support the policy. An email released under freedom of information laws shows that in December 1998 senior officials at the Bank refused to back a Treasury move to sell almost 400 million tons of gold. Hundreds of pages of documents thought to detail the Bank’s concerns and advice to the chancellor have been withheld by the Treasury. Gordon Brown was chancellor at the time.”

Details of Royal finances revealed – Daily Telegraph 1/4/10
“Six members of the Royal Household were living rent-free in grace and favour accommodation at a time when the Queen was asking for more public money to repair Royal palaces, newly-released documents show. Details of the taxpayer-funded homes were released by Buckingham Palace under pressure from Parliament’s public accounts committee as it sought information about the Queen’s finances…Papers released under the Freedom of Information Act also show that several minor members of the Royal family, including the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, paid nothing for their homes.”

Regional

Bed blocking scandal: Patient ‘living’ in hospital for nearly two years – Daily Post 24/04/10
“Beds were “blocked” by patients who no longer needed hospital treatment for 15,000 days across North Wales in the last year, a Daily Post investigation reveals. It’s thought to have wasted about £6m of taxpayers’ money, figures released under the Freedom of Information act show. The worst case saw one patient stuck in a Gwynedd hospital bed for 636 days – that’s a staggering one year and nine months. And that patient is still there – meaning other patients aren’t able to get in to use that bed. Vulnerable patients, who are often elderly and suffer from conditions like dementia, are stuck in hospitals because the right care packages are not available for them in the community.”

Building experts claim affordable homes rule is a failure- The Press 02/04/10
“Shocking new figures have revealed that only five affordable homes have been completed in five years under York’s controversial “50 per cent” policy. Three leading figures in the city’s building industry claimed today the statistic proved the policy had been a “catastrophic failure,” which had actually made it harder for people wanting an affordable home and had led to builders and developers going out of business. Developer John Reeves, architect Matthew Laverack and quantity surveyor Paul Cordock, who obtained the figure from City of York Council under a Freedom Of Information request, claimed the authority had previously “spun and misrepresented” figures to make it appear such homes were going to be produced in large numbers.”

Scotland

Hospitals hit by increase in ward closures and infections. STV 18/04/10
“New figures show a three-fold increase in infection rates and ward closures in Scots hospitals. The norovirus forced 318 ward closures in Scotland last year compared to 107 in 2006-7. Infections among patients and staff increased from 1,026 to 3,166 over the same period. The figures, released to Labour following a freedom of information request, showed the highest number of infections was in NHS Ayrshire and Arran with 843 cases, down from a peak of 1,130 in 2007-8. Labour health spokeswoman Jackie Baillie said: ‘I am deeply concerned at the huge surge in cases of the winter vomiting bug.’”

International

Once-hidden EU report reveals damage from biodiesel- Reuters 21/04/10
“Biofuels such as biodiesel from soy beans can create up to four times more climate-warming emissions than standard diesel or petrol, according to an EU document released under freedom of information laws. The European Union has set itself a goal of obtaining 10 percent of its road fuels from renewable sources, mostly biofuels, by the end of this decade, but it is now worrying about the unintended environmental impacts. Four major studies are under way. Chief among those fears is that biofuel production soaks up grain from global commodity markets, forcing up food prices and encouraging farmers to clear tropical forests in the quest for new land.”

The Science and Technology Committee has published its report on the disclosure of climate data from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia. The report recommends that the Government should review the current six month time limit for prosecuting an offence under section 77 of the Act, which makes it an offence to deliberately destroy, alter or conceal a record after it has been requested with the intention of preventing disclosure. This is an issue which the Campaign for Freedom of Information has previously raised and was taken up by Lord Dubs who attempted to make an amendment to the Coroners and Justice Bill in July 2009 to extend the limit.

If the Minister was correct to assert in July 2009 that the Government had no evidence that the current six-month time limit presents a systemic problem, then it is now clear that such evidence exists. Irrespective of whether or not CRU breached the Freedom of Information Act 2000, we recommend that the Government review the operation of section 77 of the 2000 Act and the six month limit on the initiation of prosecutions provided by section 127(1) of the Magistrates Court Act 1980. (Paragraph 95) 

The report also recommends:

We regret that the ICO made a statement to the press that went beyond that which it could substantiate and that it took over a month for the ICO properly to put the record straight. We recommend that the ICO develop procedures to ensure that its public comments are checked and that mechanisms exist to swiftly correct any mis-statements or misinterpretations of such statements. (Paragraph 91)

There is prima facie evidence that CRU has breached the Freedom of Information Act 2000. It would, however, be premature, without a thorough investigation affording each party the opportunity to make representations, to conclude that UEA was in breach of the Act. In our view, it is unsatisfactory to leave the matter unresolved simply because of the operation of the six-month time limit on the initiation of prosecutions. Much of the reputation of CRU hangs on the issue. We conclude that the matter needs to be resolved conclusively—either by the Independent Climate Change Email Review or by the Information Commissioner. (Paragraph 93)  

We have already recommended in paragraph 54 above that in future information, including data and methodology, should be published proactively on the internet wherever possible. However, a culture of withholding information—from those perceived by CRU to be hostile to global warming—appears to have pervaded CRU’s approach to FOIA requests from the outset. We consider this to be unacceptable. (Paragraph 103)

We cannot reach a firm conclusion on the basis of the evidence we took but we must put on record our concern about the manner in which UEA allowed CRU to handle FOIA requests. Further, we found prima facie evidence to suggest that the UEA found ways to support the culture at CRU of resisting disclosure of information to climate change sceptics. The failure of UEA to grasp fully the potential damage to CRU and UEA by the non-disclosure of FOIA requests was regrettable. UEA needs to review its policy towards FOIA and re-assess how it can support academics whose expertise in this area is limited. (Paragraph 104)

Download the report here.

In a written ministerial statement today (30 March 2010), the Justice minister Michael Wills, has confirmed that a Section 5 Order will be brought forward in the next parliamentary session, extending the Freedom of Information Act to Academy Schools, the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), the Financial Ombudsman Service and the Universities and Colleges Admission Service (UCAS). This follows the Government’s announcement on 16 July 2009 that it would consult these bodies with a view to bringing them within the Act’s scope (see earlier post). 

The statement said:

Having carefully considered all the evidence it is clear that all of the bodies listed above perform functions of a public nature. I have written to each of the bodies to explain the decision in detail, and to identify the functions to which the Act will apply. However the reasons in brief are as follows:

ACPO’s functions are concerned with providing leadership for the police force, improving policing, acting as a voice for the force, encouraging high standards of performance and development, providing the strategic police response in times of national need and other ancillary and related functions. Policing is clearly recognised as a function of a public nature.  For these reasons it is appropriate to include ACPO in a section 5 order for all of their functions.

The Financial Ombudsman Service resolves disputes between consumers and providers of financial services. It was established under a statutory scheme in order to provide consumers with a quick and informal alternative to the courts.  We consider that the functions of FOS appear to be functions of a public nature and that it would be appropriate to include them in a section 5 order.

UCAS provides its member University and Colleges with admissions services. Without such services, those institutions – which are bodies listed as public authorities in either the Freedom of Information Act or the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act – would need to perform these functions for themselves, and the information would be captured by those Acts. As UCAS provides these services on behalf of its members, it is clear that UCAS does perform a function of a public nature. 

Finally, although independent of local authority control, Academies are publicly-funded schools and a part of the state education system. Provision of state education is clearly a public function and parents and local residents should be able to access the same kind of information about Academy Schools as for any other state-funded school.  The Academy Trust, is the body responsible for the running of the Academy School.  In our view, the public functions of Academies are those set out in the funding agreement signed between the Academy Trust and the Department for Children, Schools and Families: in short, the establishment, maintenance and carrying on of an Academy. We propose to include Academy Trusts in a section 5 order for these purposes from the point at which they enter into funding agreements. 

The Order will be laid and debated at the earliest possible opportunity in the next parliamentary session, with the intention that it will commence in October 2011.

A news release from the Ministry of Justice is here.

Two orders under section 4 of the FOI Act were also laid before Parliament on 25 March 2010. The Freedom of Information (Additional Public Authorities) Order 2010 No. 937 adds public bodies to Schedule 1 of the FOI Act that meet the critieria in sections 4(2) and (3) of the Act. The explanatory memoranda explains:

The bodies that are being added to the list of public authorities in the Schedule to the Act include a number of newly created public bodies, and some that were not included previously but that perform comparable functions to those that are already in the list. The Act will apply to most of these bodies from 1st October 2010. The exceptions are the Building Regulations Advisory Committee for England and the Building Regulations Advisory Committee for Wales, which will each be added to Schedule 1 on 31st December 2011. This is because the Welsh Ministers (Transfer of Functions) (No. 2) Order 2009 replaces the current Building Regulations Advisory Committee with two separate committees (one for England and one for Wales) and this order will not come into force until 31st December 2011.

The Freedom of Information (Removal of References to Public Authorities) Order 2010 No. 939 removes references to public authorities from Schedule 1 of the Act, as on the date the order enters into force they will have either ceased to exist or ceased to meet the necessary criteria.

The Freedom of Information (Removal of References to Public Authorities) Order 2010 removes a number of public bodies from the scope of the Act. All but one of those bodies have already ceased to exist, so there will be no practical reduction in the scope of the Act. The exception is the Building Regulations Advisory Committee, which will cease to exist on the coming into force of the Welsh Ministers (Transfer of Functions) (No. 2) Order 2009 on 31st December 2011. This body will therefore be removed from Schedule 1 of the Act from that date.

An uncorrected transcript of the evidence given by the Information Commissioner, Christopher Graham, and Assistant Commissioner, Jonathan Bamford, to the Home Affairs Committee on 9 March 2010 has been published.

Q4 Mr Winnick: Thank you very much indeed. In January of this year The Times noted that your office has limited resources, no powers to speed up the freedom of information process and that the Office is limited by not having the final say in freedom of information appeals. Do you recognise these constraints? Do you think they are unfair, or do you think the comments were unfair?

Mr Graham: I do not believe all I read in the newspapers. I would comment that all public authorities have limited resources. We are unusual in that there is some buoyancy in our resources, at least on the data protection side, because of the introduction of a tiered notification fee. The largest concerns now pay £500 instead of £35 and that is giving us more money to spend on the data protection side of the business. On the freedom of information side of the business we have had a spectacularly productive year. We are closing outstanding cases, getting through the backlog, and this is despite the fact that there is a great public appetite for using the Freedom of Information Act – good. It does mean that applications to the ICO are up by more than 20%, but case closures are up by more than 40%. This is not an organisation that is suffering from restraint. On powers, next month we see greatly strengthened powers on the data protection side – the introduction of civil monetary penalties, the ability to audit government departments without consent. There is an awful lot going on at the ICO.
…
Mr Graham: I am going to ask Jonathan to comment on the data protection side in a minute, but the great challenge when I took on the role of Information Commissioner at the end of June last year was to tackle the backlog in freedom of information cases, and this we are doing. This is a week of tremendous activity because we are determined to clear some of the old cases before the end of our performance year and I am confident that in our annual report we will be able to tell a very good story of the speeding up. Freedom of information cases, if they come to us, which is on appeal, are almost certainly going to be difficult and intractable, but what we have succeeded in doing over the past few months is to send a message to public authorities that we are on their case, and so there is no question of just refusing information because you think it will take the ICO a long time to get round to it. If we were in a vicious circle, we are now in a positive cycle where the public authorities realise that the ICO is very alert and they had better get on with it and that is having a very beneficial effect.

The Commissioner was also asked about the Private Members’ Bill introduced by David Maclean MP, which sought to exempt Parliament from the scope of the FOI Act and create a new exemption for MPs’ communications with public authorities, by David Winnick MP who was one of the MPs who tried to block the Bill in the Commons:

Q9 Mr Winnick: Mr Graham, Parliament makes its own rules and the electorate will decide, as always, accordingly, but if Parliament had gone ahead and exempted itself from the freedom of information legislation, which at one stage was a possibility – there was a Private Members’ Bill – what do you think the effect would have been generally in the media and on the public?

Mr Graham: That is a very hypothetical question.

Q10 Mr Winnick: It is bound to be, is it not?

Mr Graham: The controversy was before my time. If we are going to re-run history, I suppose the great might-have-been is what would have happened if Parliament had been inclined to go with my predecessor’s steer and had published the expenses under more general headings. This, of course, was before we knew about flipping of second homes, so the regime might not have lasted very long, but it was Parliament’s determination to challenge the ruling of the Information Commissioner and to challenge the ruling of the Information Tribunal and take it to the highest court in the land, and the highest court in the land, as you know, turned round and said, “Publish the lot”, which was more than the Information Commissioner had requested. If you say, therefore, “How would it have gone?”, I think you would have drawn the wrath of the public upon yourself if you had exempted yourselves. I think it would have been better if, in not exempting yourselves, you had realised that this was real and the law that applied to everybody else also applied to Parliament, but it is easy to be wise after the event.

Mr Winnick: Wisdom, fortunately, prevailed and you know what happened.

 Read the transcript in full here.

The Information Commissioner’s Office is seeking comments on its draft corporate plan for 2010-13. The ICO’s website states:

Our Draft Corporate Plan 2010-2013 outlines a three year view of what we need to do to deliver our mission and achieve our vision – upholding information rights in the public interest.

We are now seeking comments on our proposals to make sure we measure up to the expectations of our stakeholders. Please read the draft and if you wish e-mail comments to jonathan.kay@ico.gsi.gov.uk. In particular we would like to know:

• Do you think the roles the ICO will play – enforcer and educator – are the right ones? (page 6, 7)

• Have we missed any key audiences out? (page 4, 5)

• Are our priorities right? Is there anything that shouldn’t be in there? Is there anything we’ve missed out? (pages 8-14)

• Do you think our plans for how we’re going to develop our workforce and direct the ICO are appropriate? (pages 15-17)

• Do you think our timescales are realistic and appropriate (pages 18-22)

• How would you measure our success? (page 23)

The consultation period will end on Friday 16 April 2010

 The draft corporate plan 2010-2013 can be downloaded here. 

The Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill, which includes amendments to the Public Records and Freedom of Information acts, received its second reading in the House of Lords yesterday. The amendments implement the Government’s response to the review of the 30 year rule year chaired by Paul Dacre.

The main effect of the amendments are:

(a) to cut the 30 year rule for the automatic release of old government records to 20 years, for some records

(b) to create a new exemption for communications between members of the Royal Family and public authorities

Move to a 20 year rule
The FOI Act allows requests for information to be made regardless of the age of the information concerned, so the old “30 year rule” no longer acts as a barrier to disclosure. However, it still operates as the point at which old government files, including cabinet papers, are proactively made public in The National Archives.

The transition to a 20 year rule will be phased in over 10 years by doubling the volume of records released each year. The proposed amendments would also lift some of the FOI exemptions after 20 years instead of 30 years as at present. Those that would be removed after 20 years are the exemptions for investigations (s 30), court records (s 32), audit functions (s 33), policy formulation (s 35), effective conduct of public affairs (s 36) – except in relation to Northern Ireland authorities, where the exemption would continue to apply for 30 years and legal professional privilege (s 42).

All other exemptions would continue for their present length of time. Those that would still operate for up to 30 years would be the exemptions for commercial interests (s 43), and devolved administrations (s 28). The honours exemptions would continue for up to 60 years, the law enforcement exemption for up to 100 years and remaining exemptions could apply indefinitely.

Royal Family
At present, information relating to communications with Her Majesty, other members of the Royal Family or with the Royal Household are exempt under section 37(1)(a) of the FOI Act. This exemption is subject to the Act’s public interest test, which in turn is subject to the potential use of the ministerial veto.

The effect of the amendments would be:

(a) to exempt information relating to communications with the monarch, the heir to the throne and second in line to the throne for (i) 20 years or (ii) till 5 years after the individual’s death, whichever is later. This exemption would no longer be subject to the public interest test.

(b) that communications with other members of the Royal Family would also be protected until 5 years after the individual’s death or for 20 years, but in these cases the public interest test would apply. 

The main effect of the change is therefore to rule out the possibility of any disclosure on public interest grounds of information relating to communications between the monarch, heir or 2nd in succession until 5 years after the individual’s death or 20 years, whichever is later.

During the debate, several Lords spoke about the amendments. In response, the minister, Lord Bach said:

The speech of my noble friend Lord Berkeley concerned one aspect of the review. The noble Baroness, Lady Young, asked why the change was being phased in gradually and wondered why it could not be done straight away. She asked whether we were covering our backs. The Dacre review recommended a phased approach to a reduction in the 30-year rule. Current estimates suggest that in central government alone departments hold at least 2 million files between 20 and 30 years old. I was asked about consultation on the transitional order. We will be working closely with central government and the wider archive sector to ensure that the transition to the new rule can be achieved in a fair and transparent manner.

The issue concerning the Royal Family was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and by my noble friend Lord Berkeley. This matter relates to the monarch herself and the next two in line to the throne. Just as it is a sovereign’s right and duty to counsel, encourage and warn her Government, it is also the right and duty of the heir to the throne to be instructed in the business of government to prepare him for the time when he will be king. Both these sets of rights and duties rely on well established conventions of confidentiality that were never meant to be superseded by the Freedom of Information Act. Therefore, we think that we have approached this part of the Dacre review in the right manner.

Read the debate here.
Latest copy of the Bill here and Explanatory Notes here.

The Information Commissioner’s Office have published a monitoring report on publication schemes in the police sector. This follows a monitoring report on central government published in November 2009. The report’s summary states:

The results were mixed. Most disappointingly we found that 26 out of the 90 authorities (approximately 30%) did not appear to be operating an approved publication scheme which s.19 of the Freedom of Information Act requires them to do. This is despite the two sectoral representative bodies, the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) and the Association of Chief Police Authorities (APA) putting a great deal of work into helping their members meet their FOI obligations. Despite us contacting the public authorities concerned, some are still not meeting their s.19 obligations and their details have been passed to our enforcement team.

Overall most of the public authorities inspected, and who we considered were operating an approved scheme, are releasing a large amount of information. However without exception what they are currently doing could be improved. 

We found authorities, while following the approved model, did not provide some of the information that we believed they should (and as set out in our “Definition Documents”). We also discovered that information which they said was available by contacting them either wasn’t, or there was considerable delay before it was, and websites were poorly maintained with out of date information and broken links.

The report also states that, in future, the ICO will recommend that all public authorities should produce a  ‘guide to information’ which lists the classes of information they’re making available.

It has become clear during this exercise that where authorities have produced a guide as a record of the information they make available routinely, then this is both the best way to keep track of what they are doing and it is straightforward for people to access information covered by the scheme.

As a result we will in future recommend that all public authorities follow this approach to producing their guide to information. This means that they should produce a guide which lists, by class, the information they are making accessible, how the information can be got and whether there are any charges.

This is a welcome development since some authorities claimed to have adopted the new model scheme without making clear what information they were making available or where it could be found.

ICO press release here and Police Sector Monitoring Report here.

Secretary of State for Justice, Jack Straw, gave evidence to the Justice Committee on 10 March 2010 on the work of the Ministry of Justice. He was asked about use of the veto in relation to cabinet minutes and the effect of FOI on advice to ministers.

Q94 Chair: Thank you very much. I am going to turn to a number of wider issues. I am going to start with a Freedom of Information issue. There have only been two occasions when the Information Commissioner has recommended the disclosure of Cabinet minutes. One was Iraq. The other was devolution last December. You told the House that disclosure of the devolution papers was not in the public interest because it undermined collective responsibility and effective government. That sounds to me like an argument that you would use against ever disclosing any Cabinet minutes. Were you using the power that you had to veto the disclosure of specific Cabinet minutes to take up a position, which the legislation does not have, that no Cabinet minutes shall ever be disclosed by the Information Commissioner’s requirement?

Mr Straw: No, most certainly I was not. That would be contrary to the structure of the Act and an abuse of the discretion that is given (in this case to me) under section 53 of the Act. In each case you have to judge the merits or demerits of a section 53 decision strictly on the basis of the information which it is proposed by the Commissioner or the tribunal to release at that time, so this is not remotely a way of bypassing the legislation. I have set out in both cases very detailed explanations about why I reached those decisions, and we followed strictly the non-statutory procedure, with consultation with Cabinet colleagues and so on in advance. There has been a high level of consideration given to this, including by meetings of the Cabinet, with the full papers available to members of the Cabinet, and on the basis of that consultation I formed those judgments. I would just make this wider point: section 53 is there, as I have said in the House on a number of occasions; it is a fundamental part of the architecture of the Freedom of Information Act. The Act would not have come in without section 53 being there because it is there as a balancing measure for what are otherwise the most stringent and powerful Freedom of Information provisions of almost any jurisdiction in the world. I do resist very strongly those who are now seeking to cherry-pick the Freedom of Information Act and say that requesters are entitled to use, say, sections 35 and 36, and the Commissioner and the tribunal are entitled to come to their decisions, but ministers should go into a self-denying ordinance about ever using section 53. That is not how the Act is established. I can say this without any challenge: the Government would not have recommended the Act to the House, following a series of changes greatly to strengthen its provisions, if section 53 had not been there.

…
Q99 Chair: Let me turn it round and say to you: can you think of a Cabinet discussion that you have taken part in in recent years which, if the Information Commissioner required you to disclose it, you would not veto?

Mr Straw: If I may say so, I am not going to get into the realm of speculation. It is the case, by the way, that one document relating to a Cabinet sub-committee, which was actually the agenda (agendas can be quite revealing), has been released. There have been relatively few requests, as we have said, which have gone to the Commissioner. The other side of this is that a good deal of inter-ministerial correspondence has been released.

Q100 Chair: I cannot escape the conclusion that there are no Cabinet minutes whose disclosure you would not veto.

Mr Straw: That is a wrong conclusion. The conclusion, obviously, Chairman, you decide to come to is a matter for you, but I am just telling you, as the person who has had to exercise this discretion on two occasions, that is wrong. It is not what the law says and it is not what I have said in very detailed explanation. I also just repeat the point, and you may take a different view about this (I hope you do not), that section 53 is an inherent and integral part of the whole architecture of the Act. Even with section 53, this is still amongst the strongest and most incisive freedom of information legislation in the world, contrary, I may say, to those who continued to claim, including people from your benches, that all we were doing was putting into statutory form the previous freedom of information code.

Q101 Mr Tyrie: We were both supporters and remain supporters of FOI. I have had expressed to me quite a number of concerns by officials, informally, that FOI gets in the way of enabling them to offer free and independent advice to ministers; it inhibits them from writing down things from time to time. Is that a problem that has ever been brought to your notice? Do you think there is something we should do about it?

Mr Straw: It is certainly a comment that has been made to me. I do not, myself, feel, in my Department, that officials have been reluctant to say what they think about issues —

Q102 Mr Tyrie: On paper.

Mr Straw: On paper. It has certainly not made me reluctant to say what I think about issues on paper, because my view is that if you are confident about the reasons that you are offering (in this case a minister is offering) about why they are either going to accept or modify or reject advice which is put forward, then you should be ready to justify that. That is not, by the way, a green light for saying this should be made available on the intranet or internet that day, or even in anything less than what will now be 20 years. Mr Tyrie, it is quite often said that it is an inhibition. Bear in mind that there is a difference in terms of the kind of sensitivity of most of the work in my Department compared to some other key departments.

Q103 Mr Tyrie: I am asking the question in the round, with your constitutional hat on.

Mr Straw: Indeed. I just wanted, as it were, to make your point. When I was at the Foreign Office (I was only there for 18 months after the FOI Act came into force) there was, I think, that sense around, and I have heard that said in respect of other departments handling more sensitive material – for example, in the Treasury. I am anxious here to not either dismiss these opinions, which you have also received, nor to say they are fact. I think, therefore, now that you have raised it, what we need to look at is whether there would be a way of having an independent scrutiny by people who were neither parti pristo ministers or prospective ministers, nor to the Information Commissioner and the Freedom of Information campaigners, who could both look at a series of submissions and compare them with equivalent submissions made before the Freedom of Information Act became law, because it came into force in 2005. So to look back, before it was, as it were, even a gleam in the eye —

Q104 Mr Tyrie: So get someone in to take a look at this?

Mr Straw: To take a look at this, and also to talk to officials and to try to come to a judgment about that. I will try and get that going.

The Department of Health has updated its guidance on dealing with access to health records requests:

Guidance for access to health records requests (22 February 2010)

This supersedes Guidance for access to health records requests under the Data Protection Act 1998 (2003).