A major attack on the public’s right to information is likely following the government’s announcement today of a new Commission to review the Freedom of Information Act, according to the Campaign for Freedom of Information. The Commission has been asked to consider whether new measures are needed to protect the government’s internal discussions from disclosure and to reduce the ‘burden’ of the FOI Act.
The Campaign has published this briefing explaining how the Information Commissioner and Tribunal have protected the ‘safe space’ and genuinely frank discussions from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.
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The Campaign has commented on proposals for a draft transparency clause produced by the Crown Commercial Service, a Cabinet Office agency. The clause is intended to be included in an updated version of the Model Services Contract which is designed for use by government departments when procuring services. The Government is committed in the Open Government Partnership National Action Plan 2013-2015 (see commitment 12) to introduce such standard transparency clauses into government contracts and to draw them up in consultation with civil society organisations and business.
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The Campaign for Freedom of Information expressed concern at today’s Commons statement by the Justice Secretary Michael Gove saying that the government would “revisit” the Freedom of Information Act to ensure that civil servants’ advice to ministers was protected so they could “speak candidly”.
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FT front page, 17.6.15
The Cabinet Office has a policy of deleting all emails after 3 months, which recently featured in a front page Financial Times story on June 17 2015. Under the policy, all Cabinet Office emails are automatically deleted after 3 months – anything needed for permanent preservation must be printed out and stored before this happens. The FT reported on the frustration of some former officials and advisers over their disappearing emails. The Telegraph has reported that some other departments also automatically delete emails after a set time.
It was suggested that the policy was an attempt to circumvent the FOI Act. The government maintains that it was merely good record management.
It was probably both.
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The Campaign for Freedom of Information today criticised the government’s statement that it would seek to strengthen minister’s powers to veto decisions under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act. The announcement was made in a lobby briefing in the run up to today’s publication of Prince Charles’ correspondence with government departments. The material had been sought by the Guardian newspaper under the FOI Act.
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What does the future hold for Freedom of Information? We’ve been going through the major parties’ election manifestos to see what FOI commitments have been made.
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Labour’s election manifesto promises to extend FOI “so that public services run by large private companies are included” – a welcome step. However, the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) have expressed doubts about this proposal and are instead calling for transparency to be achieved by proactive publication of information about contracts presumably via the Institute for Government’s proposals. These envisage a contractor and authority agreeing between themselves in advance what information about the performance of the contract will be published; allowing the contractor to verify any information before it is published; and allowing the authority to withhold the promised information if it considers publication would be contrary to the public interest.
We have no particular problem with the IfG proposals themselves. We do have a problem if they are used to prevent the FOI Act being extended to provide an adequate right of access to contractor held information.
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The Campaign for Freedom of Information welcomed today’s Supreme Court ruling that ministers cannot veto decisions of the Tribunal that deals with FOI cases merely because they disagree with them. The judgment followed the Attorney General’s attempt to block disclosure of Prince Charles’ correspondence with government departments. The Upper Tribunal had ordered disclosure after Guardian journalist Rob Evans had requested it. The correspondence will now have to be disclosed.
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