Changes to freedom of information rules could reduce openness
The Department of Constitutional Affairs (DCA) today announced changes to the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act which would increase administrative charges for requests made under the act. Increased charges would lead to a greater number of requests breaking the £600 threshold above which a request can be denied due to cost. According to Maurice Frankel of the Campaign for Freedom of Information the changes “…would knock out a significant volume of the most important requests on public issues so it would have a pretty drastic effect on the legislation.” In addition to this it will become possible for information holders to refuse requests if the total of cost of requests from a single organisation in a 3 month period exceeds the £600 threshold. This bundling of requests would have a serious impact on the ability of journalists working for large organisations to make requests. It has been suggested that the changes would also make it particularly difficult to question ministers since passing a request up to a minister immediately adds several hundred pounds to the cost of a request. Needless to say a spokesman for the DCA (sort of) denied that the changes were intended to decrease legitimate use of the act - “The government are doing what they always said and reviewing the position after 12 to 18 months live running and considering changes in light of experience.”
I’ve no doubt that the FoI Act is used to make frivolous requests and that these cost the taxpayer money. However given the government’s willingness to waste money on say a giant tent, their zealous pursuit of savings in the case of FoI suggests that there might be more to the changes than just the finances. It’s all very depressing really, once again the government seem to have forgotten that they work for us not on a higher plane were they must occasionally tolerate requests from the proles. Hopefully further oversight freedom minded backbenchers or an outcry from the media will prevent these proposals from passing into law.
More at The Register.
November 1st, 2006 at 12:29 pm
[…] I posted an article last week about planned changes to the FoI Act that could make it very difficult for journalists to make requests under the act. Part of basis for the changes is a report by Frontier Economics which claimed that the FoI requests were costing the taxpayer £35 million a year. The Campaign for Freedom of Information (CfoI) made a request to the Department of Constitutional Affairs for access to the data used to formulate the report. This request was denied on the grounds that the information “relates to the formulation and development of government policy” which makes it exempt from disclosure under the FoI Act. As pointed out by Maurice Frankel of CfoI “The whole debate becomes very difficult if the Government is not prepared to release the factual survey which forms the basis of the Frontier Economics report.” […]