No freedom for information about freedom of information
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.”
Quite what’s to be done when the department responsible for the FoI act are plucking numbers out of the air and then stifling attempts to call them up on this I don’t know. That the FoI Act contains a clause allowing the government not to reveal the information it uses in policy decisions points to how little the government really believe in openness.
Via Out-Law.com.