The Freedom of Information Act under attack

If the government has its own way a hugely effective public interest tool could be severely watered down, writes Raymond Snoddy.

Just when you thought it was safe to go out, another serious media issue comes hurtling down the track.

Set aside ad-blocking, programmatic trading and whether Alan Yentob should hold on to his job at the BBC for a moment and concentrate on the growing threat to one of the better achievements of the Blair Government – the Freedom of Information Act.

It is now under intense scrutiny from a government inquiry and not all that many people know that the final date for submissions is November 20th.

The inquiry has all the hallmarks of an investigation set up to produce “the right answer” and hobble legislation that has been important over the past decade in exposing some of the lamentable inner workings of government and local authorities to great public scrutiny but is highly inconvenient to the Sir Humphries of the world.

The Society of Editors’ annual conference this week was told that despite flaws, and cynical delaying tactics by public bodies, FoI had been involved in exposing many issues that are enormously in the public interest.

They range from MPs’ expenses to publicising the NHS Trusts which ignored Patient Safety Alerts, potentially endangering lives, to the council boss in Pembrokeshire who was driving around in a Porsche at a cost to the local authority of £2,368 a month.

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The FoI Act is probably in need of reform but not quite in the way the Government and its inquiry team have in mind.

Public bodies have a right of veto over handing over information and have used it to block publication of internal risk assessments for the much-criticised NHS reforms and for HS2, the high speed railway.

In both cases the assessments could have been very revealing on how sensible such multi-billion initiatives actually are and whether either should have been given the time of day.

You could also limit the way public bodies use delaying tactics and appeal systems to prevent publication of information.

Jason Collie, former deputy editor of the Oxford Mail, now at the London Evening Standard, told how the police and other public bodies use the FoI Act as a method of obstruction.

After more than a year of appeals and re-submissions he has still been unable to find out how many times the Thames Valley Police Force has used the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), supposedly aimed at terrorists, to obtain the phone records of journalists to trace the identity of whistleblowers.

Increasingly, the conference heard, journalists making simple requests to press offices are asked to put in a FoI request instead. This delays the initial need to answer for at least 20 days when they obviously hope a story may have gone off the boil.

Resubmission of failed requests in different forms to try to get at the truth is likely to be branded “vexatious” and therefore something that does not require an answer.

So there is plenty of scope for reform to help make public bodies more accountable.

That does not seem to be the approach of the five-strong inquiry team under the chairmanship of Lord Burns, former permanent secretary at the Treasury and out-going chairman of Channel 4.

Most appear to have gone on the record about the FoI Act before being appointed.

Lord Burns seems to be in favour of charging for FoI requests despite, or maybe because, when charging was introduced in Ireland FoI requests fell to 25 per cent of their previous level.

The Lib Dem Peer Lord Carlile accused the Guardian of a “criminal act” for publishing the Edward Snowden leaks and former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw is on record saying the Act has gone too far and needs to be reworked.

Another committee member Lord Howard also probably feels less than warmly about the Act – his gardening expenses were exposed by it and Dame Patricia Hodgson, who chairs Ofcom, has criticised the Act’s “chilling effect” on government.

It is a committee that is very reminiscent of the composition of the group of advisors set up to advise Culture Secretary John Whittingdale on the future of the BBC.

Apart from charging for FoI requests there is a real danger that the veto powers will now be changed and extended following a ruling of the Supreme Court.

The Court decided the veto powers under the act had been used unlawfully to block publication of the “black spider letters” sent by Prince Charles to government departments.

Clearly that sort of thing can’t be allowed to happen in future.

At the conference Whittingdale had something to say about both the inquiry into the FoI and the BBC but said he was only having a look.

He was just having a look at the FoI Act, Whittingdale explained, in the way that “everyone thinks I am going to abolish the BBC just because I am looking at how it works after 10 years.”

Whittingdale’s “look” at the BBC has already cost the Corporation more than £650 million to pay for the licence fees of the over 75s. At the conference, Rona Fairhead, BBC Trust chair, conceded that the BBC would have to make cuts of 20 per cent – 10 per cent to pay for the free licence fees and a further 10 per cent to fund future change at the BBC.

After the Whittingdale contribution, Nick Turner, president elect of the SoE, compared the Government “looking” at FoI and the BBC to “the way a lion is only having a look at an antelope with a limp.”

Information Commissioner Christopher Graham told the conference he planned to make a submission to the inquiry.

“I will do the facts and you, if you want to, do the campaigning,” Graham said tellingly.

The media industry does indeed want to do the campaigning and chose the SoE conference to launch a Hands Off the FoI campaign.

Newspapers all over the country will be encouraged to re-run the significant local stories they have obtained through the freedom of information legislation and will be asked to lobby local MPs.

The campaigners would also like to see FoI legislation extended to cover the commercial bodies increasingly taking on public functions, at the moment exempt from the FoI Act.

The launch of the campaign to try to prevent the watering down of Freedom of Information legislation highlights the other campaign that is conspicuous by its absence – any sign of a media movement to prevent the evisceration of the world’s leading public service broadcaster – the BBC.