Freedom of information?

The UK Government is planning changes to the Freedom of Information Act, “reported The Register“ earlier this week (I was away, I missed the first posting of the article…). The proposals mean that it will be much easier for the Government (or anyone else) to refuse an FoI request on the basis of cost, by increasing the number of “administrative charges” that can be used to get past the £600 limit.

any request referred to a minister is almost certain to be denied because of the extra costs involved under the new plans. “Officials can say about any request they are not keen on, we’ll send this up to ministers and that will immediately add £200, £250, £300 to the likely costs of dealing with the requests and make it much more likely that it will be refused without further consideration, and that will make it much harder to get information which ministers are worried about.
“Information that ministers are worried about will, merely because they are worried about it, become more difficult to obtain,” said Frankel.

Worse still, the limiting charge (which lets you refuse an FoI request if it’s too expensive) wouldn’t apply to each request any more – organisations would be able to lump together all requests within a 3-month period, and refuse them all if the total exceeds £600! Which basically means that a newspaper could make only one FoI request per quarter. Useful for a government that doesn’t actually want to divulge any information. No, wait, wasn’t it this government that actually introduced the FoI Act? Yes, I believe it was. What on Earth is going on?

pax et bonum

Article posted at 09:34am on 25 October 2006
Category: Politics, General