91Èȱ¬

For some time I've been feeling a little bit guilty towards the Foreign Office. But only a little - and yesterday I had the chance to put matters right.

I recorded a clip for a package on the PM programme yesterday evening about the report of the Commons Constitutional Affairs Committee - see entry below.

In it I explained how I asked the Foreign Office for various exchanges with the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs. And the Foreign Office sent me more information than the Swedes did in response to a similar request. So - in contrast to Downing Street - perhaps the Foreign Office can claim to be more open than the famously open Swedes.

I would have made this point in September last year in a Radio 4 documentary I produced about how freedom of information was working so far. However I was unable to do so. Although I put the request to the Foreign Office in January 2005, I didn't receive the response until April 2006 (and it needed the intervention of the Information Commissioner's office).

I calculate the length of time involved as being 300 working days.

And what was the Foreign Office's explanation for the delay? An administrative oversight due to the fact that the officer initially dealing with my case had since left the department.

Still I feel the Foreign Office is entitled to a little bit of positive publicity for its comparative openness. And at least the world now knows.

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There is no doubt what the main theme is of the House of Commons in their on freedom of information. That theme is delay, delay, delay.

Delay in public authorities replying to initial FOI requests. Delay in internal reviews in response to complaints. And delay in the appeals process at the Information Commissioner's Office.

The report is called 'Freedom of Information – One Year On.' Yet it is interesting that the MPs have decided to say very little about whether public authorities are now actually revealing the kind of information which should no longer be secret.

Instead they decided to focus their inquiry on what they clearly perceive as the key issue - the speed, or lack of it, with which anything gets disclosed. They have produced some pointed criticism and interesting recommendations.

Notably they remark sternly that 'The 20 day response deadline is a statutory requirement and not merely a target'.

Some of the most interesting recommendations focus on the role of the Department for Constitutional Affairs. The Committee want the DCA to collect and publish statistics on how long departments take for assessments of the public interest which are permitted to go beyond the normal 20-day limit. And they want similar data published on the time taken for internal reviews.

They also want the Department's Central Clearing House to be more openly accountable about its work, a topic I have discussed before.

Although the Committee criticise the performance of the Information Commissioner's Office in 2005 as 'unsatisfactory', the Commissioner, Richard Thomas, does not come out of the report particularly badly.

The MPs seem ready to adopt a 'wait and see' approach to his plans to clear the backlog of cases. They are also sympathetic to his predicament as a regulator both independent of but also funded by the DCA.

The Committee however do not appear to have been impressed by the evidence given to them by the junior DCA minister, Baroness Cathy Ashton.

The MPs are deeply worried about the long-term accessibility of digital information recorded on forms of technology which have become outmoded – and they clearly regard Cathy Ashton as being complacent when she told them it was not a significant problem.

Despite all their concerns, the MPs do stress they regard FOI as a significant success, which has brought constructive and beneficial releases of information.

The Committee also take the chance to comment on the DCA's ongoing review of the regulations on fees for FOI requests. They make clear their opposition to any change in the fees regulations, in case any such change reduces the benefits of FOI.

The report quotes extensively from and was clearly strongly influenced by the received. The 91Èȱ¬ was one of the organisations which gave written evidence to the Committee, although it was not invited to give oral evidence too.

This is not the first time that the Constitutional Affairs Committee has reported on freedom of information. In December 2004, just before the FOI Act came into force, they that the state of readiness was patchy.

They predicted that some parts of the public sector, such as the Police, were much better prepared than other parts, such as the NHS. This certainly proved to be a fair analysis of the situation, so perhaps the Committee can claim a record of getting things right on FOI.

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The question of whether UFO 'sightings' may actually, in the view of the Ministry of Defence, involve secret US spy planes, continues to interest some .

It stems from the MoD responding to a freedom of information request by last month releasing a lengthy three-volume of unidentified aerial phenomena, as by Newsnight and mentioned by me.

I've now been told that at first MoD officials only wanted to release volumes 1 and 2 of the report, and not volume 3, which was classified secret originally because of the information it contains about radar performance. This plan was over-ruled when someone with more acute political antennae argued that holding back volume 3 would only convince many UFO enthusiasts that it was the crucial volume with all the details of visiting aliens.

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Iain Dale (prominent Conservative and possessor of an excellent surname for anyone who wants to keep an online diary) has suggested I should be putting in a freedom of information request to the 91Èȱ¬ about the amount of money we are paying to Jonathan Ross. Not one for me, I think.

Still, Iain's blog (which is always worth reading) seems to have been kept by Ross's interview with David Cameron on Friday night, so it looks like Iain at least is getting good value for his licence fee from JR.

If you watched the interview you'll know that at one point it seemed like Ross himself was about to spill the beans on the full details of his latest contract, in which case no FOI request would have been needed.

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Lazy journalists? Opportunist businesses? Obsessive campaigners? Individuals motivated by little more than idle curiosity?

Well let's not forget government ministers - one of whom has just told me how he has used FOI a couple of times to help pursue local constituency cases. And it worked to his satisfaction on both occasions. It's good to know that someone's finding the law effective.

Actually I have a theory that most freedom of information requests are put in by people who work as FOI officers. This is based on the fact that when I'm discussing one of my FOI requests with an officer dealing with it, half the time they start telling me about the fate of an FOI request which they've put in to another public authority.

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More documents from the Metropolitan Police Special Branch personal protection file on James Callaghan, following my previous post on this.

These documents were released to the 91Èȱ¬ following a freedom of information request we made. Again they illustrate how sometimes it is surprising what gets disclosed.

Several documents make clear that Callaghan consistently felt annoyed that he was not receiving enough personal protection after he ceased to be Prime Minister. Civil servants briefed the then 91Èȱ¬ Secretary Leon Brittan ahead of a tricky meeting with Callaghan in 1983 to discuss his complaints.

And this is the Special Branch assessment of the extent of the threat to Callaghan. Personally I would have expected such assessments to be a little more detailed.

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I mentioned before that the government is considering changes to the system of fees for freedom of information requests.

Has the Department for Constitutional Affairs made projections of the possible impact of various charges on the level of FOI requests being made?

Yes, it would seem so. The 91Èȱ¬ asked the DCA this question, and the Department has now confirmed to us that it does hold relevant information.

Will it reveal what those projections are? After all, possibly this would help create a better-informed public debate on the merits and demerits of various options.

The answer is that it won't - because in the Department's view, any benefit to public debate is outweighed by the argument that revealing such projections would inhibit the provision of free and frank advice to Ministers.

But in the absence of their projections, here's a fact. In Ireland, after upfront fees for FOI requests were introduced in 2003, the number of requests fell dramatically, as discussed by the Irish Information Commissioner in her

Is that a change for the better or a change for the worse?

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First I should confess that I have published this , but I reckon it deserves another outing, given the England v Sweden game in the World Cup.

Revealed here is a letter sent by Tony Blair to the Swedish prime minister, Goran Persson. So what does it say?

"Dear Goran, You are a star. You can appear on British radio anytime. And thank you for Sven. Yours ever, Tony."

It was sent in the wake of England beating Germany 5-1 in the World Cup qualifiers in 2001, an early triumph for Sven-Goran Eriksson. Persson was interviewed on Radio 4's Today programme about this boost to Anglo-Swedish relations - following which Tony Blair despatched him this short handwritten note.

I obtained a copy when I visited Persson's office in Stockholm and asked to see copies of correspondence between him and Blair. Sweden has probably the strongest freedom of information law anywhere in the world. It means that I could see most (although not all) of the letters they have each sent each other.

But when I asked the British government for copies of letters between the two prime ministers, Downing Street refused to reveal any of them because they said it might 'damage international relations'.

Given that the Swedes happily hand most of them out to anyone who asks, it is a little difficult to see how it would harm relations with Sweden if Britain did the same. But while the British government sticks to that policy, all Tony Blair's letters to Goran Persson, whether about gratitude to Sweden for Sven or anything else, are still British official secrets.

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The has been hitting the headlines by blocking some of Tony Blair's political nominations for peerages. But it also has the task of nominating non-party political members for the House of Lords.

And it has been having trouble locating what its secretariat describes as 'high-quality, appointable women nominees'. This is disclosed in a document I have obtained from the Commission under freedom of information .

This also shows that the secretariat dismissed the idea of trying to solve this problem through 'broad-based publicity to attract female nominees', because it thought this wouldn't attract high quality nominations.

So how should the Commission find top quality women for nomination to the House of Lords? The secretariat recommends 'a system of "shoulder-tapping" by Commission members.'

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An with an interest in UFOs uses freedom of information to request a report from the Ministry of Defence. The MoD on their disclosures log. Its main conclusion gets , widely. The report is extremely long, three volumes, 465 pages. It sits on the MoD website, for a month so far. It contains another very interesting story, about what the UK may know about whether the US Air Force is building secret spy planes which can cross the sky at 3,000mph. Does anyone spot it? Well, in this case, yes - Newsnight producer Meirion Jones .

It all goes to show that there is something out there - the story. Often 'hidden' in lengthy reports on official websites. FOI is going to make more reports like this publicly available. Let's hope someone reads them properly.

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Rumours are going round about how the government may or may not seek to change the on fees for freedom of information requests.

One idea for example which has been discussed is to reduce the thresholds above which public authorities are able to reject requests as involving too much work. Supporters of this argue it would reduce the administrative burden of FOI, although how much difference it would really make is open to question.

Changes to the regulations have been discussed in cabinet sub-committee. Some ministers have been making clear their irritation at various FOI-based stories that have appeared in the media, and want to discourage FOI requests.

Others see this as a political trap for the government. One former government adviser, very close to FOI policy, once told me that on FOI the government has ended up with the worst of both worlds. It has had to put up with embarrassing revelations which FOI inevitably leads to, but because it weakened its initial plans it hasn't been able to claim the real credit it deserves for at least being open. On this analysis any changes that inhibit FOI requests will probably make matters worse for them.

Of course it would be interesting to read the official account of debate taking place in cabinet committee. But when the 91Èȱ¬ asked last year for copies of the minutes of the cabinet committee dealing with FOI, now called , we were told that they could not be released because it would inhibit the 'free and frank exchange of views'.

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Attended a seminar last night given by Kevin Dunion, the

He gave a very impressive and insightful account of his work, but there's a limit to what I can tell you about it, as the seminar was held under the - which is much misunderstood but broadly says that participants can reveal what was said but not who said it.

Given that the job of a journalist is to find things out and tell people about them, is it right for journalists to obey such rules? Is it even stranger when the seminar is about freedom of information?

Well, if I wasn't happy to accept the conditions, then I suppose I needn't have gone.

But here's one interesting fact anyway. 55 per cent of the complaints to Dunion come from ordinary individuals, 20 per cent from solicitors (and one firm in particular), and only 7 per cent from journalists. That makes it seem as if we in the media are an easily satisfied bunch. Perhaps we are.

The seminar was held at the , which is gearing up to carry out what could be some very interesting research on FOI and how it's working in practice.

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An interesting this morning on the Today programme based on documents the 91Èȱ¬ obtained using FOI.

It seems that Revenue staff were paying tax credits to immigrants who weren't entitled to them, because they were told to ignore the fact that a claimant didn't meet residency rules as long as he or she had a national insurance number.

It also provides one interesting sidelight on using FOI. FOI users often complain about not getting any information, but occasionally it can almost be the reverse.

In this case the government helpfully supplied a pile of paperwork about six inches high, with several hundred pages of guidance to officials dealing with tax credit applications. Somewhere in the middle was the memo in question.

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Why isn't there one single source where people who want information can easily find regularly updated contact details for putting in FOI requests, links to publication schemes and disclosure logs etc, for all the public authorities covered by FOI?

Well perhaps there will be one soon. In fact, possibly you could help to create it.

from Liverpool John Moores University has set up a wiki to start putting together such a . Over to you.

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The 91Èȱ¬ has today how many foreign drivers have avoided paying the congestion charge in London.

The worst offenders are French motorists, who owe Transport for London (TfL) over £2.5 million. The second largest sum - £990,000 - is owed by Polish drivers.

We obtained this data from TfL using FOI. The full table they supplied also shows those countries from which one individual has apparently managed to drive their car to London, failed to pay, and departed owing £100. These include Cambodia, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Libya, North Korea and - perhaps most unlikely of all - the Solomon Islands.

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When I've chased up a government departmental FOI officer over what's happening to a request I made a long time ago, I often get told (off the record, naturally) more or less the following: "It's not our fault - blame the Clearing House. They've been sitting on it for weeks."

The is the unit within the Department for Constitutional Affairs (DCA) to which departments should refer particularly tricky or sensitive requests. And there's a long of what counts as tricky or sensitive.

The riposte from Clearing House staff (equally off the record) is that the departmental FOI officers would get all sorts of things wrong if the Clearing House team wasn't able to stop them sending out the unsatisfactory letters which they would if left to their own devices.

Just a normal tale of inter-departmental rivalry in Whitehall? Or is there a genuine issue of delay caused by the Clearing House?

Well, many FOI officers and requesters certainly think that the Clearing House operates like a black hole, outside the normal rules of the space-time continuum. Once you send something in there, you can never be sure when if ever you will see it again.

The problem is that when the 91Èȱ¬ asked the DCA for data on how long the Clearing House took to deal with cases referred to it, they replied that they couldn't tell us that as they didn't actually keep the information.

However possibly some light has now been shed on this matter thanks to a fascinating by Prof Al Roberts, an international expert on FOI. He shows there is a remarkable correlation between those departments which are slow in their FOI responses and those which refer many cases to the Clearing House.

Of course that doesn't prove anything, perhaps they just get the trickier cases. Could it be spurious? As Al Roberts says, "It's tough to tell, given the refusal of DCA and other departments to release documents or data that shows the internal workings of the FOI process."

Until and unless the DCA reveals more data on the operation of the Clearing House, it's certainly the kind of thing which will add to the suspicions of its critics.

And there is one intriguing detail in Prof Roberts' graph - the one outlier is the Treasury, which manages to be the slowest department of all, without even the bother of getting the Clearing House involved in many of its cases.

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Evidence is mounting that the Information Commissioner is cracking down on incompetent public authorities who fail to deal properly with simple information requests.

The Commissioner has upheld a complaint from that one of its requests was not handled properly. And which authority was it that failed to follow basic procedures? Actually, the Information Commissioner's Office.

So if the Commissioner gets 0 out of 10 for how his office answers information requests, perhaps still he can get 10 out of 10 for ticking himself off in public.

It's not surprising that it's Friends of the Earth which has forced the Commissioner into this embarrassment. Its Head of Legal Phil Michaels is an authority on information law and FoE has probably been more determined and assiduous in its use of FOI than any other campaign group.

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Back now, with a further thought about the Information Commissioner's decision on the legal advice on the Iraq war, given the dust has settled. It illustrates a weakness of FOI as a tool for opening up government.

In his the Commissioner, Richard Thomas, made the interesting decision to force ministers to tell us more about the evidence that supported the government case - but they've not had to tell us anything more about the evidence on the other side. You can read his reasoning in the Notice.

In other words, if the Attorney General's initial advice had not been leaked, this suggests that Thomas would have forced the disclosure of the parts that supported the legality of the war and not the counter-arguments or caveats.

It will be interesting to see if this becomes any kind of precedent for other cases.

But beyond that the striking thing is how little other written material there seems to be which helped the decision come down in favour of legality. And Thomas states that the government assured him that they had shown him everything relevant.

FOI's limitation is that it only applies to 'recorded information'. It can't force people to answer questions about what was going on inside their heads.

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