Ministers are today over the proposed by Tory MP David Maclean that would exempt MPs from freedom of information.
Lord Falconer is opposed and has warned his colleagues that it would add to the perception 'of being an increasingly secretive goverment', while in contrast the proposal is being welcomed by Jack Straw and some others 'because of the special circumstances of Parliament'.
It is believed by many that there was a similar internal disagreement over the government's planned restrictions on FOI, which were pushed through by Straw and others over-ruling a reluctant Falconer, while other Cabinet ministers without a specific interest in FOI were told it was a simple tidying up exercise to which they need pay no attention.
But there's another angle to this topic, which is the considerable use that MPs themselves make of FOI, a topic which has been by Steve Wood of Liverpool John Moores University. FOI gives MPs numerous advantages over Parliamentary Questions, such as the option of appealing to the Information Commissioner when dissatisfied with a response.
Some MPs, notably the enegetic Tory , have been particularly effective at use of FOI.
One consequence of the Maclean Bill is that it would make it much more difficult to research MPs' use of FOI, since public authorities may keep secret FOI requests received from MPs. But research into how others use FOI would still be possible unimpeded.
Who is the watchdog who acts as guardian of whether or not public authorities are fulfilling their duty to be open under the Freedom of Information Act?
It is usually said to be the Information Commissioner, . But in practice is it turning out to be John Angel, the lawyer who chairs the ?
The Tribunal's role is to hear appeals from those who are dissatisfied with a decision made by the Commissioner. I've been looking at which the Tribunal has so far decided.
A rough-and-ready analysis of the 34 FOI or EIR decisions shows that in 11 of them - nearly one in three - the Tribunal overturned the Commissioner's decision. And in 9 of these 11 cases, the Tribunal's view can be regarded as being more in favour of openness than the Commissioner's (while one decision is effectively neutral and one more disposed to secrecy).
What's also interesting is that decisions taken by the Tribunal when John Angel is sitting as one of its members seem to be more likely to favour openness than those taken when one of his deputies is acting as the legally qualified member of the Tribunal panel.
(However I should add the caveats that this may reflect the nature of the cases rather than anything else and that this is based on a crude summary of the outcome rather a nuanced assessment of the full implications of each decision.)
Yet, while Richard Thomas is a public figure, is not. I believe the Information Tribunal website used to have a list of its members with brief biographies, but this seems to have been taken down.
Would you like to become one of the Tribunal's lay members, so you too can have the chance to help overrule or uphold the Commissioner's decisions? If you are interested, here are of a recent recruitment exercise.
Some interesting FOI developments this week:
• The journalism trade paper Press Gazette is continuing its campaign against the government’s plans to restrict FOI, this week with a at the stance of broadcasters, including the 91Èȱ¬.
• Jack Straw (who is not one of the Cabinet’s FOI enthusiasts) seized yesterday to bash the 91Èȱ¬ over freedom of information. He takes the same line in his private conversations with journalists.
• The Today programme this morning ran an important from its reporter Sanchia Berg on failure to tackle corruption in prisons, based on documents obtained using FOI.
How many FOI requests does it take to be considered a serial requestor assessed as costing central government up to £50,000 a year?
The answer in some cases is just one. Or at any rate it is according to Frontier Economics, the economic consultancy commissioned by the Department for Constitutional Affairs last year to assess the cost of FOI.
I have written previously about some of the considerable methodological doubts affecting the on the cost of FOI.
I was particularly interested in Table 5 of this report, which estimates the annual cost to central government of journalists' use of FOI as follows:
Media organisation - Requests - Cost
91Èȱ¬ - 750 to 2,000 - £300,000 to £1,000,000
The Guardian - 500 to 700 - £250,000 to £350,000
Evening Standard - 300 to 400 - £150,000 to £200,000
Mail on Sunday - 50 to 100 - £25,000 to £50,000
The Sunday Times - 50 to 100 - £25,000 to £50,000
Other journalists - 300 to 400 - £150,000 to £200,000
These figures are based on a one-week sample extrapolated to a whole year. I have also discussed before why I believe the Frontier Economics estimates for the 91Èȱ¬ are grossly exaggerated and methodologically flawed. But I wondered how many requests had actually been made by the other media organisations in the week specified.
And the DCA have today sent me the answers in a response to an FOI request I put to them:
Guardian - 11
Evening Standard - 5
Mail on Sunday - 1
Sunday Times – 1
All other identified media outlets and journalists except the 91Èȱ¬ – 10
Who has more need for their activities and expressions of opinion to be kept secret - MPs or anyone else?
That is the interesting question raised by a brief which went through the initial stages of the legislative process in the House of Commons last week. This was little noticed until in the Guardian this morning.
As it stands the Bill would make all correspondence between MPs and public authorities exempt information - even if that correspondence doesn't contain any personal information about constituents or come under any of the other headings that are already exempt from FOI.
But the exemption for MPs' correspondence would be a qualified exemption subject to the public interest test. So it could still be released if it is in the public interest to do so. However this may not be the intention of David Maclean, the MP behind the Bill, and it is likely to be amended if it continues to make way through the process of becoming law.
Until now it has always been a pretty fundamental principle of how FOI has worked in practice that there is a stronger public interest case for the public to know what elected representatives are doing and saying than to know what private individuals or anyone else is doing or saying.
The intention of this Bill (if not yet its effect) would be to reverse this principle completely.
What went on between the Americans and the British over the starting up of a Serious Fraud Office investigation into BAE Systems, which was last month?
And what do freedom of information releases from both sides of the Atlantic tell us about this?
According to a , the US 'pressured Blair into arms bribery inquiry'. The article stated that 'documents released under US freedom of information laws reveal how the probe followed arm-twisting by the Bush administration'.
These documents relate to a meeting in July 2002 between Anthony Wayne, the US Assistant Secretary of State for Economic and Business Affairs, and Sir Kevin Tebbit, the permament secretary at the Ministry of Defence. They indicate that Wayne complained to Tebbit that the British government was being slow to take action over corruption allegations.
So what is the British account of this meeting?
According to information obtained by the 91Èȱ¬ through FOI, Tebbit 'replied robustly', complaining that the Americans failed to provide 'specific evidence' they had promised. Later Tebbit reported back to a meeting attended by BAE's legal advisor, referring to 'the fact that US allegations were unsupported and to their admission of a lack of evidence'.
Tebbit also described 'the tenor of the meeting', but the MoD has refused to provide further details because to do so could damage Britain's relations with the US. So we just have to make do with that adverb 'robustly'.
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