He has been replaced by:

Rosalie Ashtani
0207 7276 8632
rosalie.ashtani@foodstandardsagency.gsi.gov.uk

The Department for Children, Schools and Families takes over all pre-19 education responsibility from the Dept for Education and Skills. It is responsible for all aspects of policy affecting children and young people.
FOI webpage

The Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills takes over the functions of the former Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) along with the further and higher education and skills previously part of the Dept for Education and Skills. Also manages policy on science and innovation.

The Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform takes over DTI responsibilties for productivity, business relations, energy, competition and consumers, with the Better Regulation Executive, previously part of the Cabinet Office.
FOI webpage

The mailing address remains:
FOI Team
Cabinet Office
Room 118
70 Whitehall
London SW1A 2AS

This recent curtailment of a generic email inbox (Identity & Passport Agency has done the same thing) shows the need for individual accountability. It is much more difficult to get rid of an actual person than a generic email address. For that reason, I always provide named FOI officers in my book.

I made a speech at the launch and have posted the full version below:

Thank you all for coming out on this dreary January evening to support ‘Your Right to Know.’ First I’d like to thank my publisher and all those who helped bring about this second edition of YRTK. It was a big risk taking on the first book as we had no way of knowing how a book about freedom of information and citizens’ rights would sell. Few had heard of FOI back in 2003/4 and certainly fewer thought it would catch on or flourish. But it has and the existence of this second edition hopefully proves that the public are interested in politics when it is on their own terms.

When I wrote the first edition of Your Right to Know, I hoped it would inspire a culture change from obsessive secrecy to openness. The concept of ‘information sharing’ in the minds of politicians seemed to me at the time to exist entirely of a one-way process where we tell those in power everything about us, but they tell us nothing about themselves. I was surprised by how little respect the general British public received from those calling themselves public servants. Everywhere I saw signs saying ‘We will prosecute those who abuse our staff’ but nowhere did I find any awareness among this staff that the public being abused in numerous ways. Firstly, they were being forced to fork out a load of their own money for services that often didn’t work and when they tried to fix them they were told to go away. I wrote: “Novel Concept: the public pay for and elect the government. Public servants’ primary responsibility is to serve the public.” Our role should not just be to put up (the cash) and shut up. We are ‘the boss’ of government. We put up the money for public services and they are run for our benefit. We have a right to ensure they are working for our benefit.

Fortunately, I didn’t realise the immensity of the task when I first began. But here we are now at the launch of the second edition of Your Right to Know – fully updated and expanded for the year 2007. I didn’t expect politicians to embrace the book, but I did hope the public would. It’s been an interesting couple of years. When people complain that the FOI law is useless then the question must be asked ‘then why did politicians spend so much time and energy blocking it? And why are they now attempting just two years in, to kill off the law?’

The fact is that although the law is weak and enforcement weaker still – freedom of information is revolutionising the way we are governed. It reminds me of the little dog Toto in the Wizard of Oz. The law, like Toto, is not a big muscled beast designed to protect us, nevertheless, it is successfully pulling back the curtain to reveal the inner workings behind the great and powerful. And the great and powerful certainly do not like their lever-pulling exposed.

There are now as many as 20 stories a week generated by freedom of information in local and national newspapers. We now know more about the police then ever before. About the number of serious criminals that are now receiving cautions rather than the full weight of the law. About officers with criminal records, the number let off speeding fines and about crimes in our neighbourhoods and operational failures in particular forces. We are discovering the myriad flaws and failures of the Home Office whether it’s losing criminals, failing to monitor our borders, failing to track those on probation, monitor sex offenders, check criminal backgrounds or enter arrests into the national Police computer. We know more about the NHS and that at least 13 trusts are bankrupt. Citizens can discover what sort of ‘value for money’ they are getting from private finance initiatives, which used to be conducted in almost total secrecy. We are getting close at last to revealing the detailed expenses of MPs’ – something our Scottish counterparts have been forced to publish for the past year. And to those who might think FOI costs money – may I point out that since FOI, the amounts claimed by Scottish MSPs has plummeted!

In today’s Guardian, David Hencke wrote about an EU-wide initiative that will finally disclose who gets the 100billion Euros doled out in farm subsidies. This is all taxpayer money – our money. And until passage of the FOI laws, politicians refused to reveal who was receiving these payments. We now know that the recipients are not small hill farmers in Wales, but the world’s largest agribusinesses, the Royal family and rich landowners. I’m not interested in making a political statement about that – all I have to say is that without information we as a society cannot have an informed debate. Is Tate & Lyle a worthy receiver of taxpayer subsidy? That is what we as a society need to debate – but we can’t have that debate until we know the facts. Until now, the British public have not known the facts on a huge number of things.

Despite a total lack of publicity about the law, the public have found out about freedom of information. Not just journalists but campaign groups such as the Campaign Against Arms Trade, Friends of the Earth, Unison and the Taxpayers’ Alliance are all using the Act to get information. Gradually, with all these people’s efforts, the feudal attitude that Government knows best is being replaced by something more democratic and egalitarian. I hope that my recent win at the Information Tribunal against the BBC for the minutes of the Governors’ meetings after the Hutton Inquiry put to rest the outdated belief that public servants can only make good decisions in secrecy. Secrecy is the nemesis of good government. It leads to inefficiency, incompetence and corruption.

The past two years have seen changes, but mostly they are on the side of the public. Where people once assumed that secrecy was beneficial now they are realizing its costs and its harm. They are now turning the government’s argument back around and wondering if the government has nothing to fear, then it should have nothing to hide. Secrecy now makes a politician, a public service a government department or a council look bad.

As is so often the case with rights, we must use them or lose them. We must make FOI requests and challenge refusals, challenge delay and demand better enforcement by the Information Commissioner. Only with due diligence can the system be made to work for us and not those in power.

At the moment, the only changes on offer are ones that will make the law work for politicians and not the public. The line is that FOI is too expensive and used by some to make silly requests. Funny then, that the changes will ensure that only silly simplistic requests will get below the new fee limits. In the US groups working for the public interest are given fee waivers, here in the UK we are about to create a system that imposes penalties on these very same people. The cost of making government responsive to the people who fund it and in whose name it exists should not be attributable solely to FOI. But even if it is, surely that is a cost worth bearing? Making government transparent and directly accountable to the people increases the efficiency and competence of the public sector more than any set of government regulators or so-called watchdogs.

Transparent government means that we will lose a little of the childish awe we felt for those in power, but we will gain better services. I do believe that people get the government they deserve. If people are content to delegate all responsibility for the running of public services then they have no one to blame but themselves when things go wrong. We must each of us, do what little we can to improve the system.

Please support the Press Gazette’s ‘Don’t Kill FOI’ campaign by signing up to their petition. And if you have your own FOI experiences, then please make a submission to the Government in their current public consultation that ends 8th March.

I know that many people claim they are not interested in Government. You might not be interested in the government but the government is most certainly interested in you. They want to know what you earn, how you look after your children, where you drive your car, who you email, where you’re going on the tube, your health condition and where you’ve flown. The less we oppose the Government, the more power they gain over us by default. I really like the way Ian Hislop described FOI in the introduction which he kindly wrote. Sadly he couldn’t be here tonight because of a prior engagement. He wrote ‘If this is not exactly a call to arms, it is certainly a call to write a letter.”

I hope that some of you will do exactly that. And if by now the wine has loosened your wallets, you will find at the back of the book an expanded collection of sample letters to do exactly that.

Access to Information Unit

Departmant for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

3-8 Whitehall Place

London SW1A 2HH

Clive.porro@defra.gsi.gov

Tel: 020 7270 8883

Email: accesstoinfo@defra.gsi.gov.uk

Email: ccp.disclosure@hmrc.gsi.gov.uk
Tel: 020 7147 2412
Fax: 020 7147 2197
FOI Officer: John Sharpe

The Center for Public Integrity has a useful FOI section that explains how to make an American FOI request with a directory of most of the major government agencies and departments.

Freedom of Information Manager
25 Camden Road
London, NW1 9LN

Or you can make a request online using the feedback form.

British Transport Police cover the national railways, London Underground, Docklands Light Railway, the Midland Metro Tram System and Croydon Tramlink.

• Do you have any problems using the book?
• Is there something you want to know that wasn’t addressed?
• Have you found any changes to the FOI contact details listed in the book?

I’d particularly like to hear from anyone who has made requests under the Freedom of Information or Environmental Information Regulations. What was your experience? How would you rate the public authority’s response? Were they helpful and professional or obstructive and delaying?

You can either post your comments here or email me. Many thanks!

The FOI Officer remains the same but with a new title:

Mike Carty
Information Rights Unit Branch Head
Information & Better Regulation Division
Department for Transport
Zone 9/2 Southside
105 Victoria Street
LONDON SW1E 6DT
0207 944 5825 / GTN 3533 5825

Of course, the simplest and best way to maximise use and reuse of public sector information would be to abolish the feudal Crown Copyright laws. Such a freewheeling system operates in the United States of America and that is why the USA is the leading creator of information databases globally. Europeans complain about the American hegemony of online information (Google, Medline, Edubase, Lexis Nexis, Westlaw, various mapping databases) but then fail utterly to implement the kind of public copyright system that leads to the creation of such databases. Instead we have the weasley EU Directive on Public Sector Information.

This will not help public interest websites in the UK who must still pay extortionate rates to access OS maps or land registers – all information created and compiled by what are, ultimately, public bodies funded by taxpayers’ money. Public interest websites such as Up My Street or Write To Them have to beg and plead for public information and almost build their sites illegally because the government is so intent on making a few quick bucks at the expense of greater public good and overall economic growth.

The new powers are designed to solve problems highlighted in a report on the private dentistry market in the UK by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT). Patients complained that they were not given adequate information to make informed choices about their treatment and often do not know how much their treatment is going to cost. The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman has made several rulings against private dentists who have obstructively withheld information and/or improperly charged private prices for doing NHS work.

The Order, made under Section 60 of the Health Act, will allow the GDC to establish a complaints scheme for non-NHS patients to complain about their dental care. For example, dentists are expected to agree a patient’s treatment costs in advance. If the patient then finds that the costs substantially exceed this agreed amount they can complain.

Hew Mathewson, President of the General Dental Council said:

“The new powers will enable us to make significant changes to the way we regulate the dental profession – for the benefit of all UK dental patients and the dental professionals who provide their care. Next year will see us introduce a new complaints scheme for patients receiving private dental care and begin to register and regulate new members of the dental team. We have been preparing for these improvements for several years and are delighted now to have the legislation to implement them.”

Caroline Llewellyn
UK Trade & Investment Open Government Team
Bay 155, Kingsgate House
66-74 Victoria Street
London SW1E 6SW
020 7215 2427
caroline.llewellyn@uktradeinvest.gov.uk

UK Trade & Investment is the Government organisation that supports companies in the UK doing business internationally and overseas enterprises seeking to locate in the UK.

There is no direct link on the UK Trade & Investment website to the Publication Scheme or to general information on the public’s right to access information from UK Trade & Investment. The only way I have found to access the Publication Scheme is by conducting a search for the term ‘freedom of information’ from the main website. I have complained about this to Ms Llewellyn and she has said more direct links may be added at the next website review in late 2005.

However, Derek Twigg (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Transport) told Parliament that he understands from CLRLL that the board of directors will behave as though it has to conform to the Act. And so it should as it is a 50/50 joint venture owned by Transport for London and the Department for Transport, both public bodies subject to the FOIA.

Romford residents have endured a long wait for details about a depot site elimination as a result of Crossrail, according to MP Barbara Smith. Crossrail is covered by the new Environmental Information Regulations 2004, so it may be better to make enquiries citing this law.

The legislation – the Civil Service Order in Council – was amended on the 22nd June by the Privy Council but no statement to Parliament or public announcement has yet been made by the Government. This prompted Sir Alistair Graham, the Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Standards in Public Life to issue a scathing statement against the Government:

I am very disappointed that the Government has chosen to make changes to the legislation governing the role of Special Advisers using prerogative powers without any proper parliamentary and public debate on an issue which has been of clear concern to the public, parliament and media for some time. On this important constitutional matter, not only has the Government not consulted Parliament, it has chosen not to tell them about the changes. Even if the intention is not to extend special advisers’ powers, the manner in which the changes have been made could lead to this very perception and consequently a loss of trust in the machinery of Government.

Special Advisers are often better known as ’spin doctors’ as they work solely for a particular minister and do not have to sign up to the Civil Service Code that requires impartiality. Their power can be immense as seen by the activities of the PM’s former adviser Alistair Campbell, so it is important that they account for themselves to the public. Instead, they are being given more power and made less accountable! This is a dangerous combination that will further erode the public’s trust in government.

There is also an article about this change in today’s Guardian.

Bearing in mind that when I wrote Your Right to Know this information was virtually impossible to get hold of, the fact it is now easily available online is encouraging. Readers of the blog will be aware of an earlier post listing a directory that was obtained by filing a Freedom of Information request. It’s good to see that the information is finally available where it should have been in the first place.

For many people the Freedom of Information Act is not working

In 1987, 31 people died in the King’s Cross Tube station fire. The Fennell Report into the disaster found that many of the dangers had been identified in reports by the fire brigade, police and Railway Fire Prevention and Fire Safety Standards Committee. Yet there was one group of people who were kept in the dark about the danger: the Tube-travelling public.

Almost 20 years have passed and the public are still being denied access to these reports, despite the implementation of the Freedom of Information Act. The secrecy is because of an obscure law – Section 21 of the Fire Precautions Act 1971 – that makes disclosure to the public a criminal offence.

This law is exactly the kind that must be reviewed under the terms of the Act, but the Department for Constitutional Affairs, the government department in charge of implementing the Act, did not even discover the prohibition until last year. And it is running years behind schedule to make these laws compliant with the Act. So far only eight out of nearly 500 prohibitions have been changed or repealed.

Although the Freedom of Information law was passed in 2000, the first Parliamentary Order was made in November 2004, affecting just eight pieces of legislation, and came into force on January 1 this year. A second order to address the remaining 400-plus laws should have been published by January 1, but was deferred to March, then April, and has now been delayed indefinitely.

This is a cause for concern because until these laws are amended, they trump the Freedom of Information law, leaving many citizens with no more rights to information than they had before. Fire inspection reports are the most sought after.

Under the Fire Precautions Act 1971, even if you were buying a property you could not find out whether it had been cited for fire-safety violations from the fire authority without the written permission of the owner. David Wilkinson, a divisional officer of the West Yorkshire fire service, says: “It does actually make one of my officers guilty of an offence that could lead to a fine or jail.”

It was always going to be difficult to review more than 400 pieces of primary and secondary legislation. The normal procedure in Parliament is that new legislation amends the old automatically. But government officials were so worried about freedom of information that they decided to create an exception whereby the old laws had precedence over the new, and would have to be reviewed individually.

Jo Sanders, a media lawyer at the London firm Olswang, says: “It would have been much simpler and more user-friendly for the Freedom of Information Act to create a self-contained regime that clearly set out all the circumstances in which information was exempt from disclosure. It is unfortunate that, when the Freedom of Information Bill was passed, Parliament decided to retain myriad very specific exemptions contained in existing legislation.”

The most notorious of the prohibitions is the Official Secrets Act but other less well-known laws stop the release of all kinds of material regardless of the public interest. Even finding all the laws has been a task that has kept the Department for Constitutional Affairs busy for more than five years.

Maurice Frankel, director of the Campaign for Freedom of Information, says: “At least we’ve had eight successes. In 1993 there was an exercise by the Tories to review these laws and they didn’t get as far as repealing any. It defeated them.”

Some of the prohibitions relate to personal privacy but the Act provides an exemption for such information, so to have a series of separate exemptions might be seen as overkill. Of more concern are the prohibitions that favour businesses, making it illegal for a regulatory body to release information it holds even if it is clearly in the public interest. For example, until Section 118 of the Medicines Act 1968 was made Freedom of Information compatible, there was a ban on the release of any clinical trial information regardless of the public’s need to know about drug safety. This information could be obtained only from the US Federal Drug Administration.

“We said at the time this was being done that this process is usually not successful,” Frankel says. “The sponsoring departments tend to see all the advantages of keeping the prohibitions. There’s a whole essay to be written on each one of these, and if the department doesn’t want to get rid of them, there’s not a lot the Department for Constitutional Affairs can do.”

Until these laws are repealed, the British public will continue to be the last to know.

See the prohibitions that have been amended

Medicines Act 1968

Factories Act 1961: new Section 154A allows public officials and others on their behalf to disclose information under the FOIA

Offices, Shops and Railway Premises Act 1963

Health and Safety At Work etc Act 1974: Section 28 amended so information can be disclosed under FOIA.

Biological Standards Act 1975: Section 5 (restrictions on disclosure of information) repealed

National Health Service Act 1977: Amended to allow disclosure under FOIA

Audit Commission Act 1998: Section 49 amended to allow disclosure

Access to Justice Act 1999: Section 20 amended to allow disclosure under the Act after 100 years

Section 36 is an example of how NOT to draft a FOI law. It is a ‘catch-all’ exemption for information ‘prejuducial to the effective conduct of public affairs’. This definition is purposely vague and far-reaching and guaranteed to undermine the public’s right to know. It can cover pretty much anything and everything, which is just the way politicians like it.

As if the exemption is not bad enough, the ‘qualified person’ is allowed the final say on what is in the public interest. As these are always people associated with the authority rather than the public they are hardly going to be objective. For example the Vice Chancellor of a University can decide whether info is in the public interest when s/he is precisely the person who would most want to keep embarrassing facts under wraps.

Worse yet – when the qualified person is a government minister his or her opinion overrides the decision of the independent Information Commissioner.

Section 36 has to go!

In some situations, local authorities can close a meeting because of a particular document that they would have to release under the FOIA. A government advisory group was set up a couple of years ago to try and resolve these anomalies and the initial deadline for making existing local authority legislation compatible with the FOIA was set for 1 January 2005.

That deadline came and went. A new deadline was set for March, according to Luke Scofield in the Democracy and Local Governance Division, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. The General Election announcement put a stop to that. Now a new (slightly vague) date has been set:

‘We’ll be laying it as soon as possible, and it should be in force mid-June,’ Scofield told me.

The amendments to Schedule 12 (a) of the Local Government (Access to Information) Act 1972 will come in the form of a draft Order that Parliament must approve. As far as I know, the public have not been allowed to see the draft order and our first look will be when it goes for a vote – too late to make any major changes if the Order is badly drafted. The draft order should add a public interest test to the older exemptions and a harm test for some exemptions such as commercial confidence.

I would be interested to hear from anyone who has been in the situation where they are excluded from meetings based on documents that must be disclosed under the FOIA.

Local Government (Access to Information)(Variation)(Wales)

The situation is more advanced in Wales, however. The draft order which will amend Schedule 12A for councils in Wales is now on the Welsh Assembly website.