Identity & Passport Service: internal review appeal
Information Policy Team
Information and Record Management Service
The Home Office
4th Floor Seacole Building
2, Marsham Street,
London, SW1P 4DF.
13 December 2006
FOIA INTERNAL REVIEW REF. FOICR 4616/06
Dear Anonymous Bureaucrat
I am seeking an internal review based on my request to the Identity and Passport Service. Firstly I would like to address the handling of this request and then the substance of your refusal.
The handling of my request has been an example of the very worst of information management and customer service and is particularly worrisome from a department charged with safeguarding the personal information of 60 million people. While I can understand the initial failings, the response to these failings was unprofessional and cowardly. In what seems a blind state of panic, the IPS now refuses to operate using direct accountability but instead signs letters: ‘Yours faithfully, Signed on behalf of the Identity and Passport Service’ with a high-price 0870 number for contact.
I made this request for a Channel 4 Documentary ‘Suspect Nation’ that was broadcast last month. Because of the interminable delay and obstruction, the public were given no information about the current state of the UK ID card project. I specialize in using the FOIA as a legitimate means of obtaining official information. From this experience, I would advise future journalists, that such legitimate means are a complete waste of time. The Government is thus providing, through delay and obstruction, a dangerous incentive for illegitimate information gathering.
A timeline of events is below:
29 August Emailed request to address on IPS Publication Scheme
26 Sept 20-working-day deadline passes
2 October Telephoned and left message for FOI Officer Denis O’Brien
3 October, 10am Denis O’Brien returns telephone call. “I must admit I haven’t seen it. I can only apologise. We have had some emails go astray in our transition to a new address. I’m not really sure why the emails were lost or how many we lost”
He gave me a new address: hqenquiries@ukpa.gov.pa. This email was also returned as undeliverable. At 11am, I telephoned Mr O’Brien again and sent the request to his personal email while he waited to receive it. He then told me the message had come through and he would deal with it as soon as possible.
10 Oct Still no word
18 October, 10am Telephoned the usual number. Colleagues said Denis had moved to Marsham Street and had no phone. ‘He’s working on a mobile but we don’t have the number.’ I sent Mr O’Brien an Email checking the status of my request.
19 October Still no word, so I called the Home Office Press Office to find out what had happened to the missing request and now the missing FOI Officer
23 October Sent a string of internal emails about my attempt to find out what’s happened to my request in which one of the IPS staff says: “She’s not the most supportive of journalists (see example below) so Peter will need an answer/lines quickly please.” And another says “Eek. Has there been a malfunction here?”
30 November FOIA request answered in the negative and signed by anonymous person with no direct contact details.
Having set forth this litany of disaster, I now proceed to the substance of the refusal notice issued by IPS on 30 November 2006.
The IPS refusal relies primarily on Section 35, the formulation of policy. Section 35 was one of the most controversial amendments to the FOIA when it went through Parliament. It was decried as being symbolic of everything that a freedom of information law should not be. Lord Lucas said of it: “Here we have a government who say that they want much more openness in public affairs but when we reach the part of the Bill where their own affairs are concerned, they are quite clearly determined to stay rooted to the spot and even to go backwards [HL 3R, 24 Oct 2000, col 279]. Lord Falconer assured the Lords that this was not the case and asserted that “the government believe that factual information used to provide an informed background to decision-taking will normally be disclosed.” [HL 3R, 24 Oct 2000, col 297].
So why then is this information not being disclosed? My appeal rests on the fact that the Government has in no way accurately taken into account the public interest in providing a frank and forthright account for this costly and controversial policy. The letter itself is taken up only by arguments seeking to justify secrecy with barely a mention of the benefits of openness.
The ID cards programme is estimated to cost at least a billion pounds and possibly much, much more of public money. As this is public money it stands to reason that the public have a right to know exactly why and how it is being spent. Introducing ID cards is a controversial and extremely expensive decision and should not be made purely on the whim of a politician. If the reasons for this policy are sound, then there is absolutely no reason why they should not hold up to public scrutiny. As I so often here from the government with it seeks to invade my privacy: If you have nothing to fear, you have nothing to hide. Can we assume, then, that the government has something to hide?
We do not quite live in a totalitarian regime - there is at least the pretence of democracy and that public servants operate for and on behalf of the public. As such, the public must be told the detailed facts behind the ID card project.
The idea that secrecy is needed for effective policy making is absurd. The UK has a dubious distinction in this field and what does it have to show for it? Hundreds of poorly planned projects that were delivered massively over budget, if at all. A small (though by no means exhaustive list) includes the fiasco that is the Child Support Agency, the Millennium Dome, the Criminal Records Bureau, the tax credit mess along with numerous Ministry of Defence procurements. To continue to argue that good policy formation can only be done in secret is archaic and goes against all evidence. Open source, in both computer programming and decision-making is now acknowledged to produce the best products and the best policies. Indeed, this very government has announced its conversion to evidence-based policy making.
The real danger to independent scrutiny and free and frank debate comes not from transparency of proceedings but from a political system run on patronage that rewards those who tow the government line and gives the boot to those who don’t. If this government really seeks free and frank debate then it would provide proper protection for whistleblowers and seek to break the dependence of scrutinisers on the executive.
In the second part of my request I asked for the names and employment status of those working on the ID card project and if on secondment, the name of the sponsoring firm. You chose to play semantic games and argue that an ‘identity card team’ does not exist within the IPS. You argue that the IPS was created out of the UK Passport Service and the Identity Card Programme Unit of the Home Office and as such there exists no such unit within the confines of the IPS. However, as you will know, my request was referred to the Home Office and a member of the public cannot expect to be fully versed in the intricate machinations and name changes that occur in Home Office bureaucracy. The fact remains that there is an identity cards programme and there must be people whose contracts say they are working on it. My query clearly relates to these people. I doubt you will find the Information Commissioner receptive to this kind of blatant obstructionism.
Based on these arguments, I maintain that my entire request should be answered positively.
Regards,
Heather Brooke
