Tony Blair says that he regards the Freedom of Information Act as his biggest mistake in government. Make of that what you will - there are certainly a few people in Iraq who feel that they were a bit more badly affected than the civil servants who have to respond to requests for information.
The public has certainly found out about some important things that they wouldn't have otherwise have known about thanks to the freedom of information legislation. There is an interesting discussion on the subject on Roger Bolton's excellent 'Beeb Watch' podcast (15th June 2023 edition). Martin Rosenbaum, a former BBC Freedom of Information specialist, gives a perspective both on using freedom of information for journalistic purposes, and on how the BBC responds to the requests it receives.
The podcast is also worth listening to for the interesting exchange about the virtues of independent investigations, and how having one might have saved the BBC a lot of trouble over weapons of mass destruction before the Hutton inquiry.
Martin Rosenbaum, has recently published a "practical guide" to freedom of information. He gives the interesting example of information about which models of cars have the worst MOT failure record. The Department of Transport collects this information, but refused to publish it on the grounds that it was commercially confidential. Rosenbaum appealed and won. The information is now routinely published.
In my work I have seen both sides of freedom of information - having to respond to requests, but also seeing information that has been obtained from others asking questions.
There is no doubt that receiving a freedom of information request can be annoying. You are trying to get your job done, and you have to stop to spend time putting together a response to a seemingly endless list of questions. But that is an occupational hazard if you work in the public sector. The public have a right to information which, after all, they paid for in the first place. And from a policy point of view, I have no doubt that having more information in the public domain leads to better public services in the long run.
Working with public sector organisations from the outside (as I do now), I get very frustrated with the way many of them respond to freedom of information requests. I have seen 'knee-jerk' rejections of requests, with little thought to whether the organisation has a right to withhold the information.
Most frustrating of all are organisations that withhold information when they are asked for it despite it being clear that they will ultimately have to divulge it under the Freedom of Information Act in the end. This not only wastes the applicant's time, but means public money is spent preventing people getting access to information which they have a right to see - and will eventually see anyway. Any organisation receiving a request should ask themselves whether the Information Commissioner will ultimately require it to be released. If the answer is yes, they should just get on with it.
Love it, or loathe it, freedom of information isn't going anywhere. Time to live with it.
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