We should all be concerned about the latest assault on the Freedom of Information
The Freedom of Information Act is once more under attack, and we should all be worried.
You will not be surprised to find that as a journalist whose patch includes covering public authorities I am well acquainted with the FOI act.
Just this Monday I revealed the £85m cost to the taxpayer of Merseytravel's move to Mann Island.
I would challenge anyone to suggest that it is not in the public interest for this information to be published. Yet if some people had their way my news organisation should have had to pay for this information. Ridiculous.
Would this information have been offered up by Merseytravel without the use of the act? I doubt it very much.
Does the public have a right to know that a public authority will be paying £2.86m a year to rent one of the best addresses in the city? Of course.
I could go on, but you get my point.
I think my first ever successful FOI was to Preston council, back when I was a trainee reporter, on the now defunct Preston Citizen, which revealed the top ten streets by number of parking fines issued.
Since then I have used the act to glean all sorts of information from public bodies.
The biggest complaints about journalists use of the act is that they use it to fish for stories. And the act has generated many interesting stories, not necessarily in the public interest, but of interest.
But the best stories that come from FOIs are not usually the fishing expedition types. They are the ones which start with a journalist's instinct that knows that there must be more to an issue than meets the eye. Or there must be more information available than what is already published. Essentially a follow-up to an issue or controversy that has already hit the public's attention. A good example of this would be the shocking safety record of the Sonae factory in Kirkby, which I revealed by using the FOI act.
This is where the FOI act comes into its own in giving the press and the public access to information that truly informs the public debate about a serious issue.
But just because the act is not always used for serious issues does not mean a draconian crackdown on an act, which is really still in its infancy, is what is called for.
If public authorities want to reduce the number of people using the FOI act they need to become more open. Not less open.
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David Bartlett
City editor of the Post and Echo covering politics, regeneration, and urban affairs.
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Brilliant post, David, and you've nailed the 'fishing expedition' point too. What seems like a fishing trip to many is often based on a belief that there's something there worth going after.
What is the assault on the FOI and by whom please ?
So is this a coalition government proposal? Another illiberal act by the Liberal Democrats?
well, I don't know about the FoI but for sure it would be in the public interest to know also about the saving Merseytravel will have moving three different offices into one, not paying rent in the other offices or rent them out.
If the saving is more than 2.86m, Merseytravel will gain, otherwise we still have to consider what a "best address" in the city can add to reputation and to the brand of the company.
And in any case the difference would be the real costs, not 85m.
Briefly the article was lacking of key information misleading the public.
Spot on. Without the FOI Act, we'd never know the following facts about the LDL contract :
1. The only external legal advice LCC took over the £56 million lawsuit claim from BT was oral and nobody took notes
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/bt_legal_claim_of_56_million
2. The council doesn't know what 3rd party work is taking place
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/income_received_from_ldl_during
3. The council expects to earn £1 million from 3rd party work, spread over the 15 year lifecycle of the contract. Apparently 300 people are employed full-time on this work. LCC payments to LDL will exceed £1 billion at current rates, meaning that income from 3rd party work is less than 0.1% of LCC's regular payments to LDL
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/income_received_from_ldl_during
4. It appears that no councillor or MP has emailed anybody in the council in relation to the LDL contract - at least since January 2008.
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/emails_related_to_ldl_contract
5. While council staff work for LDL (15 years) they are clocking up pension entitlement which falls as a liability to the Council, but not to BT
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/pensions_for_seconded_staff
6. We finally have a copy of Cherie Booth's second letter - albeit hugely redacted
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/advice_provided_by_cherie_booth
7. The quarterly accounts are provided verbally at meetings, with nothing in writing!
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/quarterly_accounts_for_ldl
8. The £32 million investment by LDL, which was part of the peace offering to secure a contract extension, only comes to £29.8 million, and we don't know whether the cost of this was recharged to the Council - more to the point, the Council appears not to know
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/32_million_investment_by_ldl
9. The £1m 'sponsorship' which was part of the same peace offering was just for BT to buy the naming rights to the convention centre, no money passed to the council
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/1m_sponsorship
As Jenny’s comment makes clear a lot of information about LDL and its doings that they really didn't want to release has been obtained through FOI requests, in some cases after complaints to the Information Commissioner.
We would never have found out any of this in any other way, and so could not have demonstrated the extent of the incompetence - revealed in their own words.
When requests are made they have to deal with them properly and promptly, and when made through a website like whatdotheyknow their replies are permanent, and cannot be deleted, destroyed or denied.
And the responses given to the following requests about LDL, in addition to the ones in the other comment, show clearly that
a) LCC does not have information it should have, and/or
b) it denies having information it does have, and/or
c) it can’t access information it should and actually does have, and/or
d) it sometimes just makes things up.
This all indicates that information policy at the council now appears to be focussed on preventing people finding things out, and ensuring that as little information as possible is “caught” by the Freedom of Information Act. This means making it disappear.
For instance, it has a very robust policy for destroying emails, but no corporate email policy (guidance about which ones should be retained and why, even though they state in their Retention Policy that they do (as they’re supposed to).
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/email_policy_2#comment-24104
They can only find very very recent emails about anything (an FOI request at the end of October for all emails between Ged Fitzgerald and David McElhinney produced a redacted list of emails for the week from 22 to 29 November 2011 – nothing else.
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/emails_between_ged_fitzgerald_an
Anything not in a personal folder is destroyed within weeks, and when people leave their personal folders are destroyed – so there is no evidence of what they’ve been doing. And for some reason no-one appears able to access copies of their emails held by anybody else at the council. Even when the person who left is the chief executive (another request about Colin Hilton’s emails).
Regarding LDL, we know that at it has over 1000 people seconded from LCC at a total salary cost of over £40 million, 22 of whom earn over 50,000 (basic salary), and some considerably more.
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/lcc_staff_seconded_to_ldl#incoming-244741
But we don’t know what they’re doing – and LCC say they don’t know either.
And although we know from the contract refresh that people get substantial bonuses, we don’t know who, how much, or what for.
Nor do we know what the Business Development people in LDL, who cost X million (the exact figure is redacted) are doing – whose business are they developing?
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/ldlrefresh_proposal#comment-24572
Because, of course, as the previous comment makes clear, all we know about the third party work that LDL does, but does not appear to be paid for. And while they say they get discounts instead of income (which is, I think, their response to this point), they will not produce any information about this. But LCC’s costs for Revenue & Benefits collection are high (Audit Commission), and whatever LDL charges for anything is secret anyway (even the cost of CDs etc).
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/ldl_catalogue#incoming-252808
The Council apparently doesn’t even know the identity of most of these clients – over 300, according to LDL’s own literature. They released a list of 12 clients – all small and local.
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/third_party_clients_of_ldl#outgoing-185367
They forgot, or don’t know about, the Liverpool Arena and Conference Centre (owned by LCC, with Anderson and Fitzgerald on the board of directors), which received LDL services worth 1.15 million in 2010/11 (an FOI request to the ACC, which is not yet on whatdotheyknow). Nor do they know anything about the Security Industry Authority, a home office quango that pays BT around 15 million a year to process licence applications – work which is actually done by LDL (see the SIA annual accounts). But LDL does not appear to receive any of the money.
And then there’s the CEO of LDL, David McElhinney. He was appointed Chief Information Officer of LCC last June (by an urgent and very small Appointments Panel), but there is no trace of him in the latest organogram from the council:
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/organogram_pay_and_staff_numbers#incoming-251829)
The organogram also shows that the director of Finance & Resources does not appear to be responsible for resources (including IT) any more. Is LDL doing this now? Mr McElhinney’s council role (whatever precisely it is) isn’t even listed in the spreadsheet of council pay grades and scales at December 2011 supplied as part of the same response.
He has never declared his interests as CEO of LDL, CEO of One Connect, and BT itself (the work for which he gets the bonus Cherie Booth was concerned about in her advice?).
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/has_david_mcelhinney_been_appoin
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/role_of_david_mcelhinney
We don’t know what he is paid by anybody for anything.
In the same response they refused to provide information about LDL salaries – too time-consuming. Until a few months later, when they found that they did have this information (in the the response about the 1000 plus secondees, above).
And so it goes....there is loads more, painting the same dismal picture. We have had ten years of leaks, rumours and supposition – with FOI we now have the facts, original documents. This doesn’t in itself guarantee action, but it’s a start.
So FOI is really important. And that’s without considering all the other information that has been obtained that has received national coverage – MPs expenses, fat cats, tax-avoiding civil servants, etc etc. It has, I hope, changed things permanently – people are far more aware of being fobbed off, and far more willing to challenge things – now that they can. I would hope that there would be such outrage at the idea of curtailing any of this that they won’t dare touch it.
I forgot, finally, to mention that soon we will fill in some more of the gaps - a number of other requests in the pipeline, including several complaints to the Information Commissioner (the IC takes a while, but that's what got us the contract, refresh proposal, etc. etc.).