Relight My FOIA

As we report on today in The Times, the government has been issued with an unprecedented formal rebuke by the transparency watchdog for wrongly interfering to block one of my freedom of information requests.

I wrote a blog in January setting out the challenge I faced trying to get hold of information on how Suella Braverman used her private email account whilst in office, including details of the apparent political interference in the process.

The practice notification issued by the Information Commissioner’s Office cites that blog post. I had shared the correspondence used in it drawn from my FOIs and subject access requests to the Attorney General’s Office (AGO) with the regulator.

The notice is pretty forthright in its criticism of the Attorney General’s Office. The ICO said:

• The correspondence “strongly implies that the AGO anticipated their refusal would be overturned and aimed to delay the publication of information that it believed it should release under The Freedom of Information Act”.
  
• It was “highly concerning behaviour for an organisation with the AGO’s role and remit to take this approach” given its role in attempting to ensure that the government upholds the rule of law.
  
• “It should not require the commissioner and then the tribunal to instruct them to disclose information which they know they should disclose”, which was a “waste of their own, the commissioner’s, the tribunal’s and ultimately the taxpayer’s limited resources”.
  
• The internal correspondence, the ICO said, raised concern about “the underlying culture at the AGO in relation to transparency”, concluding that it was “clearly not in the spirit of the act that a request made at the end of 2022 for information that should have been released at the time does not result in disclosure of information until 2024.”
  
• The ICO further criticised the AGO for allowing senior officials to intervene to water down the response to ensure what was disclosed would not be “easily quotable in a newspaper”, with it being clear that “the quality of the response the requester received was likely to be affected by their status as a journalist.”

Press freedom under pressure

This kind of interference in the transparency process risks stifling press freedom, by preventing information being reported on when it is of most relevance.

Democracy doesn’t just mean having elections.

It relies on a number of mutually supporting institutions that support an ongoing process of accountability.

This ensures those who hold senior positions are held to proper scrutiny in-between elections.

Public access to accurate information is a key pillar of this process.

Blocking the release of information undermines the ability of the press to perform their public watchdog duty.

Each individual FOI blocked or delayed might be seen by officials as nothing to cry about.

But such actions add up, and if access to information begins to seriously break down, creeping autocracy awaits.

This is unprecedented and welcome regulatory action from the ICO and will hopefully be a shot across the bows of other public departments who might wish to try the same tactics.

The ICO has also today issued the Cabinet Office, in my experience one of the most obstructive departments in government, with a notice to speed up its responses and provide clearer information to requestors. This is also welcome.

Sadly, the AGO notice may simply encourage officials to become better at hiding bad behaviour.

As I wrote in my previous blog on Dominic Cummings, if government correspondence is taken offline, there are very limited legal powers available to force its disclosure, if the person who holds the correspondence declines to cooperate with the process.

In any case, it is great to see a little blog I started to give me an outlet to avoid boring my editors talking about in-the-weeds transparency issues has led to some actual regulatory action to address FOI failures!

Picture credit: Simon Walker / No 10 Downing Street