NOT SO FREE

By Monitor ONE of the many encouraging prospects about New Labour in 1997 was its commitment to introduce a Freedom of Information Act. The difficulty that any member of the public has in getting access to official documents in Britain compares badly with the relative ease of access to state papers in the United States. Although it took the Labour government an age to introduce Freedom of Information legislation it eventually did so and an Act which provides the right for anyone to ask government departments, local government and many statutory bodies for documents in which they have an interest. Although there were some early successes when newspapers asked for and got information that would otherwise have been buried for fifteen or thirty years, the response to requests has now become so slow that some people are beginning to think the government is now taking evasive action. Understandably, any government reserves the right to withold documentation it thinks too sensitive to make available; mostly this will be in the area of military, intelligence and security papers whose release would not be in the national interest. When a request is refused there is an appeal process which in theory reviews the request and the reasons for its denial. This week it has been revealed that the unit handling appeals has had 700 cases in the last three months of which half have not been reviewed and only two have led to the release of the requested information. Bizarrely, it has also emerged that the unit will not even say whether the requested information exists; a Civil Service guidance says, “...whether information is, or is not, held is in itself information and confirmation of this fact alone may be damaging to the public interest...for a public authority to confirm or deny if it holds information is a matter which always requires careful consideration.” Sir Humphrey lives on!