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UPDATE - UNITED KINGDOM
21 June 2007
Proposed reforms aimed at denying costliest requests for publicly held
information endanger fledgling Freedom of Information Act, says ARTICLE 19
SOURCE: ARTICLE 19, London
**Updates IFEX alerts of 29 May, 9 February, 29 and 17 January 2007**
(ARTICLE 19/IFEX) - The following is a 19 June 2007 ARTICLE 19 press
release:
United Kingdom: Proposed Reforms Endanger Freedom of Information Act
ARTICLE 19 has urged the British government to drop its plans to change the
way in which costs for access to publicly held information are calculated.
Responding to an official consultation, ARTICLE 19 warned that the proposed
amendments would greatly enfeeble the fledgling freedom of information
regime on the pretext of saving a very modest amount of money.
"After two successful years of the Freedom of Information Act's operation,
it is as though the government wants to put the genie back into the
bottle," said Agnès Callamard, Executive Director of ARTICLE 19.
The annual cost of the FOI Act is £35.5 million; according to government
figures, 5% of information requests account for 45% of this amount. The
thrust of the proposed amendments is to eliminate the most expensive
requests by making it easier to refuse them on the grounds of costs,
leading to projected annual savings of £11.8 million.
In its submission, ARTICLE 19 points out that the Act, which has already
exposed serious inefficiencies in the use of public funds, offers good
overall value at just 0.0064% of total government expenditure. The proposed
measures fail to discriminate between expensive requests which are in the
public interests and those which are not. By the government's own
admission, the hardest hit groups of requesters would be journalists, MPs,
campaign groups and researchers, which collectively hold the government to
account.
ARTICLE 19 takes the position that at 67p per person in England and Wales,
the cost of the FOI Act is reasonable and in line with other jurisdictions.
If cost-cutting is nevertheless deemed necessary, the government should
choose those means which are least harmful to the right to know. To date,
it has made no effort to explore other options, such as charging for
requests which impose a significant cost or refusing requests when the cost
of processing them is out of proportion to the public interest they serve.
Accordingly, the submission joins the chorus of voices calling for the
proposed amendments to be dropped.
The submission, which is in response to a supplementary consultation called
by the Department of Constitutional Affairs (now subsumed in the new
Ministry of Justice), can be downloaded from the ARTICLE 19 website at
http://www.article19.org/publications/law/legal-analyses.html
ARTICLE 19 is an independent human rights organisation that works globally
to protect and promote the right to freedom of expression. It takes its
name from Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which
guarantees free speech.
For further information, contact Daniel Simons, Legal Officer, tel: +44 20
7239 1192, daniel@article19.org, or ARTICLE 19, 6-8 Amwell Street, London,
EC1R 1UQ, U.K., tel: +44 20 7278 9292, fax: +44 20 7278 7660, e-mail:
info@article19.org, Internet: http://www.article19.org
The information contained in this update is the sole responsibility of
ARTICLE 19. In citing this material for broadcast or publication, please
credit ARTICLE 19.
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