Opinion

Watch out for moves to curtail freedom of information

Brian Feeney

Brian Feeney

Historian and political commentator Brian Feeney has been a columnist with The Irish News for three decades. He is a former SDLP councillor in Belfast and co-author of the award-winning book Lost Lives

Edward Snowden released material which revealed much about government eavesdropping
Edward Snowden released material which revealed much about government eavesdropping Edward Snowden released material which revealed much about government eavesdropping

On July 17 the British government’s Cabinet Office minister Matthew Hancock set up an allegedly ‘independent’ commission to examine the Freedom of Information (FOI) legislation which has been in operation for fifteen years. The terms of reference of this group give a good indication of the direction in which the government plans to travel.

The emphasis is on what ‘new protections’ might be necessary to prevent information being released, what new vetoes of types of information to be revealed (like maybe Prince Charles’s daft ideas about alternative medicine or advice from certain civil servants), and the ‘burden’ of responding. In other words could the commission please give a list of what restrictions they believe should be imposed?

The membership of the commission is itself extraordinary in that the five people on it have not engaged in FOI requests but most have themselves been the subject of FOI requests. The chair is Lord Burns former head of the Treasury, and given his years as an insider hardly likely to be enamoured of the right for any Tom, Dick or Harry to find out what his fellow civil servants have been telling ministers they should or shouldn’t do.

The other members include Patricia Hodgson, now chair of Ofcom who has previously objected to the cost of providing FOI answers, Michael Howard, former Conservative party leader who famously resisted giving Jeremy Paxman an answer to a question posed fourteen times. Obviously a keen supporter of freedom of information. Then there’s Jack Straw a well-known opponent of FOI who has been the subject of FOI requests about ‘rendition’ to American torture centres euphemistically known as ‘black prisons’ as opposed to normal American jails known as prisons for black people.

Then there’s Lord Carlile QC the Lib Dem peer this government holds in such high esteem that he’s been drafted in to decide whether and in what capacity the IRA currently operates. He’s so much in favour of freedom of information that he thought the Guardian’s release of what turned out to be Edward Snowden’s enormously useful and revealing material about government eavesdropping was ‘criminal’.

The British government, though notoriously secretive, is not alone in this attempt to curtail access to information which should be in the public domain. The Irish government tried the same two years ago, first by restricting the areas which could be compelled to release answers and secondly by charging for FOI’s. Charging is pretty effective. Labour’s Brendan Howlin to his eternal shame introduced a €15 charge for questions and requests dropped by half immediately. After howls of protest he was compelled to rescind the charge in 2014 and requests immediately went up by 100 per cent.

At present here FOI is free for requests costing less than £600 from government departments. There is speculation that Hancock’s ‘independent’ commission will propose a charge of £20 per question. It’s hard to know what they’re up to because recently the commission held a press briefing in Westminster which was surely the most Kafkaesque in living memory. The journalists at the briefing were not allowed to report who from the commission, if anyone, was present or who said what to the press. Instead they had to attribute their reports to ‘sources close to the commission’. Now there’s freedom of information for ya.

Now it would be interesting to know what, if any, submissions Stormont departments have made to the commission because we know how important FOI requests are here and we know Stormont departments hate them and have the worst record in the UK in responding to them with OFMdFM topping the league. You can see why.

Wouldn’t it be great to see what if any written instructions Arlene ‘rogues and renegades’ Foster gave to the department of Finance and Personnel about how to respond to questions about Nama from the DFP committee? Wouldn’t it be great to see what advice the DFP gave to ‘rogues and renegades’ herself about how to respond to the committee?