Law Lecture #4

FOI (Freedom of information act)

Journalists thrive off information and it is often a large part of their character that they are nosy and love finding out new information. 


FOI Law - Freedom of Information Act 2000

Instead of saying we are going to protect information, the whole point is to release it. The government may want to do this, as they want to be seen to be open.
The government can not make you do things, i.e. have a police officer in every room to make you do things. They want to control you without looking. 
They get legitimacy through democracy (who we vote for) and accountability (if we are angry about the government, we want a way to voice our anger). 

We have a right to this information, as we pay for this stuff. We pay tax etc so we have the right to this information. It relates to us. 

Any person can request (and receive) information from a public body (approx. 130,000 e.g. police, NHS etc) , subject to certain exemptions.
It doesn’t only apply to paper files either, it also includes any information of video, tape or anything electronically.

You can be anybody to get this information as you pay tax and deserve the right to this information.

There are 100,000 requests a year and it costs £34 million to give this information out.
Only 12% of these people are Journalists. 

FOI was a New Labour policy objective (2005)

“Unnecessary secrecy in government leads to arrogance in government and defective policy decisions” - Tony Blair

• Promoting accountability and transparency
• Furthering the understanding of and participation in public debate of issues of the day
• Allowing individuals and companies to understand decisions made by public authorities affecting their lives
• Bringing to light information affecting public health and public safety. 

The last three bullet points are a good example of public interest. 

What does it cover?

EVERYTHING

The basic principle of FOI is: “Any person making a request for information to a public authority is entitled ... to have that information communicated to him.”

EXCEPT

FOI gives you the legal right of access to any piece of information held by most public authorities, unless theres a valid reason. 

How do you make an FOI request?
An FOI request should be in writing. Email is fine. It’s free.

They can say no because it’s too expensive. If it costs more than £600 (or £460 for smaller authorities). But you do not have to accept this decision.

There are two kinds of exemptions:

1. Absolute (eg security services, court records) They have no duty to confirm or deny that any information exists.
2. Qualified (eg ministerial communications, commercial confidentiality

Where the information is covered by a qualified exemption, you should still be given it if the balance of the ‘public interest’ favours disclosure. (Public Interest Test)

Public Interest - in the public interest - not merely interesting to the public.

For example:
How many NHS nurses have criminal convictions? (public interest)
How many NHS nurses are divorced? (merely of interest)

Qualified Exemptions (23 possible exemptions)
Under a qualified exemption, information can be witheld where ‘the public interest in maintaining the exemption outweighs the public interest in disclosing the information.’ 

• Likely to jeopardise national security
• Likely to prejudice defence or international relations
• Information intended for future publication
• Which prejudice the economic interests of the UK
• Which might prejudice law enforcement
• Communications with the royal family
  

How long does it take?
The public authority must respond ‘promptly’, which means 20 working days. Then 40 days if they need to consider the public interest. Remember there is no need to explain what the information is for - there is no distinction between the media and ordinary people.
What if they say no?

• Ask them why they haven’t responded - they’ll have an internal review
• You go to the information commissioner - they investigate
• You go to the information tribunal
• Then to the high court

A good example of this is Heather Brooke - expenses scandal. 

Update
Government is considering adding more limits to the FOI Act
Essentially the government wants to:

• Limit groups or individuals making too many requests where they become too ‘burdensome’. i.e. journalists
• Lower the limits on costs, leading to many more requests being refused
• Include other factors - such as the time taken to release information or not - into the cost calculations

Needless to say press organisations and freedom of speech campaigners have been very critical of plans. 

Law aspects to do with information
Data Protection is about keeping information from the public domain.
It is normally a barrier to information. There is on instance that you can get this information that we wouldn’t normally be able to get, you can get information about yourself. 
If people hold information on you, you are within your rights to ask for this information. 

Data Protection is about the world we are living in now. It’s about people who have information about you, i.e the Uni who have your details, you hand them over but the deal is they have to keep this private and only use it for the purposes that they hold it. 

Official Secrets Act - plans or anything particularly important. MOD sites. Protection for things which are crucial to the defense of this country.

Confidentiality - protection of information that is handed over. Discussion about a medical condition, there is an aspect of confidentiality within this. Recently in the news the story about medical researchers who want to analyse peoples medical data, and take samples from people who have some conditions and try and cure some diseases.