Return to the age of secrecy?

The MP’s expenses scandal — one of the biggest stories to break in the past decade — may have been kept a secret to this day, had it not been for the Freedom of Information Act, made into law in 2000.

Freedom of Information (FoI) requests, which enable anyone to ask public departments for information that might be in the public interest, are the beating heart of a transparent democracy, helping campaigners, journalists and average citizens hold power to account.

FoI requests have been also used in revealing disability benefit death statistics, as well as revealing that the Department of Work and Pensions had used fake benefits claimants in their leaflets about sanctions — two stories UniteLive has covered before.

But now the Freedom of Information Act is under threat, after the government announced earlier this year a Freedom of Information Commission which would look at ways to water down the Act.

More than 100 groups, including Unite and dozens of campaigners and newspapers, recently signed a letter sent out by the Campaign for Freedom of Information to prime minister David Cameron, calling on him to stop the government’s approach to the FoI Act.

The letter expressed deep concern about the Commission, a five-member team who are noted for the criticism of the FoI Act, including Tory home secretary Michael Howard, Lib Dem peer Lord Carlile, Lord Burns, Ofcom’s Dame Patricia Hodgson and former Labour foreign secretary Jack Straw.

Howard has been on the receiving end of FoI requests before by Labour, while Straw has publicly voiced criticism of the Act despite his helping draft it in 2000. Lord Carlile attacked The Guardian for publishing Edward Snowden’s National Security Agency leaks, calling it a ‘criminal act’.

In 2012, when Dame Hodgson was Ofcom’s deputy chair, the communications regulator said that there was ‘no doubt’ that the FoI Act has a had ‘chilling effect’ on the recording of information by public bodies.

Simply put, the Freedom of Information Commission is on the side of less transparency — a sure sign that the FoI Act will be weakened.

In the letter to the prime minister, the Campaign for Freedom of Information highlighted that the Commission members’ backgrounds demonstrate that any review of the FoI Act will be biased.

“An independent Commission is expected to reach its views based on the evidence presented to it rather than the pre-existing views of its members,” the letter read.

“Indeed, in appointing members to such a body we would expect the government to expressly avoid those who appear to have already reached and expressed firm views. It has done the opposite.

“The government does not appear to intend the Commission to carry out an independent and open minded inquiry. Such a review cannot provide a proper basis for significant changes to the FOI Act.”

The letter also expressed concern about proposals that have been made to weaken the public’s access to information, including replacing currently free appeals with £100 fees for first-tier tribunals against FoI decisions made by the information commissioner. Under the same proposals, an oral hearing would cost £500 extra.

Other proposals include changing cost limits (an FoI request may be rejected if it is too costly to carry out) and including the time officials spend “thinking about” a request as part of determining the total cost.

Unite research officer James Lazou explained to UNITElive just how important Freedom of Information requests are in the union’s work.

“We’ve done some important research on, for example, how the privatisation of ambulance services has affected the overall service. We did FoI requests for all the Trusts and got useful information about the number of accidents and so on,” Lazou explained.

“Another instance in which we’ve used FoI requests recently was in a report that showed that pharmacy schools had been lowering their standards, which may eventually have the adverse effect of creating a glut of newly-qualified pharmacists not able to find jobs, while also lowering professional standards.

“We requested information from each pharmacy school about the percentage of students they’d taken on through clearing and the average pass rate in their qualifying exams. It showed that some schools were failing their students,” Lazou noted.

Lazou added that Unite reps have also made use of FoI requests. For example, they’ve requested information about local authorities’ HR costs after the reduction or removal of facility time for union reps to see whether HR costs had gone up as a result.

“Freedom of Information requests were also extremely important for the Save Lewisham A & E campaign, as well as for revealing what was going on at Mid Staffs,” he noted.

Unite is now campaigning for Freedom of Information requests to be allowed for all entities providing public services.

“At the moment, some information about public services can be restricted from the public if these services are being run by private companies,” Lazou explained.

Lazou also argued that the current review of the Freedom of Information Act and attempts to weaken it are part of the government’s wider assault on powerless citizens.

“We can see the Freedom of Information Commission in a deeper context when taken together with, for example, the Lobbying Act and the Trade Union Bill,” he said. “The government is attacking the very public it is supposed to serve through its austerity and privatisation agenda, and then moving to silence any criticism of this agenda — to hide the bad things that they’re doing.”

“The fact of the matter is that individual public institutions often want to be held to account and to be able to improve their services,” Lazou added. “And FoI requests help them to do that. It is only this government which is seeking lesser and lesser transparency.”