(C) OpenDemocracy This story was originally published by OpenDemocracy and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Transparency Under Threat: New report exposes government’s FOI failures [1] [] Date: 2024-06 Public authorities, including government departments, are consistently failing to answer Freedom of Information requests within the legal time limit, new research by openDemocracy has revealed. We painstakingly analysed 6,000 rulings issued by the FOI watchdog, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), between 2021 and 2023 – finding that almost a quarter related to public authorities’ failure to hit the 20-working day deadline. The findings are made as part of openDemocracy’s extensive new report on FOI, Transparency Under Threat: Monitoring FOI compliance in the UK, which is published today. Public bodies are not only taking longer to answer FOI requests, they are answering fewer and fewer in full. Only around a third of FOIs to central government departments and agencies were granted in full last year. Get our free Daily Email Get one whole story, direct to your inbox every weekday. Sign up now Despite the apparent litany of transparency failures in Whitehall, none of the major political parties have pledged to tackle FOI in their manifesto for the upcoming general election. Ben Worthy of Birkbeck College, who has written extensively on FOI, believes public authorities are being further emboldened to breach FOI law by the fact that so many already routinely get away with doing so. Worthy said: “One of the greatest dangers for any FOI system is that it gradually slows and stagnates. The data confirms that in the UK this is exactly what is happening, and is made worse by the fact that more and more authorities are dealing slowly with fewer requests. “This can create a kind of ‘collective irresponsibility’, so that no one complies, and no one gets in trouble.” Delayed and undisclosed The ICO is tasked with investigating complaints over FOI, including that the government has failed to adequately respond to a request. It then hands out Decision Notices – rulings that say whether it thinks a public authority has complied with FOI law. The act of ignoring the timeframe in which an FOI request should legally be responded to – known as ‘stonewalling’ – is a big problem for the watchdog. Transparency Under Threat reveals that around a quarter of its Decision Notices between 2021 and 2023 concerned Section 10 of the FOI Act, which relates to the 20-working day deadline. This suggests a high level of non-compliance with this rule. Several central government departments were among the public authorities that received the most Decision Notices relating to Section 10, including the Department of Health and Social Care and the Home Office. NHS England and the council of the London borough of Croydon also received a high number of these Decision Notices. Police forces across England and Wales are also failing to meet the 20-working-day deadline. South Yorkshire Police, Dyfed Powys Police and Sussex Police are the least compliant with the legal timeframe, according to statistics compiled by the National Police Chiefs’ Council. Commenting on our findings, Martin Rosenbaum, author of Freedom of Information: A Practical Guidebook, said: “This research shows there are serious failings in complying with FOI in important parts of the public sector. The public is entitled to receive prompt responses to FOI requests and internal reviews. “It’s absurd that the ICO has to spend so much time and effort tackling public authorities who are ignoring requests and failing to meet basic legal deadlines. Police forces in particular should all be setting a good example of properly abiding by the law.” John Edwards took over the role of information commissioner in January 2022, and the watchdog has since stepped up its enforcement, issuing reprimands against public authorities for their FOI record. But many of the ICO’s recent rulings still fail to include key dates, such as when a request or a complaint was made, meaning members of the public cannot easily assess its performance in handling investigations. In response to our report, an ICO spokesperson said: “In 2023/24 we closed 96% of our cases in less than six months, the best performance ever achieved by the office. We also upheld or partly upheld more cases than in seven of the last 10 years and issued more enforcement notices than any other previous year. “We continue to explore ways to be as efficient as possible while delivering the best service we can to the people that come to us for help.” No improvements in sight openDemocracy has first-hand experience of the government’s efforts to avoid releasing information. In December 2021, we requested a copy of Liz Truss’s ministerial diaries from when she was secretary of state for international trade during the pandemic. The Department for International Trade refused the request, deeming it “vexatious” after an internal review in July 2022. Almost a year later, in June 2023, the ICO said the government had been wrong to reject our FOI. The government then partially released Truss’s diaries the following month. These contained three entries about meetings that discussed FOI, lobbying and the procurement of personal protection equipment. openDemocracy requested further details about these meetings. At the time, the Department for Business and Trade (which replaced the Department for International Trade) confirmed it held this information, but said it needed more time to consider whether releasing it was in the public interest. But in October 2023, the department changed its position and said it didn’t have the information. openDemocracy once again had to appeal to the ICO. It was not until May 2024, almost one year after we received the initial diaries, that the department reversed its position again and said it did hold the information – although even this was limited. The department was able to confirm that Truss, a special adviser and other officials had been invited to a meeting titled ‘FOI discussion’ on 16 March 2020 but said it had no further information. “We have been unable to locate a description of what was discussed, an agenda, minutes, or a copy of other materials in relation to this meeting,” its FOI response said. Similarly, the department could not locate much information about a meeting called ‘Correspondence and FOIs’ on 3 April 2020. It was able to confirm only that the meeting had been “requested” by Truss to “discuss the correspondence and FOI processes” and that officials, including a special adviser, were invited. For a diary entry titled “PPE Procurement and lobbying plan” on 16 April 2020, the Department for International Trade said that Truss, minister Greg Hands and other officials from the department were invited to an online meeting on Microsoft Teams. Its FOI request added: “We have been unable to locate a description of what was discussed, an agenda, minutes, a copy of any such plan or other materials in relation to this meeting.” There is no evidence to suggest Truss was personally involved in stalling the FOI response. The former prime minister recently criticised FOI in her book, Ten Years to Save the West, writing: “When I was looking to reform justice or sell a trade deal, I might have wanted to consult outside views, but the barriers to doing that are significant. “There are constant questions about who you’ve met and why, and every contact has to be recorded and scrutinised. Every meeting is treated with suspicion, and the Freedom of Information Act (FOI) means that innocent meetings are privy to the press and often deliberately misconstrued.” None of the major political parties explicitly mentioned FOI in their manifestos ahead of the general election on 4 July – including the Labour Party, which is widely expected to form the next government. This is despite the party’s leader, Keir Starmer, criticising Conservative governments’ poor track record on FOI in an essay back in 2021. Starmer wrote: “Where the current Tory government has muddied the waters of transparency on the money it spends or the things it does, I want to make it easier to hold government to account. “That means everything from ending the outrageous way government departments refuse Freedom of Information requests to ensuring the next Labour government gives updates on our progress delivering on our key promises.” Martin Rosenbaum told openDemocracy it is “very disappointing that the party manifestos have ignored FOI”. He continued: “This suggests the parties don’t understand how FOI can be a valuable tool in making public services more responsive and accountable. If Labour forms a new government, it should proclaim an era of openness and encourage an ethos of transparency, starting at the centre of government and spreading across the rest of the public sector.” You can read our full report here. 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