Evidence submitted by the Press
Gazette
INTRODUCTION
Press Gazette—the weekly magazine
for journalists—has been campaigning extensively since January
12 against the Government's proposals to amend the Freedom of
Information fees regime.
This has attracted massive support from our
estimated 20,000 readers in print and from our larger internet
audience.
So far just over 900 journalists have signed
our e-petition opposing the changes—including more than
100 regional and national newspaper editors. This is an unprecedented
response to a Press Gazette appeal.
Petition signatories range from the editors
of national newspapers to people who edit obscure websites; journalists
working in broadcasting, newspapers, magazines, wire services
and online; it has supporters on tabloids and broadsheets of all
political perspectives.
It has united the National Union of Journalists,
the Society of Editors, and the Newspaper Society in opposition
to the Government's plans.
DETAILED CONCERNS
According to the review from the Frontier Economics
commissioned by the DCA, journalists' requests account for approximately
10% of all those sent to central government and between 10 and
23% of those sent to the wider public sector, at a total cost
of around £3.9 million per year.
Both The Guardian and the BBC have disputed
the methodology of the Frontier Economics report, arguing that
the actual volume and cost of their requests is much lower than
the estimate in the report, which was based on extrapolation from
a single week.
Nevertheless, many of the "serial requesters"
whose extensive use of FoI the Government hopes to curtail are
journalists.
So there is great concern among journalists
that the draft Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit
and Fees) Regulations 2007 would severely harm their ability to
use FoI to hold public officials to account on behalf of their
millions of readers.
Ministers have repeatedly cited the volume of
trivial requests that "are not in the spirit of the Act"—
such as the total amount spent on Ferrero Rocher chocolates in
UK embassies— as justification for the need to reduce the
volume of requests being made.
However, instead of reducing requests for trivia
of this sort, the effect of the proposed fees regime would be
to limit the most controversial requests, which take the most
time to process.
The Frontier Economics report acknowledges that
these changes would hit "journalists, MPs, campaign groups
and researchers" hardest.
As Maurice Frankel of the Campaign for Freedom
of Information said: "Simple requests would be unaffected,
but if the issue was complex, contentious or just unfamiliar,
the cost barrier would loom."
There is also concern that these proposed rules
are open to abuse. Public authorities could easily rebuff unwelcome
requests simply by padding the estimated time for processing the
request with unnecessarily consultations with lawyers or by packing
proposed meetings about the request with additional staff.
The Government proposes to allow public bodies
to aggregate multiple, unrelated requests from individuals or
"legal persons".
The DCA confirmed to us that this could be interpreted
to mean that entire news organisations could be treated as a single
"legal person". In practice, this would mean that journalists
working for any given newspaper or broadcaster would effectively
be limited to two or three requests every two months to an entire
Whitehall department.
This would have particularly perverse effects
on journalists working for large news such as the BBC. A journalist
working on Newsnight in London could, for example, have a request
to the Home Office rejected because a radio journalist in Scotland,
unknown to the first, had used up the corporation's quota of requests
on a completely unrelated matter several weeks earlier.
The Freedom of Information Act was intended
to alter the culture of the public sector from a "need to
know" to a "right to know" culture, in which the
burden of justification is shifted from those seeking disclosure
to those seeking to withhold information.
On 22 May 2006, the Lord Chancellor said: "Our
FOI regime is blind to both the identity and purpose of requests.
It is rightly blind. The decision whether to disclose must be
based on an objective application of the principles to the information
requested, irrespective of who has asked, and for what reason."
However, Implementation of the new regulations
would require officials to establish a system of identifying "serial
requesters" and different requesters working within the same
organisation—and applying different principles to processing
requests from different classes of requesters.
How this will be achieved is not clear. Answering
a Parliamentary Question from Oliver Heald MP on 8 February, Constitutional
Affairs minister Vera Baird confirmed that "there are no
plans to introduce a requirement for people to provide proof of
identity" when submitting requests.
ALTERNATIVE RECOMMENDATIONS
According to the Frontier Economics report,
these options would increase the number of requests rejected on
cost grounds by 17,469 and save a total of £9.9 million.
The Government must strike a balance between
openness and limiting the cost of implementing the law. However,
its draft regulations attempt only to reduce the total number
of requests, without taking into account the varying public interest
of various disclosures.
Instead, the Government should draft new fees
regulations that deter trivial or self-interested requests but
not legitimate requests about matters of significant public interest.
Other jurisdictions achieved a better balance
between curtailing costs while concentrating available resources
on requests which will result in disclosures of genuine public
interest.
The United States Freedom of Information Act,
for example, formalises the classification of requesters that
is implicit in the Government's proposals—and assigns a
different fees regime to each category.
Requesters in the United States are separated
into three categories, each subject to a different system of calculating
the cost of officials' time:
— "Commercial requesters"
are charged for searching, deliberation and photocopying.
— By contrast, "educational
or non-commercial scientific institutions" and "representatives
of the news media" are charged only for photocopying expenses.
— Other requesters, such as private
individuals, are charged only for the records search and photocopies.
In addition, all three categories of requesters
can apply for a public interest "fee waiver" if they
"can show that the disclosure of the requested information
is in the public interest because it is likely to contribute significantly
to public understanding of the operations and activities of the
Government and is not primarily in the commercial interest of
the requester."
The UK Government appears to be adopting regulations
that specifically limit the ability of requesters who are most
likely to request information of broad public interest, such as
journalists, MPs and campaigners.
Enclosed is a selection of articles printed
in Press Gazette over the last month which reflect the huge level
concern in Britain's journalistic community about the proposed
FoI changes.
Dominic Ponsford,
Editor
February 2007
| 
