Examination of Witnesses (Questions 51
- 59)
TUESDAY 24 APRIL 2007
RT HON
BARONESS ASHTON
OF UPHOLLAND
Q51 Chairman: Last year you told
us that you planned to review the operation of the Freedom of
Information Act to ensure that it was working well and that the
charging regime was balancing public access rights with the needs
of public authorities to deliver services effectively. Did you
conduct that review and how did you reach the decision that FOI
costs had to be reduced?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
As you rightly say Chairman, we said from 2005 that we wanted
to ensure that the regulations were working effectively. I have
said to this Committee before that it is very important that Government
always do that and it is particularly important in this area.
We did an internal review and we looked at what was happening
in different organisations and also got back a degree of anecdotal
evidence from organisations about the pressures that they were
facing. From there, as you know, we asked the Frontier Economics
organisation to look at specifically what needed to happen and
to conduct a review around the cost to government in the broader
sense of the word "government" and then to take it forward
from there.
Q52 Chairman: You did not ask them
to assess the balance between the public access rights and the
needs of public authorities to deliver services effectively, you
asked them to assess the costs to government. It is that that
they did, not the balancing job. Why did you decide to give them
that particular set of terms of reference?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
We wanted to get an economic framework around the issues that
were being raised with us. The issues that were coming forward,
as you know because we have put them in the consultation documents,
were when people were finding that they were spending considerable
amounts of time reading or considering requests. Whereas some
organisations, and we have very good examples, have been able
to reach agreement with the requester to find a way through that
which enabled them, for example, to release the information on
a more gradual basis or on a regular basis or whatever, and that
has been very successful and there are good examples from the
Association of Chief Police Officers, Treasury and so on, in other
cases this was having quite a dramatic effect. The implications
of that were that individuals were being taken off the work they
were doing—and this is particular relevant in front-line
services, whether that is NHS, education and so on—and having
to spend time reading and considering the information. So we knew
that we had a policy question and we wanted to put an economic
framework around that as well. The two in a sense go together
and they looked at the four options: whether you could make the
change with fixed fees; whether you could do it by aggregation;
whether you could do it by taking into account consideration and
reading; and to consider what then should happen. It was based
of course as well on the fact that 5% of freedom of information
requests take 45% of the time.
Q53 Chairman: What was the timescale
that Frontier Economics had in which to carry out the research
for this work?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
I cannot quite remember because it was some time ago and we have
dealt with a lot of things since then, but it was in the region
of weeks rather than months.
Q54 Chairman: A very short period
in which to make an assessment of the costs and that was all they
were doing, making an assessment of the costs of the freedom of
information legislation and the impact which these various different
options would have on cost saving.
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
They were doing a piece of work on the back of information we
had already received and they were a professional organisation
who did, as far as we are concerned, a good job against the remit
that we had given them, that enabled us to then, through both
talking to the FOI users' group but also more importantly through
the consultation, to be able to consider the options available.
Q55 Chairman: When you launched this
new round of consultation, which is really more fundamental because
it is asking whether these regulations should be amended at all,
you said that there had been a wide range of responses, if I remember
the phrase rightly. What proportion of the responses was generally
supportive of the Government's proposals?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
We had nearly 230 responses. I do not have the exact percentage—I
have read most of them, but not all of them—not least because
had we not produced a second consultation we would have done the
analysis fully for this Committee by now; we have not yet because
we are waiting for the second consultation to be completed. The
ones I read fall broadly into three categories: those who are
completely hostile to the proposals that we have put forward—
Q56 Chairman: Is that a large category?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
It is a substantial category. I would not say it is an overwhelming
majority of the categories because of the other two, but I will
explain the other two and then you will see where I am heading
with this. The second category is those who can see the value
of what we are trying to do but have concerns about what we are
proposing. They range from those who might be concerned that it
would be perhaps additional bureaucracy, or we would have to make
sure this was done in a way that did not allow those who wished
to "use it as an excuse"—the phrase that they
would most commonly use—not to give out information to use
it, or they would be worried that it would simply prevent good
requests from being dealt with effectively. Then the third category
was those who felt broadly that the Government are moving in the
right direction. The third category is certainly the smallest.
Q57 Chairman: That is the smallest
category?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
If you take the three categories.
Q58 Chairman: Did it consist mainly
of public authorities and bodies who were actually the recipient
of freedom of information requests?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
It is hard to remember them all offhand. My recollection—because,
again, we want to produce answers properly, so let me give you
my recollection as opposed to where the fine answers will be—is
that in the main it would be public authorities who would feel
this was a benefit. However, that is not to say that there were
not public authorities who felt differently.
Q59 Chairman: So some public authorities
thought the Government's proposals would make life a bit easier
for them and they said they were broadly supportive of them.
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
Indeed and the idea behind what we are proposing comes from those
conversations with public authorities and organisations who find
it difficult because of the impact of quite small numbers of requests
in terms of the time it has required them to spend. My concern,
as you would expect Chairman, is that if you are talking about
front-line services, the balance has always got to be struck between
those who are being paid to do a job in a front-line service who
then have to devote what could be considerable numbers of hours
looking and reading and considering that request. That is the
balance we are looking for.
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