The Freedom of Information Act

On January 8, 2005 Dr Peter Bowbrick, inspired by the Freedom of Information Act (FoI) that had just come into force, decided to use this great new tool of open government to find out how the decision had been taken to close his nearby state school.

He believed that the premises of Margaret Glen-Bott school in Nottingham had been wrongly handed over to a faith school that he suspected of practising “hidden selectionâ€: “giving away a school worth £30m for just £1â€.

He sent an e-mail to Alan Stead, the council official in charge of inquiries under the act. Nearly a month later, rather than the 20 days stipulated, he received a reply from a different council officer telling him that he should be satisfied with what he had already been sent.

Bowbrick was puzzled; he had received nothing at all. He wrote back to tell them so. A week later a council solicitor replied telling him that the details were “in draft form†and therefore exempt from release under the act. The council had no other information. If he liked, he could complain to the information commissioner.

Unsurprisingly, he did. It didn’t do any good. Richard Thomas, the commissioner, accepted the council’s word. His office issued a notice in July upholding its refusal to do any more. Three weeks later it reissued the notice this time correctly referring to Nottingham city council, not Cornwall county council.

Bowbrick was getting a bit annoyed by now. He decided to take the case to a tribunal. The tribunal ordered the city council to produce any documents by August 29. It didn’t. Only in October, when ordered to a hearing, did the council promise to cooperate.

Bowbrick offered to go and help it find the relevant pieces of paper. The council told him not to bother and at last sent him a few details. Encouraged, he replied with 18 pages of specific questions.

The council didn’t reply. Officials were summoned to a new hearing in December, by when they suddenly managed to locate more than 1,000 relevant pages. There turned out to be more. Much more. It became clear from sworn testimony that some 3,500 pages in the council education department alone had been quickly collected and could have been handed over. Instead their existence was denied.

The tribunal found in Bowbrick’s favour and ordered the council to pay costs. He is still waiting for his money but has given up hope of seeing the rest of the documents: “I have worked [as a consultant economist for the United Nations and other bodies] in 30 countries, including Vietnam when the communist regime was at its strictest, and never encountered government secrecy as tight as in Britain.â€

Now, despite Lord Falconer, the constitutional affairs secretary, hailing it last week as “the single most significant act of any government in improving transparency, accessibility and accountabilityâ€, he is about to introduce new regulations that critics believe will strangle a piece of legislation already in danger of being suffocated by bureaucracy.

FoI information is provided free if the cost (calculated at £25 per hour for a civil servant) of looking it up is less than £600 from central government or £450 from local authorities. The new proposal, however, would add on the extra time spent examining the material to see if there are obvious reasons not to release it — breach of confidence, prejudice to commercial interests — or if it is exempt from the act. In other words, officials could look at a request and say, “It’ll take us a long time to make up our minds about thatâ€, and make that an excuse for not releasing it. Clause 22: Catch 22.