The Freedom of Information Act 2000 is one of the most powerful and far-reaching pieces of legislation passed under Tony Blair.
Yet so far its impact has been blunted by chaotic implementation. Bureaucrats are reluctant to comply, and the watchdog that is meant to enforce the law has been rendered near toothless by short staffing. So we have lifted a corner of the lid on official secrecy, but there is a long way to go.
As a journalist, I have a declarable interest in anything that helps to secure strong news stories and fill column inches. But I am certain that the act works strongly in the public interest.
For example, requests from myself and other journalists under the act secured the release of correspondence and minutes of meetings regarding the sacking of prisons chief Derek Lewis in 1995.
The episode had deep political significance. It almost blighted Michael Howard’s career, leading to him ducking the same question 14 times on Newsnight, and to Ann Widdecombe branding him as having ‘something of the night’ about him. Without that baggage, Howard might have become Conservative leader in 1997, paving the way for William Hague to win the leadership in 2001 or, more likely, 2005.
The facts of the case would have been locked away for 30 years had the freedom of information act not forced their release. Why should voters only hear the details of such episodes through the filter of each side’s off-the-record briefings? Putting the paperwork into the public domain is the best antidote to spin.
But it is one thing to release information which incriminates a previous administration, another to let go of documents which embarrass serving ministers.
As soon as the act took effect in January 2005, I lodged half-a-dozen information requests. Two – one to parliamentary officials about MPs’ expenses, another to the Home Office about prison security – are awaiting rulings by the information commissioner. But he is so overwhelmed that new complaints sit on a pile for six months before they are even assigned to one of his officials.
As a result, civil servants can turn down legitimate requests for information about current hot topics in the hope that, by the time they are forced to comply, the storm will have blown over.
On the first anniversary of the act, Charlie Falconer suggested a tightening of the charging regime as a way to ration freedom of information. He accused journalists of bogging down the system with frivolous requests, giving the example of one questioner who demanded to know how many toilets the education department oversees.
I’m not sure it was a well-chosen example. If, say, schools were closing toilets to combat vandalism, that is surely in the public interest to know. But more broadly, it must be for the questioner – not the government – to decide what is important or trivial.
During my correspondence with the Home Office, I received a misdirected email from one civil servant, intended for a colleague, discussing my request. It said: ‘Can’t we just tell him that we’ve already sent him the answer and he must have lost it?’ Truly the Whitehall culture of secrecy will take some shifting.
At the Fabian Society new year conference on Britishness, Chancellor Gordon Brown captured the headlines with his latest call for the left to recapture patriotism from the right. However, what struck me most was a suggestion by Trevor Phillips that schools should adopt US-style ‘social selection’ as a way to ensure a mix of races and social classes among their pupils. Catchment areas would vanish, ending the middle-class practice of moving from inner city to leafy suburb to secure a place at a good comprehensive.
What would happen if the Phillips’ scheme was enacted? Critics might say that middle-class parents, denied the chance of a state school filled with their own kind, would increasingly go private. I suspect the reverse might be true. Guaranteed a proportion of families similar to themselves at every comp, middle-class parents might be less afraid of the state system and more ready to trust it.
Instead of security passes, conference-goers were given a red silicone rubber wristband, embossed with the words ‘Fabian Society’. Mine seemed too nice to throw away so I auctioned it on eBay, with the thought that it might appeal to a collector of political memorabilia. I was astonished when a flurry of interest from three rival bidders pushed the price up from a penny to £2.70. Is centre-left bric-a-brac the thing to collect in the Noughties, I wondered to myself as I posted off the package. But I was brought down to earth by an email from the buyer, thanking me for the wristband which was a gift for his son Fabian – for whom personalised trinkets are hard to come across.