Labour is considering lowering the cost ceiling for processing Freedom of Information (FoI) requests, using ‘spiralling administrative costs’ as the latest excuse to limit government transparency. Obviously blaming China wasn’t good enough…
According to briefings in the FT:
“The soaring number of requests comes against a backdrop of heavily constrained Whitehall budgets… the cost threshold for complying with a request is set at £600 for central government and £450 for other public bodies, with staff time charged at a flat rate of £25 an hour. This equates to 24 hours of work, or 3.5 working days, for Whitehall departments and 18 hours of work for other government agencies.”
Lowering the cost ceiling would effectively let departments turn down what they claim would be more complex or time-consuming requests without having to find a specific exemption. In reality, it would inevitably be a useful way to bury inconvenient and embarrassing material from the public. This is a government which makes the hilarious claim it has “strengthened many transparency and disclosure standards“. Total nonsense…
In the FT this morning:
“British officials are concerned that China is exploiting the UK’s freedom of information [FoI] legislation to collate unclassified data that risks revealing sensitive information. Government figures believe they have detected a pattern of requests relating to the UK’s defence and national security, raising suspicions that Beijing may be behind a significant proportion of them, according to people familiar with the matter.”
It is in Labour’s interest to limit FoI responses because they are routinely embarrassing. Guido sends hundreds, and will continue to do so. The idea that China is using them for espionage is laughable…
On 3 February Bridget Phillipson held a meeting with headmistress extraordinaire and anti-woke warrior Katharine Birbalsingh. Part of an ill-fated charm offensive with key academy figures…
Birbalsingh’s account of the meeting was scathing – she accused Phillipson of being driven by a “Marxist ideological dislike of academies” and lacking a basic knowledge of facts. Before too long a Bridget-sympathetic narrative managed to appear in the press via Freedom of Information request. Only nine days after the meeting itself was held – a miracle in government transparency and a new standard for all meeting FoIs…
Schools Week’s alternative account from the provided transcripts of the meeting went like this: “Bridget Phillipson had to ask headteacher Katharine Birbalsingh to ‘lower her tone’ and ‘allow her to finish her sentences.'” Where Birbalsingh says “You do not seem to understand your own bill” the transcript’s account is: “The SoS said that the explanatory notes on all of the Bill measures are available online and provide more detail.” You get the picture…
Seeing as DfE is so keen on getting meeting transcripts into the hands of journalists via FoI Guido put one in for minutes of meetings held with the head of the National Education Union. Ten working days later – crickets. Not so keen on releasing those?
Stories occasionally pop up about pest problems in creaking civil service HQ buildings in London. Marsham Street’s Defra/Home Office building had a particularly tough case of bed bugs last year…
A Freedom of Information request fired out by Guido has confirmed that over at the DWP’s headquarters on Caxton Street the pest controllers have been called out a whopping 24 times in 12 months. There is a 50/50 split between preventative and reactive callouts. Civil servants must know the pest controllers by name – they show up every two weeks…
The DWP is refusing to release the cost of pest control operations “to protect the ability of a public authority like DWP to obtain goods or services on the best possible commercial terms and to protect the legitimate commercial interests of its suppliers.” Is that in case someone offered to do it for less?
The Civil Service is no stranger to absent-mindedly misplacing thousands of pounds worth of equipment. They can’t help themselves…
Guido has been firing Freedom of Information requests around Whitehall to analyse just how much taxpayer-funded kit is going missing from departments. The Department for Education has managed to lose a whopping 72 pieces of kit since April alone. Despite only 69% of them bothering to turn up to the office from July to September…
31 laptops and 41 phones have been lost or stolen in the months of April to October with a total value of £8,262.01. October was the worst for both phones and laptop misplacements with 8 and 9 lost respectively – the figures have risen overall since Labour came to power. Curiously the cost of replacing all this tech is significantly higher than the original equipment at a whopping £39,641.66. Quite some upgrades…
Co-conspirators may remember Sadiq Khan’s vanity jolly last month to New York with the C40 Cities “Climate Leadership Group.” Khan claims he went to promote “London as a leading destination for business, tourism and sport.” He actually went on a boat ride to talk about voles…
Guido fired a few FOIs City Hall’s way to see how much the taxpayer was paying this time round. The GLA spent £3,683 on flights to New York for some of Khan’s retinue of a whopping eight people. Once they landed they managed to rack up a £9,060 bill on hotel rooms, which the GLA claims “is reflective of the very high demand for hotel rooms in New York when the UN General Assembly is in session.” You can feel the British public’s sympathy pouring out as we speak…
Khan and his crew were spread across three different hotels. Guido leaves it to co-conspirators to guess which the Mayor stayed in…
Above is the NH Collection on Madison Avenue. Prices range from $400 to $1,800 a night..
The Hilton Garden Inn by Central Park. Prices from $500 per night upwards…
The Aura Hotel on Times Square. From about $335 per night…
Khan’s hotel rooms, as well as his business class flight tickets, were paid for by the C40 Cities group, of which Khan is a co-chairman. That’s the same organisation of whose main proposal is to limit the public’s air travel to “one short-haul return flight (less than 1500 km) every 2 years per person.” Khan’s already exceeded his two-year quota by 3.7 times with his free 5,570km flight to the Big Apple. Poor Sadiq will have to sit in London until 2032 to compensate…
Red Wall Labour backbencher Jonathan Brash told GB News that Starmer should resign:
“I’m completely fed up about it, and I think it’s got to the point now where I genuinely think that, as far as the Prime Minister is concerned, it’s not a case of if, it’s when.”
