Opposition is mounting to Labour’s mooted plan to curb the use of Freedom of Information requests. The latest transparency crackdown from this fake liberal government…
A double-header of FT stories this month saw one spuriously complain that FOIs were being used by China to gain intelligence and other two days later confirming that the government wants to crack down on FOI use. Proposals include dropping the ‘cost threshold’ which is meant to prevent requests taking too much of officials’ time…
That threshold has been sitting at £600 since the Act was introduced and has not risen in line with inflation, reducing the scope of FOIs in real terms anyway. The News Media Association – representing national and regional news organisations – has written to DCMS to oppose any reduction in that scope. Chief Executive Owen Meredith said in the letter:
“It is not routine or trivial requests that would be excluded. It is the most sensitive and significant ones – those involving complex decision-making, high-value contracts, safeguarding, multi-agency correspondence, and procurement.
Clearly, a reduction in the cost limit would restrict access and weaken scrutiny, and risk undermining the Government’s own commitments to openness and transparency.”
The Society of Editors has also come out against the proposals. Freedom of Information requests are a routine resource available to any member of the British public to retrieve non-sensitive information from the government in the interests of transparency and good governance. Save FOI…
Statement by Paul Dacre, Editor-in-Chief of Associated Newspapers Limited, following Harry’s loss in court today:
“Prince Harry wrote a sad book which boasted about his killing of 25 Taliban, his drug-taking and, in cringe-making detail, how he lost his virginity. There isn’t a laundry in the cosmos big enough to wash all the dirty linen he has aired about his own family. For him, to complain about HIS privacy being invaded takes, not just the biscuit, but the whole tin. Poor Harry. I feel sorry for the way a confused and angry young man has been drawn into this case. The bitter irony is that his mother, Diana, liked the Mail. We were her paper. We took her side in her acrimonious break up with Charles. She and I would speak and meet. The Mail’s superb royal reporter was her friend and confidante. The truth is that this trumped-up action – which has cost well over £50 million and wasted a huge amount of valuable court time – should never have been brought to trial. That it did, raises profoundly disturbing questions about the conduct of elements of the legal profession. Today’s verdict is not just a victory for Associated’s magnificent journalists – several of whom have had a terrible toll imposed on their health and lives – but a free press generally. Make no mistake. This was a conspiracy, supported by Hacked Off, to destroy a paper. Financed by the orgy-loving, racist Max Mosley and involving the actor Hugh Grant, it was also a sinister bid to resuscitate Leveson Two and impose statutory regulation on the press which, even now, is rearing its ugly head in Labour’s Media Green Paper.”