FoI fee proposals “financially flawed and politically incoherent”
Emb’d to. 00.01 Tuesday 20 Feb 2007
The Government’s proposals to reduce the number of freedom of information requests are criticised today, Tuesday 20 February, as financially flawed and politically incoherent.
Public Concern at Work, the whistleblowing charity, points out the new scheme will cost over £12 million to bring in and that its annual costs are likely to wipe out the savings the proposal will actually achieve. Guy Dehn, the charity’s director, says “The Government needs to go back to the drawing board and carry out a proper cost-benefit analysis”.
“While it is clear that freedom of information deters waste, inefficiency and fraud across the public sector, all these benefits have been ignored in these proposals,” says Mr Dehn. Public Concern at Work maintain that past applications which have saved large sums of public money will, under these proposals, now be blocked because they cost too much. One example is the charity’s request which forced the release of information on the levels of fraud in Whitehall , which saved over £1.6 million in two years. Another is the request which revealed that £28,400 was spent on a shower for a chief constable.
Public Concern at Work is particularly critical that one of the two examples used to justify these proposals is a request to the DTI for information about the impact of carbon emissions on the economy. PCaW points out that the Prime Minister recently called the Stern Report on the Economics of Climate Change “the most important report on the future ever published by this government.” The charity says it is politically incoherent that some other part of Government is now trying to block the release of this information on grounds of costs while ignoring all the benefits publication will bring.
Under the draft regulations the Government is proposing that the time officials spend reading information and thinking about it should be calculated separately. Observing that many people in and out of government can read and think at the same time, the charity says this proposal to separate reading from consideration time will expose officials to ridicule. Using figures published by the Government which suggest that it costs officials between £1 and £2 to read a single page, the charity calculates that it will cost £7.2 million for one official in each of the 100,000 public bodies to read the new rules and guidance restricting FOI requests and a further £5 million for them to think about them. Quite aside from these start up costs which have been overlooked in the consultation, Public Concern at Work analysis suggests that the cost of implementing the new scheme will wipe out the supposed savings.
The charity warns that if media organisations were to follow the Government’s example and threaten to charge for the time their journalists spend reading and considering reports published by Government and other public bodies, ministers will not be able to take the high moral ground and claim such a move would damage the political process.
Finally, the charity points out that the Chancellor of the Exchequer is urging ministers to focus on the £21.5 billion of taxpayer’s money that is wasted and misused. It says it cannot understand why the Department for Constitutional Affairs is trying to find cuts in the £25 million spent on FOI by central government that its ministers themselves accept is “money well spent”. [1]
Contacts
Guy Dehn (Director) 020 7404 6609 (mobile) 07813 935628
Anna Myers (Deputy) 020 7404 6609 (mobile) 07969 054899
Oli Sweet (Communications) 020 7404 6609 (mobile) 07799 067080
Note to Editors
The charity’s submission is available at www.pcaw.co.uk/news
Public Concern at Work (PCaW) is the whistleblowing charity. It runs a free helpline for individuals, does consultancy and training work for organisations, campaigns on public policy and has a public education and schools programme. The charity also promoted the Public Interest Disclosure Act. Last year PCaW was paid £130,000 in compensation by the DTI because it had wasted the charity’s time. Aside from that award, PCaW is funded by income from its services work and subscriptions to its helpline.
[1] This is how the Constitutional Affairs Minister, Baroness Ashton of Upholland, described the money spent on FOI in an interview with Press Gazette, 02.02.07