´óÏó´«Ã½

Freedom of information imposes an administrative burden on the public sector - but sometimes it's a tool which public bodies can exploit too.

I'm often intrigued by those cases where FOI has actually been used by one part of the public sector (other than the ´óÏó´«Ã½!) to find out about another part of the public sector. Take this striking case from yesterday's , about a Scottish GP who used FOI requests to compare how quickly his patients were receiving hospital treatment compared to those in other areas - and on the facts as reported he seems to have found a significant loophole in the Scottish Executive's waiting times promise.

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From today people who drive their cars and talk on their mobiles at the same time - a doubled fine and three points on their licence. But how consistently will the Police enforce this across the country?

Research by the ´óÏó´«Ã½ using freedom of information requests shows wide variation in how tough Police forces have been until now in issuing fixed penalty fines to drivers using their mobiles. The force in England with the harshest record on this - Greater Manchester - has issued nearly five times as many fines given its population than the most lenient, which is Sussex.

The four English forces with the highest rate of fines per population size so far are Greater Manchester, West Mercia, Cheshire and Merseyside. The four lowest are Sussex, Devon & Cornwall, Leicestershire and Dorset. This seems to suggest a general pattern that until now the law has been more vigorously enforced in the north-west of England than in the south.

The ´óÏó´«Ã½ research also shows that altogether well over 300,000 fixed penalty fines have been issued to mobile-using motorists since the ban took effect in 2003.

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There's been a technical problem with posting comments to the blog over the past few days, but I hope this is now sorted. Apologies to those of you who tried to post a comment which never got through.

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My experience of making freedom of information requests to the Police about old unsolved cases is that they often refuse on the basis that the investigation could be reopened - even when the age and circumstances of the case make it grossly implausible that there is any realistic chance of this happening.

But I've not encountered anything quite like this case , in which apparently Tayside Police have refused to release documents relating to a murder 95 years ago because it is still unsolved. Let's hope they catch the murderer soon.

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The bad news is that Steve Wood has posted his on his blog which has been a unique and incredibly valuable resource for anyone interested in the latest developments on freedom of information.

The good news is that he has arranged for it to continue to be produced 'on broadly similar lines' from now on by the .

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The on the Downing St website that condemns the government's planned restrictions on freedom of information is closing to signatures today.

At time of writing it has 1,548 names on it, which puts it in the top 100 but is not quite as many as the number who have recently to road pricing. It is just below the petition against wind farms in valued landscapes but just above the petition asking for all exterior lights to shine downwards so as to cut back on light pollution.

Meanwhile the Press Gazette, journalism's trade paper, has its for journalists to sign. This currently has over 1,200 signatures, including at least 100 national, regional and local editors.

However, with fewer signatures but politically more important is the for MPs to sign. This will be an important indicator of how much dissent there is on the Labour back-benchers and also of how much the Conservatives will pick up on the issue. This currently has 72 names on it.

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The Ministry of Defence tested the possible effectiveness of psychic powers, with experiments asking participants about the contents of sealed envelopes.

This has been revealed under freedom of information. In , it is speculated that the aim may have been to check out potential techniques in the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or Osama bin Laden.

Sadly however the research concluded that 'remote viewing' had 'little value'. This may have wider ramifications. If remote viewing had worked, then perhaps public authorities should be employing psychics as FOI officers who have to search filing systems for information that has been requested. (After all, some public authority filing systems are said to be nearly as good as hiding places as the hills of Tora Bora). And then perhaps the government wouldn't be needing to allow 'reading time' to be included in the cost of responding to FOI ...

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A couple of years ago, when freedom of information was coming into force, I attended a talk given by one of the police officers centrally involved in formulating the police response to FOI. I can remember he pointed out that some chief constables had started releasing their personal expenses, added that others weren't so happy about the idea, but predicted that the power of comparison would force all of them to follow.

And it is true that if you search on 'chief constable expenses' you will now find data from many police forces on how they have reimbursed their boss for spending on train fares and hotel bills incurred in the course of duty.

But not all. One which doesn't seem to be providing this information yet is the Police Service of Northern Ireland, despite . And given the other recent developments relating to the PSNI Chief Constable Sir Hugh Orde, this now seems to be causing .

Perhaps this consternation will achieve what comparison hasn't.

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The minutes of some top-level Whitehall meetings are more likely to become available to the public under FOI following an important decision which has just been issued by the Information Tribunal.

The case involves the Department for Education and Skills and minutes of senior management meetings relating to the setting of school budgets in England in 2002/3.

These were requested by the London Evening Standard. The DfES refused to disclose them on the grounds that it would inhibit free and frank debate on policy options in the future and that it would reveal information about discussion in cabinet committees which might undermine the notion of collective ministerial responsibility.

These arguments were rejected by the Information Commissioner, who that the minutes should be given to the Evening Standard. The DfES then appealed against this ruling, taking their case to the Information Tribunal and arguing that the Commissioner has placed too little weight on candour in policy discussion.

The Tribunal has now dismissed the DfES case and decided in favour of the Standard. The Tribunal's decision is not yet posted on their , but shoud be soon. This is a very significant ruling, which could have a substantial impact on similar cases.

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caught my eye.

The tale it tells can be summarised as follows: A councillor wants to find out why a new bus station has been delayed. He makes an FOI request for relevant documents, but it's too wide-ranging and goes over the cost limit, so the council tells him he would have to pay £1,500 to have his FOI request answered. However, as he's a councillor he may be entitled to have the information for nothing under the 'need to know right' - BUT only if he promises to keep it secret.

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Two new ´óÏó´«Ã½ stories today based on use of freedom of information:

.

The first is based on documents obtained from the Metropolitan Police, the second from the Foreign Office. Both are public authorities that the ´óÏó´«Ã½ has made other FOI requests to in the past three months - so both stories could have been blocked under the government's planned changes to FOI.

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One of the impacts of freedom of information is that people in important positions in public life are finding that their personal work expenses are under a new and sometimes intense scrutiny.

This applies to the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Director General, , and (along with many other Chief Constables).

It also applies to MPs, even if they're the only group who can respond by .

As FOI was about to come into force, the House of Commons decided to publish some about MPs expenses, indicating the totals spent under various overall categories.

They have now been forced to disclose how their . This was resisted by the Commons authorities, but they were ordered to do so after a last month by the Informaton Tribunal.

The case was brought by Norman Baker, the LibDem MP for Lewes. Unsurprisingly, he is not top of the popularity charts with many of his Parliamentary colleagues. Just listen to the derisive laughter when he is mentioned during the committee on the Bill to exempt MPs from FOI (between 50 and 51 minutes in).

It looks like this disclosure today will be only one step in a continuing process. There are several in which the Commons authorities are objecting to disclosing further details of MPs expenses, and there are yet further cases still being considered by the Information Commissioner.

These cases may well result in the gradual forced disclosure of an increasing level of detail, a process which many MPs will doubtless find uncomfortable and regard as unnecessarily intrusive.

We do not yet know if this process will end with the Commons providing the same immensely detailed information that is now for MSPs.

The revelations about MSPs expenses since FOI came into force have had two main consequences:

The first is a sharp drop in the level of allowances claimed by MSPs. I think it can be safely predicted that the same will happen at Westminster - whether it's because unnecessary claims are reduced or because the recipients decide it's more prudent not to claim for something they're entitled to.

The second is that some MSPs got into big trouble, notably the then Scottish Tory leader . Whether that will also happen at Westminster remains to be seen.

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Is too much scrutiny and debate a bad thing?

Yes, according to the Department for Constitutional Affairs, in the case of complaints about judges.

The ´óÏó´«Ã½ put a freedom of information query to the DCA asking for details of disciplinary actions against judges. Last week the DCA supplied some overall figures, but refused to give details of individual cases. The reason?

'Disclosure would expose the sensitivities of specific investigations of cases of personal judicial misconduct to an inappropriate level of public scrutiny. This would inevitably lead to increased speculation about the correctness or otherwise of the final recommendations made to the LC [Lord Chancellor], unnecessarily prolonging public debate about the outcome of particular investigations.'

And, argued the DCA, it could also cause problems for judges in court:

'Their position would become untenable if for instance a minor previous indiscretion were in the public domain resulted in them being discredited in the eyes of the litigant when the LC and LCJ [Lord Chief Justice] had previously reached the decision that such minor indiscretion would not impact on their ability to maintain their position in judicial office. The possibility also exists for individuals to expose a previous sanction by attempting to antagonise a judge so as to bring on a repetition of the previous misconduct thereby intentionally causing a disruption to proceedings.'

So judges have to be protected from irritating litigants who would seek to provoke them into repeating the offending behaviour. Perhaps it would be a case of three strikes and you're out.

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Who are the lay members of the Information Tribunal, the court which deals with FOI cases - and has been over-ruling the Information Commissioner on one in three occasions? And what are their qualifications for this role?

As I recall, the Tribunal website used to have a page with brief biographies of its members but this has disappeared. However the Judicial Communications Office has supplied me with a collection of biographies, although they add that this is not necessarily complete or up-to-date.

But if you want to know more about some of the people who are really forging freedom of information policy, this should tell you something.

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• Faulty speed cameras could be catching out motorists for up to a year before being repaired. This was revealed by last Sunday’s on ´óÏó´«Ã½1, which used freedom of information to obtain repair invoices for malfunctioning cameras from the Police … And this reminds me that I never told you the outcome of the case of South Yorkshire Police prosecuting themselves – they were .

• MPs opposed to the government’s plans to restrict FOI have tabled a this week. The amount of support it gets from MPs could be an important indication of how much resistance the plans will meet in the Commons. So far it has 32 signatures, but that number will doubtless increase substantially.

• I’ve taken part in a podcast presented by Ibrahim Hasan, a solicitor specialising in information law. You can find it on his .

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The MPs' yesterday afternoon about the government's planned restrictions to FOI was mainly notable for the contribution from the junior constitutional affairs minister Vera Baird.

Those MPs who participated made the expected arguments about the impact of the proposed regulations, and the frequent references they made to their local newspapers must be testament to the energetic lobbying work of the and the .

Responding to their points, and combative as always, Vera Baird denounced as 'mad' the idea of not allowing public authorities to count time spent reading documents towards the cost limit. However, interestingly she didn't make any such defence of the proposal to also include time spent considering the exemptions and consulting others, which is much more controversial and widely criticised than the suggestion to incorporate reading time.

She also failed to make any significant defence of the plan to allow aggregation of non-related requests, limiting her remarks on this to some minor debating points.

Does all this indicate that ministers will not retreat on the reading time proposal but are leaving themselves room to do so on other parts of their plans?

Since Baird took time out to have a swipe at the ´óÏó´«Ã½, I feel I ought to respond. I have explained previously why the cost estimates given for the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s use of FOI are grossly exaggerated and methodologically flawed.

All I can suggest now is that those people in the DCA who do not understand the total innumeracy of multiplying one upper bound of a 95% confidence interval by another and then asserting that the result is in any way a plausible figure should perhaps consult Alex Allan, the permanent secretary at the DCA. Since , hopefully he can explain it to them.

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Yesterday's Commons committee on the is worth listening to for what it indicates about the motivation of the Bill's supporters.

There was very little discussion of the Bill's implications for blocking the forced release of further details of MPs' expenses. Instead the debate focused almost entirely on MPs' concerns about disclosure of their correspondence when they take up constituents' cases with public authorities.

Of course the personal details of such constituents will generally already be exempt under the current law. David Maclean said the main motivation driving him to introduce this Bill was actually the need to also protect from disclosure 'our own personal view about the veracity of a constituent'.

He stated that sometimes he would write to, say, the local Chief Constable, saying 'I think my constituent has got a genuine case' and sometimes saying 'that is what my constituent told me and you may have a different view'. He wants to be certain that such letters would not be made public. (These remarks are between 14 and 15 minutes into the recording, if you don't want to listen to the entire proceedings.)

On the point that the Bill would also prevent the release of MPs' letters to public authorities which are nothing to do with individual cases but are about matters of public policy, Maclean said that on this MPs 'have to be trusted to know' whether to publicise these letters or keep them confidential.

I was also intrigued by the remarks from the LibDem MP Nick Harvey about how he puts his more candid remarks on yellow Post-It notes which he sticks onto his letters.

The minister Bridget Prentice told the committee that it was an issue which deserves attention and a matter for Parliament itself to decide. So there is no official government line.

The Bill will now proceed to its next stage in the Commons (Report and Third Reading). The initial version of the Bill has been amended so that it covers all communications (not just correspondence), is limited to MPs (and not Peers), and only covers what MPs do in their capacity as MPs. The Commons library has produced to the issues raised by the Bill.

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There were two very contrasting debates about freedom of information in two different Commons committees today. If you only heard one of them you would form a very different impression of the general attitudes of MPs towards FOI.

In the afternoon in Westminster Hall the FOI enthusiasts from all parties queued up to denounce passionately the proposed restrictions on freedom of information which the government is planning to introduce.

Two of these speakers - LibDem Norman Baker and Labour's Tony Wright, chair of the Public Administration Committee - also took their chance to condemn the Private Member's Bill which aims to exempt MPs from FOI as 'bizarre' and 'absurd'. However neither of them was on the standing committee on that Bill which met this morning, when another cross-party collection of MPs equally passionately criticised FOI for obstructing them in their duties and supported David Maclean's Bill.

More comment will follow later on the details of the debates.

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There's been class warfare on the River Teign in Devon.

Or so it would seem from an internal government briefing document which the Information Commissioner has the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to disclose.

I have to confess that until now I have had little grasp of salmon fisheries byelaws, but my knowledge is improved thanks to the ability of civil servants to boil down complex matters of controversial policy to the key essentials. A Defra official briefed the fishing minister Ben Bradshaw as follows on the point of the Salmon and Freshwater Fisheries Act 1975:

It is 'specifically designed to protect poor, honest netsmen from the actions of wicked, arbitrary government, which might otherwise deprive them of their livelihoods for the possible benefit of richer chaps with rods or even richer chaps who own the river-banks and sell fishing permits to the chaps with the rods.'

This is an important from the Information Commissioner because it concerns policy advice given to a minister by a civil servant, which is the kind of material government generally tries very hard to keep secret.

Defra at first refused to release the two briefing documents involved but has now done so (here and here) following the Commissioner's decision, under the Environmental Information Regulations, that the public interest favoured disclosure.

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• According to the , the government is slowing down on the timing of its plans to restrict freedom of information. Previously it was thought that ministers intended to put the new regulations to Parliament just 11 days after the end of the . The junior constitutional affairs minister Cathy Ashton now says such a timetable 'would be quite impossible'.

• The Independent's media commentator Stephen Glover on the idea that newspapers too should be subject to the Freedom of Information Act. While there are all sorts of sensible arguments against this, I suppose it would mean that I could find out how much my newspaper colleagues spend on taxis. On one point I do agree with Glover - journalists tend to be much better at dishing out criticism than taking it.

• I was amused to the out-of-office autoreply received by Spyblog from the Cabinet Office Openness Team: 'This mailbox is no longer in use. This message has not been forwarded and has been deleted.'

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While some of her ministerial colleagues seem to be less than enthusiastic about it, Harriet Harman is proclaiming the virtues of open goverment.

In a speech to be given tomorrow she is calling for much of the legal advice given to ministers by the Attorney General to be made public.

She explains: 'For public trust to be maximised, secrecy must be minimised. This is not just a question of public confidence. The belief behind our commitment to the freedom of information is not just the public are entitled to know what is done in their name and at their expense, but also that decisions that are made publicly and for which the decision maker is accountable are likely to be more thoughtful and better quality decisions.'

This is particularly striking since she is now a minister at the Department for Constitutional Affairs and was previously a government law officer herself as Solicitor General.

The various candidates for the forthcoming battle for the Labour deputy leadership (of which she is one) are building up some freedom to stake out their own personal political positions. It will be interesting to see how they respond if each is pressed for a personal viewpoint on the government's plans to restrict FOI.

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