How many government departments have broken their own rules on the handling of personal data about members of the public? It looks like the answer is probably all bar one.
Ever since Revenue and Customs last November, the ´óÏó´«Ã½ has been trying to find out about data security in other departments. We sent them freedom of information requests about any breaches of the rules earlier in 2007.
The Treasury has replied to say there are no recorded instances of violations of its data security policy.
Four departments - Business, Cabinet Office, Environment and International Development - have admitted that there were such infringements, but have refused to disclose further details as they say that 'would assist those intent on undermining data security'.
The other deparments state they hold relevant information but are considering whether it's in the public interest to release it. That suggests they too have things to confess, which would leave the Treasury as the only department which doesn't.
(But one can't be sure about this - some departments do have a history of spending a long time thinking about documents which then strangely turn out to be non-existent.)
UPDATE (22 Feb 08): The Department for Culture, Media and Sport now also says it has no violations to confess.
Suppose the names of the paid staff of MPs were made public, what would be the consequences?
According to the Commons Speaker Michael Martin, it would be 'likely to prejudice the effective conduct of public affairs'. That's why he used his power of veto under the Freedom of Information Act to .
Mr Thomas had favoured revealing their identity. His judgment drew attention to the fact that the list of MEPs' assistants in the European Parliament is . This shows for example that Lady Dulcie Mary Atkins is an assistant to her husband, the Tory MEP Sir Robert Atkins.
His involvement followed a complaint from the freedom of information campaigner , who wanted to know the names and salaries of MPs' staff.
Now that the has led to the media publication of various lists of MPs who employ family members, I guess we may find out whether Mr Martin's fears will now come true that 'it gives rise to a risk that their ability to continue to work effectively, without unwarranted interruption will be inhibited and thus that the effective conduct of public affairs by Members will be prejudiced.'
This dispute is just one of several cases where there have been disagreements between the House of Commons authorities and the Information Commissioner about the level of detail about MPs' spending that ought to be made public. I've noted before that the Commons is one of the public authorities most frequently to have faced adverse decisions from Mr Thomas's office.
This partly reflects the level of interest in MPs' expenditure and the number of requests for greater information about it, as well as the Commons authorities' sensitivity on the matter. The latest adverse decision for them occurred earlier this month.
Regular readers of this blog will know about the dispute between Steven Sugar and the ´óÏó´«Ã½, over whether Mr Sugar should be allowed to see an internal report on the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s Middle East reporting which has become known as the 'Balen report'.
In the latest instalment of what has become a complex legal battle, the Appeal Court has today backed the ´óÏó´«Ã½ and rejected Mr Sugar's latest challenge.
It's important to note that this decision is not about the contents of the report itself. Instead it's about the legal issue as to whether the Information Tribunal has the power to overrule the Information Commissioner when the latter has decided that an information request to the ´óÏó´«Ã½ is outside the scope of the FOI Act because it's about information held for the purposes of journalism. The Appeal Court has agreed with the High Court and the ´óÏó´«Ã½ that the Tribunal did not have this power.
As I sit in my office in ´óÏó´«Ã½ Westminster, I can hear occasional chanting from Police demonstrators nearby, .
There has been much joking about whether there will be the usual discrepancy between the estimate of numbers taking part from the Police who are 'policing' the demonstration and the march organisers - in this case, the Police Federation.
I suppose I could pop round the corner and count them myself, but I'm not sure that would be any more reliable than some of the methods which have previously been used to count marchers.
It was almost exactly four years ago when along with a few ´óÏó´«Ã½ colleagues I sat in an isolated room in Broadcasting House, denied all contact with the outside world, as we studied - gobsmacked - the advance text of the which had been provided to the ´óÏó´«Ã½ the day before publication.
I had been seconded from my job as a ´óÏó´«Ã½ journalist to work with ´óÏó´«Ã½ management on the inquiry, spending many weeks involved in meticulous scrutiny of consistencies and inconsistencies between all the accounts of who said what where when and why. I didn't expect Lord Hutton's conclusion, I didn't expect the resignations that followed, and I didn't expect that four years later the Freedom of Information Act might lead to disclosure of further documents which would allow another burst of such scrutiny for those of us who remain interested.
But this last development now looks increasingly likely, as the Information Tribunal has just that the Foreign Office should reveal what has become known as the 'Williams draft' of the famous dossier on Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction - a draft written by press officer John Williams which may or may not have influenced the final version. This document was not amongst the voluminous documentation provided to and published by the Hutton Inquiry. Its disclosure may shed further light on the extent or otherwise of the role played by press officers in formulating a publication based on intelligence material.
This document was requested from the Foreign Office by the researcher Chris Ames, who has for its release. As the only 'member of the public' present at the Tribunal hearing which dealt with the case he initiated, Ames had to shuffle in and out as the Tribunal moved between open and closed sessions while discussing the confidential material.
The Tribunal's decision is notable for a couple of points:
The Tribunal was clearly dissatisfied with the Foreign Office for being 'unable or unwilling' to provide a witness who was personally involved in events at the time, as the witness they did supply was unable to explain numerous discrepancies.
The Tribunal did decide (for confidential reasons) that one 'manuscript annotation' on the draft should not be made public, saying that this should be redacted while the rest is disclosed. This demonstrates that the Tribunal will not allow the fact that a document contains some material whose publication it regards as detrimental to the public interest to prevent the disclosure of other parts of the document.
It is not yet clear whether the Foreign Office will now comply or appeal against the judgment to the High Court.
Tony Blair - remember him? What about Michael Howard and Charles Kennedy? Once upon a time they were party leaders. That time was when freedom of information came into force in 2005. And it was in March 2005 that my colleague Nicola Beckford put in an FOI request for greater detail about the expenditure of several MPs, including these three.
After a three-year battle, it now looks as if that information should be released. The Information Commissioner's Office has just issued a decision over-ruling objections from the House of Commons authorities. The Commons now has to provide the material within 35 days, unless it decides to appeal.
The decision notice makes clear the lack of full cooperation from the House of Commons during the Commissioner's investigation. In an unusual move, he had to serve a formal Information Notice on the Commons authorities in order for him and his staff to get access themselves to the disputed information, so that they could assess the implications of releasing it.
Coming soon - full details of the office spending of Gladstone and Disraeli.
UPDATE: For some comment on the Derek Conway case, see this more recent entry.
There's good news for the Information Commissioner in the latest batch of issued by his office. He'll be relieved to find that the substantive parts of two complaints against his office's handling of FOI requests ( and ) have been rejected - by himself.
Which I'm sure for him is a pleasant improvement on the time that he had to find against himself.
Last October it was that two hen harriers, rare birds of prey, had been shot illegally on the edge of the royal estate at Sandringham, Norfolk, and that Prince Harry had been questioned about the incident.
The police investigation was instigated after a nature warden working for on a nearby reserve reported he had seen two of the protected birds fall from the sky after being shot.
After the Crown Prosecution Service decided there was insufficient evidence to prosecute, the Sandringham estate issued a suggesting there was doubt about whether any such birds had actually been shot. A is taken by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.
Press reporting has diverged - you can take your pick between and , with no prizes for guessing who takes which line.
The ´óÏó´«Ã½ has now obtained from Natural England a copy of the statement from their staff member who claimed to have witnessed the incident. You can read it for yourself.
This was received through a request under the Environmental Information Regulations. We also obtained internal emails in which Natural England management discussed the matter. The agency's chief executive told her staff that 'we should go in very hard, once we have evidence'.
Another email reports that Natural England staff on the reserve have been experiencing 'very difficult conditions' in terms of their relations with workers on the Sandringham estate.
If you're not a journalist, then you're not meant to read this.
For those of you who don't possess this high professional status, let me explain that it contains a Metropolitan Police background briefing about , the woman who lay dead in her flat for two years before her body was discovered. It features what are called 'press lines', the answers which Police press officers were instructed to give to questions journalists might have asked about the case.
The Met has sent it to me after the intervention of the Information Commissioner's Office (the ´óÏó´«Ã½ has complained to the ICO about the Met's rejection of an FOI request about Mrs Vincent) - but the Police say they're only giving it to me as I'm a journalist, since 'such lines are not disclosed following an enquiry by a member of the public'.
Of course we humble hacks do sometimes get privileged access to information, for which doubtless we are very grateful. But FOI isn't meant to work like that. So the Met state this is being done 'outside of FOI legislation'.
Now on current trends it may not be long before the entire population consists of citizen journalists, at which point these occupational distinctions will no longer matter. But meanwhile please don't look unless you should - my professional advantages are at stake.
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