Freedom of Information: populist irritation or popular democratic tool?
Former prime minister Tony Blair in 2019 (Credit: Tommy London / Alamy Stock Photo)
6 min read
Tony Blair thought it was one of his worst mistakes and many if not all his successors agree, but Ben Worthy says that for the most part Freedom of Information legislation has strengthened democracy
It was 20 years ago that the Freedom of Information Act (FOI) came into force in 2005. For the first time, the act gave the public an enforceable right to ask for information from over 100,000 public bodies, stretching from central and local government, to schools, GPs and, of course, the Zoos Forum. Its arrival was accompanied by joyous celebration from campaigners and apocalyptic concerns from politicians.
Whether a policy succeeds or fails is often in the eye of the beholder. FOI has proved particularly tricky to assess because of the strength of feeling between critics and supporters.
One poll estimated that one in 10 people had made an FOI request by 2023
Politicians, and particularly a succession of prime ministers, have been fierce critics. Tony Blair, who passed the act through increasingly gritted teeth, later called himself a “nincompoop” for doing so. FOI, he claimed, was being used and abused mainly by journalists, and has made the business of government more difficult. David Cameron followed this up with a public moan that the law was “furring up the arteries of government”. A third prime minister, Liz Truss, then claimed it was making meetings impossible. From the top of government, FOI at 20 has proved to be a costly and counter-productive failure.
But on the other side, a succession of MPs, select committees and inquiries see FOI as a cornerstone of democracy. The media too are strongly supportive, from The Guardian to the Daily Mail. The public has voted with their feet, or at least their pens and emails, by using it. In 2023, there were 70,475 FOI requests made to central government, the highest since 2005. There could be around four times as many requests to local government. Nor is the law a tool of journalists or gadfly campaigners, as Tony Blair and Liz Truss claimed. The public are the largest user group, and one poll estimated that one in 10 people had made an FOI request by 2023.
So how can we make sense of this difference? Is FOI a populist irritation or popular democratic tool?
Freedom of Information, as the name suggests, should deliver more democratically useful information. This it has clearly done. Because of FOI, we know the number of Met Police officers who failed vetting, the small amounts spent on flood recovery, and the almost 6,000 unlicensed guns in Guernsey. Locally, we can see information unearthed about councils lending each other money, the decline of local bus services, or the most fined street for parking in Richmond. It was an FOI request to an NHS body in Portsmouth that first confirmed that Covid patients were being sent back to care homes in 2020.
Beyond answering questions, FOI can create pressure to lever open new areas. It was an FOI that prompted the cost of the now infamous HS2 bat shed to be made public. Journalists and FOI expert Martin Rosenbaum fought an 18 month battle to see the references (called ‘citations’) for potential appointees to the House of Lords. All these are now publicly available, and you can see, but maybe not understand, why Kemi Badenoch recommended Toby Young for the House of Lords.
The act has helped make politicians and public servants more accountable. FOI creates a pressure to explain and justify. It can even catch out wrong doing. As a ‘gotcha’ tool, FOI can be rather hit and miss, and requires the right time, right place and the appropriate levers to work. Nevertheless, in 2009, the MPs’ expenses scandal, partly triggered by an FOI, led to a record number of MPs stepping down. In 2013, a parish council resigned en masse over an FOI battle. And it was an FOI in 2019 that began the slow burn investigation of MP Owen Paterson, which ended his and Boris Johnson’s career. Perhaps the clearest example of it working well is when an FOI revealed that 14 Liverpool councillors had parking fines cancelled informally.
Yet concerns remain that, at 20, the legislation is slowing down. In 2024, you stand a one in three chance of getting a full answer out of central government, down from 40 per cent in 2021 and almost 50 per cent in 2015. This is a bad sign, and a deterrent. It is likely that chance of success at local government is as bad, if not worse.
Nor are all requests perfect. FOI can be an instrument for mischief and silliness. No one wanted Philip Morris to access data on teenagers’ smoking habits, though it tried with an FOI in Scotland in 2011. The process itself can also go dangerously wrong, as it did with the accidental release of all PSNI officers’ names and addresses in Northern Ireland.
There are frequent complaints that FOI is too costly and an expensive luxury. There is, clearly, a cost to answering requests, though how much is disputed. Cost calculations of FOI requests are often low, with estimates around £20 per request: in 2024 Liverpool City council calculated the cost as being £143.75. Perhaps a bigger financial issue is the lack of staffing and resources caused by austerity.
More worryingly, there are signs of resistance, and various bodies try to bury requests or go slow. Times journalist George Greenwood has proved, in detail, how his requests were treated in a very particular way.
What is less clear is whether FOI is making meetings and private discussion impossible, or driving decisions into less formal places. This so-called chilling effect is hard to trace. There are signs that officials actually become more diligent because of FOI, and keep better records. It is more politicians who are the problem, who were encouraged to use Post-it Notes way back in 2005. Ministers, including Michael Gove, Matt Hancock and Suella Braverman, were found to be using private email to conduct government business, a classic way to try and avoid FOI. The use (and disappearance) of senior politicians’ WhatsApp messages during Covid has been a recurring and worrying theme of the inquiries, as politicians move away from official records.
On balance, the act has done what it should, and is giving the public more information, more truth and, sometimes, a new way to make politicians accountable. The complaints of prime ministers are, arguably, a sign it is working. But as it moves into its third decade, there are red lights flashing as the system is slowed, undermined, and avoided.
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