At least half a million pounds has been spent between six government departments in attempts to block the release of information that should have been accessible in line with the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act.
Of that £500k, the Department of Health and Social Care has spent £278,404, Work and Pensions spent £80,585, Education spent £52,247, Housing, Communities, and Local Government spent £38,950, Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy spent £25,484, Cabinet Office and Digital, Culture, Media and Sport spent £20,113, and Digital, Culture, Media and Sport spent £3,902, all in the last four years.
These figures have been revealed via openDemocracy, an investigative political website. OpenDemocracy made FoI requests regarding government lawyers’ attempts to challenge decisions made by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), a body responsible for the regulation of information rights within the UK.
The Department of Health in particular spent over £129,000 in an attempt to prevent the release of ministerial diaries in one case, before a ruling declared the information should become public. In a separate case the department spent £20,000 in a bid to halt a journalist’s request for information regarding fire safety in hospitals. In yet another case the department spent £87,000 to try and obscure a policy document draft regarding childhood obesity. Other spending by government departments includes the Department for Work and Pensions spending more than £80,000 on three appeals against the ICO since 2018.
Director of policy at Transparency International UK, Duncan Hames, has accused the government of “wasting time and taxpayer money”. Editor-in-chief of openDemocracy, Peter Geoghegan, has said, “At a time when the public are concerned about government secrecy it is deeply ironic that government departments are spending hundreds of thousands of pounds of public money to hide information from the public. Ministers need to stop using public money to hide from public scrutiny”.
Geoghegan is referring to an increase in public concerns regarding government secrecy. Polling company Savanta ComRes recently conducted a survey of 2,075 adults within the UK which asked them how concerned they were with the recent rise in FoI requests that the government have refused to fulfil. Around 71% expressed concern, while 18% did not.
A spokesperson for the government has said, “Just like any other public authority, under the FoI Act the government has a right to appeal ICO rulings and set out our position when we feel there is a need to protect particularly sensitive information, including related to national security and personal data.”
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