Media Law Year Three - Lecture Four. Freedom of Information

The Freedom of Information Act 2000 allows anyone to request (and receive) information from a public body, of which there are approximately 130,000.

The Act also applies to electronic media, including videos and tapes.

There are 100,000 FOI requests a year, costing £34 million.

A public authority must respond within 20 days and a further 40 days if they need to consider public interest.

Journalists only send around 12% of requests.

It was a New Labour policy objective in 2005. The aim was to promote accountability and transparency, helping to further understanding of and participation in the public debate, allowing companies and individuals to understand decisions made by public authorities and to bring light to information affecting public health and safety.

FOI gives everyone the legal right to any information held by public authorities, unless they have a valid reason to not give you the information. You can be denied the information if the cost is more than £600 (or £450 for smaller authorities) and if the information is exempt.

There are two types of exemptions: absolute and qualified. An absolute exemption includes information regarding the security services and courts, they have no duty to confirm or deny that this information exists. A qualified exemption includes commercial confidentiality and ministerial communications.

You could still be given information covered by a qualified exemption if it is in public interest to release it.

Information can be withheld if ‘the public interest in maintaining the exemption outweighs the public interest to release the information’. Some of the other reasons for exemption include if it is likely to jeopardise national security, likely to prejudice defence or international relations, if the information is for future publication, if it prejudices economic interests of the UK, if it prejudices law enforcement, if the information requested is communication with the Royal family.

In a recent development, the government wants to limit groups or individuals making too many requests where they become ‘burdensome’ and lower the limits on costs, leading to more requests being refused.

A cynical review to take would be that the government wants to limit journalists’ powers and limit the amount of information being reported. The other side to this is that with public authorities’ budgets being squeezed, something has to give and FOI requests will obviously be at the bottom of the pile because if services are cut, there will be uproar.