| John Edwards – The Information Commissioner |
Transparency and accountability are fundamental to our democracy – the impact of decisions made by public bodies can affect us all in some way.
So it is right that we celebrate twenty years of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) coming into force this year, as well as twenty-five years since this crucial legislation, which underpins people’s constitutional and legal right to request information, was passed by parliament.
As the regulator of the FOIA, we provide guidance to the public to help them make FOI requests, supporting their right to know why decisions impacting their lives are made and how their taxes are spent. People have the right to ask for information from a public authority such as documents, emails and recordings of meetings. They can use their rights to find out about local issues like why a decision has been made to close a local hospital, or information about water quality, through to national policy matters like why benefit entitlements have changed or how we planned to handle a pandemic.
We also support public authorities to be transparent and accountable, providing certainty on the law, as well as clear advice and guidance. This includes promoting good record keeping and encouraging the proactive disclosure of information that’s in the public interest or safe to disclose. When that doesn’t happen, we take enforcement action so people’s information rights are upheld.
Recent years have seen us take more action to hold public authorities accountable when it comes to FOI failures, from police forces and local councils to government departments and the NHS. We’ve issued enforcement notices and practice recommendations to tackle systemic problems in public authorities.
Since the FOIA came into force, we have issued and published thousands of legal decision notices resolving the complaints we receive, many of which ordered the disclosure of information or required public bodies to respond to requests where they had failed to comply with their statutory duty to do so.
It’s the perfect time of year to look to the future and I see FOIA continuing to be vital to our democracy. There will be new opportunities and challenges for transparency as we go along, not least as the digital world continues to evolve.
In July 2022 we called for a government review into the risks and areas for improvement around the use of private correspondence channels such as WhatsApp. It followed an investigation into use of these channels by Ministers and others during the pandemic. We welcome the fact that the Covid Inquiry updated its Terms of Reference in line with our call for it to consider the quality of record keeping. We are also pleased to see that the new government has updated the Ministerial Code to make clear the importance of using corporate channels wherever possible and to keep accurate public records when they are not. We continue to scrutinise whether more is needed in this regard as we look at the complaints that come to us.
Ultimately, we want to deliver a modern FOI system that inspires confidence in public authorities both now and in the future.
