Citizens embrace their right to know

Published on Thursday 8 March 2007 01:37

THE Freedom of Information Act is arguably one of the most successful pieces of legislation passed by the Scottish Parliament. Consider the evidence: 73 per cent of the Scottish public say they have heard of their new right to know. Thousands of requests for information have been made to Scotland's public authorities - the majority by ordinary citizens. In the vast majority of cases, Scotland's public authorities are providing such information free of charge, within 20 working days.

One of the successes of the legislation is that we have quickly moved from an official culture that still questioned the need to know to one of compliance with a right-to-know regime.

Within that broad picture, there are instances where information is withheld or requests go unanswered. Where people do not get the information requested, they have not been slow to use their free right of appeal. My annual report laid before parliament yesterday shows that I received more than 1,000 appeals in the first two years of the act being fully in force. In over 50 per cent of my decisions in 2006, I found that the appeal was fully or partially justified.

The acid test of right-to-know legislation is whether information is disclosed that previously would not have seen the light of day. In Scotland, a number of high-profile disclosures have been made, such as MSPs' expenses, surgical mortality rates, or how public authority jobs are graded. These have all come about solely because of freedom of information laws.

It is sometimes assumed, however, the legislation only benefits professionals, such as the media, businesses and, indeed, politicians. However, two-thirds of the appeals made to me last year came from members of the public and that figure is on the rise.

The information people seek is often to do with factors which affect themselves or their communities. They want information on matters such as contracts to upgrade their homes, the outcomes of investigations into complaints made to an authority, or why a particular course of action was taken in respect of planning decisions.

From time to time, the release of information may be uncomfortable for authorities, or they may simply not like the extent to which the act is being used. In some countries, such as Ireland and Canada, this has led to the laws being amended to restrict the type of information being made available, or making it more costly to access it. The effect has been, not surprisingly, that the number of requests and appeals has fallen sharply.

At Westminster, a variety of measures is being proposed to change the FoI regime in the rest of the UK. Authorities would be allowed to charge for an official's "thinking time" when calculating how much it would cost to provide information.

Furthermore, if requests come from one source (say a newspaper or a campaigning organisation), then information on entirely unrelated matters could be withheld if the combined cost of responding over a 60-working-day period exceeded 600.

Additionally, there is even a private member's bill that would take the Houses of Parliament outside the scope of FoI laws altogether - which in the process would avoid details of MPs' expenses being released.

If these changes came into effect, then we would have markedly different regimes north and south of the Border, simply because such a revisionist approach has not been evident in Scotland.

That is not to say that freedom of information in Scotland is without its challenges. Authorities grumble that some types of requests make too many demands on their resources. Some applicants (journalists prominent among them) complain that the authorities use the provisions of the legislation too readily.

However, we are still in relatively early days. Where there are issues of friction, we should look pragmatically at what can be done to diminish these with the tools available, and by agreement. Certainly, we can improve good practice and invest in records management to minimise the costs of dealing with requests and appeals.

Looking beyond current issues, we also need to ensure that the rights to information are understood and used by all sectors of society, not just the adult male profile of existing users.

Furthermore, the time is certainly ripe to consider the possible effect of further transferring public-authority functions to private companies or charitable trusts, and the extent to which they should be kept within the freedom of information regime. Currently, private prisons, prison escort services, housing associations and even some former local authority leisure services are outside the scope of the act.

On any of these points, discussion should aim to build upon where we have come thus far, because the past two years have been an achievement.

• Kevin Dunion is the Scottish Information Commissioner.