Scottish council's transparency on FOI requests

A local authority in the north-east of Scotland has become the first local authority in Scotland to publicise details of who is making Freedom of Information requests from it - with an estimated 40 per cent coming from the media.reports Allmedia Scotland

The authority,Moray Council has put the information for requests on its website along with its responses and performance rate which it says is currently 97 per cent.

The Council currently receives more than 500 FOI requests each year.

Want a story-Put in a FOI

If you are a journalist and you are stuck for a story,why not put in a freedon of information request.
This seems the sure fire way of getting a good lead or a different insight into a subject.

According to Press Gazette,it

has led to the media publishing more than 1,000 stories based on disclosures by public authorities in just two years,

and have amongst many subjects led to

significant disclosures about the Iraq conflict, the possible cause of Gulf war syndrome, assaults on public service staff, the state of civil service morale, compensation paid to victims of medical accidents, schools' efforts to inflate their exam results, hospital techniques for deflating waiting lists, the universities teetering on the edge of financial collapse, police officers with criminal records, government efforts to encourage gambling, lobbying by multinational oil, pharmaceutical and food companies, nuclear safety and other hazards, crimes committed by offenders on parole, unpublicised prison escapes, the expansion of the national DNA database and innumerable reports about high expenses claims and dubious public spending

Sunday Mail scoops Maclean

I like it when newspapers come up with a front page scoop and yesterday's Mail on Sunday lead with a brilliant story after looking a little closer at David Maclean.

Maclean you may recall is the sponser of the current amendment going through the House of Commons which exempts MP'S from the provisions of the freedom of information act.

How apt then when the paper reports on its front page that

One wife, two mistresses... and a quad bike on Commons expenses

According to the paper

David Maclean, the author of new legislation limiting
voters' rights to know about their MP's pay and perks, has admitted that his
top-of-the-range 250cc all-terrain vehicle was paid for out of taxpayer-funded
allowances.

But the best quote comes from the Tory MP himself who said

Yes, I do have a quad bike and yes, I have bought it on
expenses.
"I can see the headlines now, "Maclean, who once had an affair,
using quad bike to ride round his constituency with his mistress on the back."'

MP's opt out of FOI

So MP's have decided that they can be exempted from the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act after voting on the Private members bill put forward by former Tory Whip David Maclean.

The whole thing stinks of hypocracy after such trumpeting by the governemnt when it was initially brought in over 7 years ago.

There was a discussion on the Today programme this morning with Ming Campbell who thought that this was double standards as Gordon Brown has made much of increasing the accountability of Parliament from the hustings.

The argument put forward by the backers of the bill is that it protects infromation that may be detrimental to constituents but as Ming pointed out these provisions are already within the existing act.

So why bother to change?

BBC protected by FOI

So the BBC clings onto the shirt tails of the Freedom of Information Act.On Friday the corporation won the right to keep its report on the coverage of the Middle East secret.

For those who have not been following the case,the corporation commissioned the internal report in 2004 and Michael Balen put together the report after watching hundreds of hours of television and radio reports.

The judge in the case found that the BBC were exempt because they were covered by the exemption that denies public access where the informatio is held for the purposes of art,literature and most importantly journalism.

Whether Steven Sugar is successful in his appeal to the new Chairman,Sir Michael Lyons,the BBC probaly feel vindicated by the report from last year when it was cleared of systematic bias in its reportng of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

What this means for FOI is unclear.Chris Tythorn writing in Media Guardian describes the ruling as having

"dealt a further blow to freedom of information campaigners"

The BBC after all is a public body as well as an artistic corporation the BBC maintains the report was purely internal

"We believe that programme-makers must have the space to be able to freely discuss and reflect on editorial issues in support of independent journalism,"