Freedom Of Information: Who can save the Freedom of Information Act?

The battle to save the Freedom of Information Act reached the highest political echelons this week as Gordon Brown and David Cameron joined the debate for the first time.

Responding to a largely media-driven public outcry over the success of a Tory MP's attempt to restrict the freedom law, Brown and Cameron appear to have intervened on the side of information rights. David Cameron, the leader of the Conservative Party, said he did not support his colleague David Maclean's Private Member's Bill to exempt MPs, peers and the offices of Parliament from the right-to-know legislation. Mr Brown adopted a similar position and even suggested he would go a step further and block the Lord Chancellor's plan to further restrict access to the legislation by curtailing the media's use of the law. So can we all sleep soundly in our beds knowing that the future of open government is being championed by the two most important politicians in the country? Not yet.

A closer examination of Brown/Cameron opposition to the Maclean bill shows that their support for information rights is far from whole-hearted. Yes, they believe that it is wrong to try to protect MPs from having to publish details of their expenses but they don't say what they think of the general principle of an over-riding exemption for MPs in relation to other information.

For example, does Gordon Brown believe it is right that we shouldn't know what a Labour MP has written to a regional authority or NHS trust about a campaign to stop the closure of a local hospital? Is it really too cynical to suggest that the MP might not want to reveal publicly the kind of arguments he or she is prepared to use to keep a hospital open, or ensure that an waste incinerator is not built where their constituents live? If both projects are part of government policy, the information disclosed might be politically embarrassing.

Yet, MPs continue to claim that the Maclean bill is all about protecting their constituents' privacy, which might be breached if they had to disclose private correspondence. Campaigners are getting fed up with having to repeat the point that the Freedom of Information Act already prevents disclosure of this kind of information.

Yesterday Richard Thomas, the Information Commissioner, said he hadn't had a single complaint from a member of the public about information being disclosed in this way. In a speech to the annual FOI Live conference in London, he said that the two year-old right-to-know law was good for people and good for government.

He argued that freedom of information was fast becoming a fixed feature of 21st-century democracy and warned that it should not be seen as a battleground between public bodies and the people.

It was Mr Thomas who first ordered the disclosure of MPs' expenses, a decision that was upheld by the Information Tribunal this year. He said yesterday:

After nearly two and a half years Freedom of Information is delivering real benefits. It is now recognised as a key feature of our modern democracy which is changing public sector culture. There is a presumption of disclosure, unless there is a genuine reason to withhold information. This must trump any instinct of unnecessary secrecy which simply suggests a public authority has something to hide.

Of course, there are bound to be times when the Freedom of Information Act may be uncomfortable. But openness - even where it reveals uncertainties, disagreements or embarrassments - treats citizens as grown-ups and reflects the realities of public life. People respect honesty, not cover-up.

r.verkaik@independent.co.uk