[Ed Hammond]

We are currently preparing a response to a call for evidence from the Justice Select Committee, who are carrying out post-legislative scrutiny on the Freedom of Information Act.

In English, that means that the select committee are looking at how the FOIA has had an impact, positive and/or negative, in advance of the Government's plans to legislate again on the subject. We're advised that a new Freedom of Information Act (perhaps not with that name) is going to be tabled in the near future which will expand the FOI regime to encompass a wider array of bodies.

I'm interested to hear of instances where you've used the powers in the Act to get hold of information, or where members of the public have used it in relation to work you've carried out (or indeed where members of the public have subjected scrutiny itself to FOI requests). What I'm trying to tease out is whether the Act is actively used by scrutiny to get information, or if it's very much a long stop, used infrequently in a public service landscape where most public bodies are comfortable with sharing information on an ongoing basis (fairly sure it will be the latter).

Any thoughts you might have on the expansion of the powers in the Act would of course be of use as well.

[Shelley Burke]

Hi Ed

It's an important long stop for us. On the whole there isn't much difficulty getting information we want for scrutiny committees, but there was an occasion when a previous OSC chair used it to get council performance data that had been removed from an agenda, and it sent a powerful message.

[Ed Hammond]

Thanks Shelley - that's really interesting. I'm particularly keen to get the opinions of information requesters represented in the response - could you / the councillor concerned get in touch with me directly to explain a bit more about what happened?

Same goes for anyone else with a similar experience.

[Ed Hammond]

Apropos this, I am currently putting the response together and am planning to include a section on Schedule 12A.

Anecdotal evidence suggests to me that councils are still taking an expansive approach to the exclusions in Schedule 12A - taking the opportunity to use it to exclude entire reports from public agendas, rather than just the exempt information, not taking full account of public interest issues when deciding to put things on Part II agendas - that kind of thing. There's no central information on the use of Schedule 12A and I don't want to go about making generalised comments backed up by anecdote which don't reflect broader experience, so I thought I would float it here before including it.

Does anyone think that this is particularly off-beam?

[Martyn Harris]

Hi Ed - that chimes with my experience too. At my previous authority there was a move to have separate public/exempt reports, with as much as possible being in the public report. I have had experience of reports which were on the border, having some sensitive data inserted with purpose, to absolutely make sure a report goes as exempt.

I wonder if the use/abuse of Schedule 12A would be good for a Scrutiny Review? Maybe not. Any thoughts?

(19-01-2012 01:43 PM)Ed Hammond Wrote:  Apropos this, I am currently putting the response together and am planning to include a section on Schedule 12A.

Anecdotal evidence suggests to me that councils are still taking an expansive approach to the exclusions in Schedule 12A - taking the opportunity to use it to exclude entire reports from public agendas, rather than just the exempt information, not taking full account of public interest issues when deciding to put things on Part II agendas - that kind of thing. There's no central information on the use of Schedule 12A and I don't want to go about making generalised comments backed up by anecdote which don't reflect broader experience, so I thought I would float it here before including it.

Does anyone think that this is particularly off-beam?

[Ed Hammond]

Thanks for that Martyn - it does reflect personal experience and informal conversations I've had with others elsewhere. I do think that I may need to be quite careful though - I am not a local government lawyer and don't wish to incur the wrath of the nation's monitoring officers by commenting on things that are connected to scrutiny, but which are more legal and constitutional in nature than matters with which I usually deal! It's important, too, to bear in mind that while anecdotal experience may support this view, it wouldn't be write to give the Committee the view that this is based on some kind of unimpeachable empirical analysis of practice in all 350 English councils.

I'll consider what to do.