Media Law - More on the Freedom of Information Act

The basic principle of the Freedom of Information Act is that "any person making a request for information to a public authority is entitled... to have that information communicated to him" The idea behind it was that taxpayers pay (through tax) for the information to be produced therefore they own the information and should have access to it.

Over 130,000 public bodies are covered by the act and over 100,000 FOI requests are made a year at an estimated cost of £34million. Official figures state that of these 100,000 FOI requests only 12% of them come from journalists. However since you do not need to state that you are a journalist when requesting information critics would that journalists just lie as you would probably get a different answer if you say you are a journalist. Therefore the actual figure of journalists requesting information may be a lot higher.

Tony Blair introduced the Freedom of Information Act in 2005 and when reflecting back on it he said: "You idiot. You naive, foolish, irresponsible nincompoop. There is really no description of stupidity, no matter how vivid, that is adequate. I quake at the imbecility of it." He later explained why he thought it was such a bad idea; "If you are trying to take a difficult decision and you're weighing up the pros and cons, you have frank conversations... And if those conversations then are put out in a published form that afterwards are liable to be highlighted in particular ways, you are going to be very cautious. That's why it's not a sensible thing."

Right now, we are in the golden age of freedom of information. Anything that is written down can be requested and everything before 2005 was written down so all those years of information are highly accessible. However now everything is spoken so there is no access to it.

Freedom of information requests have to be in writing but email is fine. FOI requests can be refused if obtaining the information would exceed £600 or the information is exempt. There are two types of exemptions:

• Absolute exemptions -  For example, national security and military opertions information and court records.
• Qualified exemptions - For example, ministerial communications and commercial confidentiality.

The only defense that you have for publishing exempt information is that its in the public interest, the ever so hard to define term, and not merely interesting to the public.

After putting in an FOI request, the relevant authority has 60 days in total to provide the information but they must contact you within 20 days, for example they may just say, "We have received your request." If after 60 days they have not provided the information then you can go to internal review, if that fails as well then you can go to an information commisioner, if you still have no luck you can go to an information tribunal and your last resort is the high court. This would take a lot of money and determination though. Funnily enough this is how the MP's expenses scandal story made it's way into the headlines, as the Daily Mail did not give up and eventually obtained the information and published it.