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oF InFoRMatIon
WORDS BY ElisHEva sokolic
to lower teen pregnancies. With this information at our fingertips, we can’t help but question the ability of those in charge. How can we trust our MPs or our police officers? Or on a more day-to-day level, our children’s school teachers or the NHS? More worrying still is if this is what we’ve found out, what else don’t we know?
Boris Johnson’s lovechild, Kate Middleton’s topless sunbathing, even Roger Moore’s sex life.
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or many, this is what springs to mind when we mention freedom of information. But behind the sanctioned celebrity gossip and the debate on invasion of privacy, the real struggle is ongoing. How far are the public entitled to question the law enforcers and rule makers of this country? Do we as the public have a right to know everything when it comes to the government? In 2005, the full provisions of the Freedom of Information Act were put into place, and around 120,000 requests are made under it each year. This act gives us access to information from bodies which perform functions of a public nature, including the government, media, schools, colleges, and the NHS. Since its enactment, there is no doubt that some shocking revelations have been uncovered. Over 200 police officers serving within the Metropolitan Police have criminal records; more than 1000 girls aged 14 and under have abortions every year; illegal immigrants are using university courses to obtain visas, despite not showing up after enrolment; maybe most worrying was the discovery that the NHS had been giving girls as young as 13 contraceptive injections which made them infertile for up to three years, in an attempt
Unfortunately, far from helping the public to answer their valid questions and put our minds at rest, key figures in the political arena have actually fought to limit its influence. Tony Blair, responsible for passing the act, has now backpedalled into naming it “one of the biggest mistakes of [his] career.” Blair feels that the media are using the act to attack the government, merely as a form of aggression. “The information is neither sought because the journalist is curious to know, nor given to bestow knowledge on ‘the people’,” he wrote in his 2010 autobiography. “It’s used as a weapon.”
Over 200 police officers serving within the Metropolitan Police have criminal records Labour peer Lord Falconer has also been disappointed with the results of the act, criticising journalists for what he terms “fishing expeditions” where the media are actively searching for scandalous stories within Parliament. “[The Freedom of Information Act] is not for press, it is for the people. It needs to be properly used in order to promote good Government. Information needs to be handled responsibly.” Most worrying of all, an amendment bill was put forward to Parliament in 2007. It suggested that the Freedom of Information Act could no longer be used on any correspondence between MPs. Fortunately for the fight for transparency,
Sir Menzies Campbell spoke out against the bill, arguing there shouldn’t “be one law for MPs and a different law for everyone else” and the bill failed to pass a first reading. However, its very existence, together with the ministerial veto on the act itself (so far used 5 times) suggests that Parliament has something to hide. It is this lack of trust in our government and the reach of the Freedom of Information Act that has led to the popularity of organisations such as Wikileaks, where news and information, along with proofs and sources, are given to the public anonymously, all in the pursuit of transparency. They claim that “better scrutiny leads to reduced corruption and stronger democracies.” With the help of these arguments, freedom of information has moved beyond the Act itself. This decade is seeing the public make transparency their own responsibility. In a similar way to Wikileaks, across the board we are seeing individuals and organisations fight for more information and better examination of public facts and figures. Take the case of Boris Johnson’s alleged daughter with Helen Macintyre. Some would argue that his moral standing has no effect on his ability to serve as Mayor of London. This would make this case fall outside of the realm of freedom of information and more into that of celebrity gossip. Nevertheless, Lord Justice Dyson ruled that it was “a public interest matter which the electorate was entitled to know when considering his fitness for high public office”. As an individual, Lord Dyson has highlighted the growing public attitude in favour of wider-reaching disclosure. On a larger scale, this public need for freedom of information has led to successful ventures such as Sara Payne’s ‘Sarah’s Law’, where individuals can search to see if someone in contact with their child has a history as a sex offender. One anonymous father commented, “Without [Sarah’s law] we would have had no way of knowing that this man was not to be trusted.” The success of schemes like Sarah’s Law and Wikileaks, and the popularity behind individual decisions like Lord Dyson’s are just a few of the proofs that the world is moving towards greater transparency. Agree or not, we are taking our right to know seriously, and where the government may fail, we have no qualms in taking matters into our own hands.