The Freedom of Information Act 2000 (c. 36) (FOIA) is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that creates a public right of access to information held by public authorities. It is the implementation of freedom of information legislation in the United Kingdom on a national level. Its application is limited in Scotland (which has its own freedom of information legislation) to UK Government offices located in Scotland. The act implements a manifesto commitment of the Labour Party in the 1997 general election, developed by David Clark as a 1997 White Paper. The final version of the act was criticised by freedom of information campaigners as a diluted form of what had been proposed in the White Paper. The full provisions of the act came into force on 1 January 2005. The act was the responsibility of the Lord Chancellor's Department (now renamed the Ministry of Justice). However, freedom of information policy is now the responsibility of the Cabinet Office. The act led to the renaming of the Data Protection Commissioner (set up to administer the Data Protection Act 1998), who is now known as the Information Commissioner. The Office of the Information Commissioner oversees the operation of the act.
A second freedom of information law is in existence in the UK, the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (asp 13). It was passed by the Scottish Parliament in 2002, to cover public bodies over which the Holyrood parliament, rather than Westminster, has jurisdiction. For these institutions, it fulfils the same purpose as the 2000 Act.
Around 120,000 requests were made in the first year that the act was in force."Independent Review of the impact of the Freedom of Information Act: A REPORT PREPARED FOR THE DEPARTMENT FOR CONSTITUTIONAL AFFAIRS", Frontier Economics Ltd, October 2006. Retrieved on 28 May 2012. Private citizens made 60% of them, with businesses and journalists accounting for 20% and 10% respectively. However, requests from journalists tended to be more complex, and, consequently, more expensive. They accounted for around 10% of initial FoI requests made to central government, but 20% of the costs of officials' time in dealing with the requests. The act cost £35.5 million in 2005."Every expense spared", The Economist, 19 December 2006, Number 8532, page 46. Retrieved on 20 July 2011.
Background The act implements what was a manifesto commitment of the Labour Party in the 1997 general election. Before its introduction, there had been no right of access to government by the general public, merely a limited voluntary framework for sharing information.
The white paper The act was preceded by a 1998 white paper, Your Right to Know, by David Clark. The White paper was met with widespread enthusiasm, and was described at the time as being "almost too good to be true" by one advocate of freedom of information legislation. The final act was substantially more limited in scope than the initial white paper.
Parliamentary debate A draft bill was published in May 1999; the bill was extensively debated in the House of Commons and the House of Lords, and received royal assent in November 2000.
How the act affected access to public records The FOIA modernised the Public Records Act 1958. This act gave the public a general right to access all types of recorded information held by public authorities, much greater than was previously allowed. The FOIA was mainly concerned with the management and preservation of public records.
Access to more recent records The FOIA reduced the 30-year rule to a 20-year rule, meaning records would be made public earlier. This gave the public the ability to access more recent records without sacrificing national security or personal privacy.
Creation of the Information Commissioner's Office A significant part of the FOIA was the establishment of the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO). This office oversees the upholding of information rights in the public interest, as well as making sure the FOIA is adhered to properly. If someone thinks a public body is intentionally not releasing the information they have asked for, the ICO is the agency to contact. They are essentially the centralised management and oversight agency for all things pertaining to public records.
Real-time reporting While there was still a waiting period for the public to access records, the FOIA also established a system of real-time reporting of records to the National Archives which could be accessed by all UK government agencies.
Digitisation of public records This is also when public records began to become digitised which also meant that the time frame for accessing records was immediate or real-time. This is an ongoing process that started with the advent of the digital age of the 21st century and is today a common practice for all UK public records.
Act
Applicability The Freedom of Information Act creates a statutory right for access to information in relation to bodies that exercise functions of a public nature. Three different kinds of bodies are covered under the act: Public Authorities, publicly owned companies and designated bodies performing public functions.
Public authorities In principle, the freedom of information act applies to all "public authorities" within the United Kingdom. A full list of "public authorities" for the purposes of the act is included in Schedule 1. Government departments, the Houses of Parliament, the Northern Ireland Assembly, the Welsh Assembly, the armed forces, local government bodies, National Health Service bodies, schools, colleges and universities, police authorities and Chief Officers of Police are included within this list, which ranges from the Farm Animal Welfare Council to the Youth Council for Northern Ireland. A few government departments are expressly excluded from the scope of the act, principally intelligence services. The act does not cover the Scottish Parliament and Scottish Government, which are instead subject to the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002.
As government departments are created or closed, the act must be continually updated. Schedule 4 of the act empowers the Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs to add a body or officeholder to Schedule 1 as a public authority if they are created statute or prerogative; and its members are appointed by the government.
Hybrid public authorities For some public authorities listed under Schedule 1, the act has limited effect. For example, the BBC is subject to the act only for information which is not held for the purposes of journalism, art or literature, to prevent its journalistic activities from possible compromise. The scope of this provision was considered in the 2007 High Court decision of BBC v Sugar, an internal BBC document examining the BBC coverage of the Middle East for potential bias. The appellants in that case argued that the document had been produced for both operational and journalistic reasons, and so should not be covered by the partial exemption provided in the act. The High Court rejected this argument; Mr Justice Irwin considered that the meaning of journalism within the act meant that any information held for such purposes was covered by the exemption:
My conclusion is that the words in the Schedule mean the BBC has no obligation to disclose information which they hold to any significant extent for the purposes of journalism, art or literature, whether or not the information is also held for other purposes. The words do not mean that the information is disclosable if it is held for purposes distinct from journalism, art or literature, whilst it is also held to any significant extent for those listed purposes. If the information is held for mixed purposes, including to any significant extent the purposes listed in the Schedule or one of them, then the information is not disclosable.
A 4:1 majority (Lord Wilson dissenting) of the Supreme Court upheld this decision, stating that the disclosure of any information held for the purposes of journalism, art or literature was to be excluded - even if the information was predominantly held for other purposes.Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, Press Summary: Sugar (Deceased) (Represented by Fiona Paveley) (Appellant) v British Broadcasting Corporation (Respondent) [2012 UKSC 4], published 15 February 2012, accessed on 8 September 2024
Publicly owned companies Companies that fall within the definition of a publicly owned company under s6 of the act automatically fall within its grasp. S6 provides that a company is publicly owned if:
(a) it is wholly owned by the Crown, or (b) it is wholly owned by any public authority listed in Schedule 1 other than (i) a government department, or (ii) any authority which is listed only in relation to particular information.
Designated bodies Under Section 5 of the act, the Secretary of State may designate further bodies as public authorities under the act, provided that those bodies are exercising a function of a public nature or contracting to provide a service whose provision is a function of a public authority. The first order under section 5 (in November 2011) extended the list of public authorities to also include the Association of Chief Police Officers, the Financial Ombudsman Service and UCAS.
Schedule 1 of the act deliberately uses generic descriptions to ensure the legislation's wide application, and does not need to specifically mention every organisation classed as a public authority under FOIA.
Right of access The act creates a general right of access, on request, to information held by public authorities. On receipt of a freedom of information claim a public authority has two corresponding duties. First, a duty to inform a member of the public whether or not it holds the information requested (s1(1)(a)), and second, if it does hold that information, to communicate it to the person making that request (s1(1)(b)). As the corollary to this, the act thus grants the equivalent rights to a confirmation or denial and communication of relevant information to an individual making a request under the act. The basic duty is supplemented by an additional duty to aid individuals in making requests and ensuring that they frame their FOI requests appropriately. (s.16(1))
However, there are numerous exemptions. Some of these are absolute bars to disclosure; some are qualified, which means the public authority has to decide whether the public interest in disclosing the relevant information outweighs the public interest in maintaining the exemption. An applicant for information who considers that a request has been wrongly rejected may apply to the Information Commissioner, who has the power to order disclosure. However, such orders can be appealed to a specialist tribunal (the Information Tribunal) and in some circumstances, the Government has the power to override orders of the Information Commissioner.
Any person can request information under the act; this includes legal entities such as companies. There is no special format for a request. Applicants do not need to mention the act when making a request. Applicants do not have to give a reason for their request.
Exemptions Although the act covers a wide range of government information, the act contains a variety of provisions that provide for the exemption from disclosure of certain types of information. The act contains two forms of exemption: "absolute" exemptions that are not subject to any public interest assessment, they act as absolute bars to the disclosure of information; and "qualified" exemptions where a public interest test must be made, balancing the public interest in maintaining the exemption against the public interest in disclosing the information. The original Freedom of Information White Paper proposed 15 such exemptions, but the final Bill included 24, and not all of the initial 15 were included.
Absolute exemptions