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Printable editing passages - Taxi for the Beeb

BBC bigwig Jana Bennett could have saved the Corporation thousands if she'd mastered how to use the tardis.

Imagine you are an employee at the BBC and you need a taxi for yourself or a guest who is going to appear on your show.

The procedure would appear to be that you contact a company called One Transport. They arrange the taxi for you, they pay the taxi for you and then send the BBC a bill not just for the taxi ride but also for them arranging it.

More than a year ago I asked the BBC how much they spent on providing taxis for staff and guests in the 08/09 financial year – the answer came back at around £14million.

But to my surprise the BBC wouldn’t say how much of this went into the pockets of One Transport, so I appealed.

The BBC which had claimed the information was exempt under S.43(2), refused my appeal and I have ended up at the Information Commissioner’s door yet again.

He, I thought unsurprisingly, sided with me saying there was no evidence shown of how prejudice to the BBC or One Transport could be likely to occur by releasing the figure.

But then the BBC appealed and now I find myself looking down the barrels of another Tribunal with the Information Commissioner and myself on one side of the argument and the BBC and One Transport on the other.

A hearing has been pencilled in for February 17 and 18. What will be interesting from my point of view as a journalist is the BBC will not only have to show that S.43(2) (Commercial Interests) is engaged but that the public interest is in favour of non-disclosure.

Particularly as the BBC’s taxi bill caused controversy recently after it was revealed that Match Of The Day pundits Alan Shearer, Alan Hansen and Mark Lawrenson are regularly chauffeured home to the North-east and Merseyside at licence payers’ expense.

Also April last year it was disclosed that three top BBC bosses spent £12,000 on taxis in 12 weeks. This included £4,862 racked up in fares - £75 per day - by its £515,000 then director of Vision, Jana Bennett (pictured).

As an Additional Party to the Tribunal hearing I had to get my skeleton argument in by yesterday so went through some of the arguments put down by the BBC and One Transport.

I have to say that if there can be a category of vexatious requestor there should also be a vexatious public authority – one which refuses to release information even in the face of overwhelming odds.

If there was such a category I feel the Beeb would be in line for the award in this case as some of their arguments are preposterous.

One of them was that if the information I had asked for was released other companies in the same market would know what the winning bid price was (this I consider to be a good thing!). Anyhow the BBC argument goes on that rivals would then bid under that price in a bid to win the contract when it is up for renewal (again I think this is a good thing!).

But in their eagerness to undercut their rivals the BBC fears the new lower bidders risk going bust – meaning the BBC are in danger of not having anybody left in business to provide its taxi service.

It is good to know, I suppose, that the BBC sees itself as an organisation that has to save private businesses from committing commercial suicide – or is it?

Anyhow as you can probably tell I’m pretty confident and if the BBC manage to win this appeal I’ll buy myself the Strictly Come Dancing DVD box set.

You can see the original Decision Notice [here].

Printable editing passages - Naked Brooke Shields - Shameless attempt to increase my hits!

Inappropriate motorbiking gear. The naked Brooke Shields' picture was replaced by the Tate Modern with this one.

Hollywood starlet Brooke Shields naked – if the start to this post doesn’t shoot me up the google rankings nothing will.

The full frontal image of Miss Shields standing in the bath naked, her face turned provocatively to the camera, has one deeply unsettling quality to it – the Ms Shields in the picture is only ten-years-old.

For centuries rich people and ‘clever’ people, and sometimes rich and ‘clever’ people have tried to justify pornography as art. When they do we have the makings of a controversy.  

That’s what happened at the Tate Modern when it put on display its image of a naked ten-year-old Brooke Shields.

The Tate, which has previously paid thousands of pounds for paintings constructed with elephant dung, took advice from lawyers about whether it should allow the Shields image to go on display.

One presumes that armed with this advice the photograph went on display only to be taken down when the Metropolitan Police visited the exhibition and warned it could be breaking obscenity laws.

Let me now nail my colours to the mast. I have seen the photo and after a momentary gaze at it you know that regardless of any laws it is just wrong.

When you then find out that, according to the Guardian, the image appeared in Playboy magazine with the full knowledge of Ms Shield’s mother it does nothing to quell any doubts you might have about the picture.

If somebody took a picture of a child like that and went to Boots to have them developed, you would expected the shop assistant to get straight on the phone to the police and the photographer arrested and jailed.

In all this preamble you may be wondering why this is appearing on my blog, which is ostensibly about Freedom of Information.

Well I asked for the legal advice supplied to the gallery by Withers LLP [link] on the assumption that they must have thought it was ok for the photograph to be displayed or it would never have gone on show.

Why do I think I should see the advice from the lawyers and break the sanctity of the S.42 (Legal Professional Privilege) exemption? Well as I see it there are two possible scenarios.

Firstly the lawyers told the Tate Modern not to put the picture on display but the gallery went ahead with it, risking prosecution knowing the image was potentially obscene. In which case there is a clear public interest in knowing that the state funding museum is run by people prepared to wilfully break our obscenity laws.

Secondly the lawyers told the Tate Modern the image was fine to display and shouldn’t bring any attention from the police. If this is the case then there is a clear public interest in knowing exactly what this erroneous advice was, as it was paid for with taxpayers money.

Of course there is a third possibility in that the advice from the lawyers was inconclusive (which would not really a big surprise). In which case I still say there is a clear public interest in establishing what the advice was, when it is taxpayers money being spent on it.

As an aside I don’t really think it takes swanky city lawyers to pontificate on whether this image should have been shown in the gallery or not – if you look at it you know it’s wrong and I challenge anybody to say different.

Well my request for the information was turned down by the Tate Modern. I appealed to the Information Commissioner, who also ruled against me [decision notice].

I then appealed to the Tribunal, but my appeal was out of time by a few days. The Tribunal allowed my appeal but the Information Commissioner appealed against me appealing out of time (confused!). The Tribunal then came down on my side and as we stand at the moment I am taking the Commissioner to a Tribunal over the matter.

WARNING: For those of you who want to see the image the head of Ms Shields, which cannot be considered indecent is on the Guardian site’s story of the controversy [here]. There is a website called iconic images which has the full picture which can be viewed (but don’t then come moaning to me) that you have been upset, revolted etc. It can be seen by clicking [here].

Printable editing passages - Olympics forced to reveal bonus details

Bonus payments. Nice if you get them.

I know I have been away for too long. I have ignored those of you with empty lives like me who hanker for any snippet of FoI related news or gossip.

Well now I’m back, I promise. This blog will get bigger and better. I was given a coffee-maker for Christmas and if I have to consume a double espresso at midnight to write this blog – then that’s what I’ll do.

Apart from the normal asking questions, getting answers, writing news stories I am becoming all too familiar with the workings of the Information Tribunal.

I’ll start today off with my experience of bringing my own appeal against the Information Commissioner and the Olympic Delivery Authority.

This case has rumbled on for months and a date was eventually set for November 10. On the day in question I arrived in London with all my papers but realised I was lacking one essential item – a remembrance poppy.

The horror of being the only person in the room without a poppy so consumed me that I began approaching strangers in the street asking to buy their one – and was refused. Eventually I got one from the Nationwide Building Society and was ready for legal war.

The key to the case was that I wanted to know how much the executive of the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) could have been paid as a maximum bonus, and what performance criteria determine those payments.

I’ve written about this case before [here and here] so I will not go over it in too much detail for those of you who are already familiar with it.

In summary I represented myself, the ODA had Mr Pitt-Payne QC of Panopticon fame and the Information Commissioner had barrister Joanne Clements. They brought along about 10 paper shufflers and I took my mum and dad, who I think are curious as to how their son makes a living.

I crossed swords with Sir Roy McNulty and then the ODA’s Aussie chief executive David Higgins (I should have mentioned the cricket).

Well the upshot of the whole thing is that I think if we continue with the Olympic theme I can award myself a bronze or silver medal. Gold I’m afraid I can’t lay claim to as the Tribunal decision was that the objectives that underpin the bonus payment should remain secret.

However, my appeal was upheld as it was stated that the ODA and the Commissioner should have allowed me to know what the maximum bonus was that the executives could have been paid.

My argument is that bonus payments are pretty meaningless to the general public unless we can know how much of their bonus they were awarded. A chief executive who gets a bonus of £50,000 might be doing a good job, but if he could have got £500,000 if his performance had been better, I’d say he was pretty poor.

Anyhow, expect questions on executives’ bonus payments in the near future. There is a link [here] to the decision of the Tribunal and [here] to a revised question for the ODA.

Next week more of my Tribunal skirmishes with the BBC, the Royal Mail and the Tate Modern over a nude picture of Brooke Shields.

Printable editing passages - JOB - Assistant Information Governance Officer - £25k/£28k - Glasgow

University of Strathclyde - Assistant Information Governance Officer - £25k/£28k - Glasgow

Closing date: 12/01/11

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Printable editing passages - JOB - Information Asset Manager - £30k/£40k - Surrey

Surrey & Borders Partnership NHS Foundation Trust - Information Asset Manager - £30k/£40k - Surrey

Closing date: 26/01/11

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Printable editing passages - Clegg hints at FoI extension

Nick, why wouldn't we trust you?

The first details of what might appear in the new coalition Government’s Freedom Bill have started to leak out.

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg suggested in an interview with the Daily Mail that hundreds more taxpayer-funded and charitable bodies should come under the Freedom of Information Act.

New organisations that could be caught by the Act include Network Rail, the Advertising Standards Authority, the Local Government Association and utility companies, who must have thought they had escaped the clutches of the Act following a recent Tribunal decision.

In the interview Mr Clegg said that if an organisation’s behaviour and decisions had ‘clear consequences for the public good, people must be able to see right into the heart of them’.

He also said that the Information Commissioner’s Office is to be overhauled to make it independent of the Ministry of Justice.

The Deputy Prime Minister said Britain remained a society where information was ‘hoarded by the few’.

He said: ‘As we know, information is knowledge, and knowledge is power.

‘People cannot be free when the state is forever on their back; when their liberties are denied and their autonomy is undermined. So this Government is going to restore British freedoms.

‘It is part of our wider project to resettle the relationship between people and government.

‘Free citizens must be able to hold big institutions and powerful individuals to account, and not only the Government.

‘There are a whole range of organisations who benefit from public money and whose activities have a profound impact on the public good.

‘In order to do so, citizens must first know what goes on in these institutions, and they must be at liberty to speak out about the things they discover.

‘It is a modern right to information combined with traditional freedom of expression.

‘Recent years have seen some progress on transparency, most notably through the introduction of the Freedom of Information Act.

‘But that progress has stalled. The Freedom of Information Act was a good start, but it was only a start.

‘Exceptions remain far too common and the available information is too often placed behind tedious bureaucratic hurdles.

‘The previous Labour Government knew this but chose to respond to repeated calls for the extension of freedom of information by kicking the issue into the long grass.’

Printable editing passages - Commons FoI debate

A potential Liberal Democrat

 A former Labour minister has taken a public swipe at the appointment of Christopher Graham as Information Commissioner.

Labour MP Denis MacShane was speaking in the House of Commons as part of a debate on the possible extension of the Freedom of Information Act.

In it he questioned the political independence of Mr Graham who has been an active member of the Liberal Party.

Mr MacShane said: “We also need to look at the UK Information Commissioner. That distinguished gentleman spent the early part of his life serving as a Liberal Democrat councillor, and he has twice stood as a Liberal Democrat candidate for Parliament.

“I wonder whether the Information Commissioner should be so connected, in such a direct political way, with one of the parties now in government.”

Some might say he has become a little detached after leaving Government in that he proposes that the Freedom of Information Act should also be applied to newspapers – I presume his tongue firmly was in his cheek at the time.

He was speaking as part of a motion brought by Liberal Democrat Tom Brake to extend the scope and power of the Freedom of Information Act.

Mr Brake wants to see the Act extended to more organisations, public authorities given less time to consider the public interest test, the ditching of the ministerial veto and make it easier to prosecute authorities for the offence of altering a record.

A full transcript of the exchange can be found here.

Mr McShane also mentioned that the “blog rats” who spread rumours about William Hague being gay had somehow used the Freedom of Information Act to circulate their story – if anybody knows anything about this I’d like to know how, please get in touch.

The video clip has got nothing to do with FoI but I just like it and it might make you smile. If you enjoy it there are a whole load more of his clips on the BBc website.

Printable editing passages - Waste? Yes. Waist? No.

Thanks to the Daily Mirror for this.

When our new Justice Secretary Ken Clarke was interviewed on the television about his appointment in the cabinet he made a joke about how he looked in silk stockings.

Hopefully as somebody who rarely misses a trick I thought I’d wait to see what his inauguration outfit looked like before firing in a question to the Ministry of Justice.

When the answer came back that the clothes he wore for the ceremony cost around £20,000 it was clearly going to be a story – although from my point of view it was a shame that the vast bulk of the cost was incurred by Jack “The Veto” Straw who felt it necessary to spend £18,000 on the gown. Who says politicians can be out of touch?

Anyhow the reason for bringing this story to your attention is that when I sent in my question to the MoJ I couldn’t help myself and thought if I’m paying for Ken Clarke’s breeches then I wonder what size they are.

But the MoJ didn’t fall for that. Although they gave me the cost of his costume the details of his girth will remain subject to a S.40 exemption. [MoJ response]

The MoJ said: “Section 40(2) provides that personal data about third parties is exempt information if one of the conditions set out in section 40(3) is satisfied. Under Section 40(2) together with section 40 (3) (a) (i) of the FOIA disclosure of this information relating to third party would breach the fair processing principle, as there was a legitimate expectation by a third party, that this information would remain confidential.”

And we must remember that disclosure of his breeches would be a breach of the Data Protection Act.

Printable editing passages - Can FoI work miracles?

So sunny! That's almost a miracle.

The first time I went to Ireland I bought a Ryanair ticket to Knock on the west coast. Due to cloud cover, which let’s face it is not unusual in Ireland, the pilot made three daredevil attempts to locate the landing strip, gave up and dumped us in Dublin.

So for me Knock has never had a connection with all things miraculous – rather I remember it as the destination of a four-hour coach trip that I shouldn’t have needed to take.

Yet Knock, in Co Mayo, is a town highly significant for Roman Catholics as it is said to have been the site of a vision of the Virgin Mary in 1879. Since then millions of Catholics have flocked to the shrine including John Paul II and Mother Teresa – although I doubt they took the coach.

Anyhow the Freedom of Information Act in Ireland is being used in an attempt to verify a real life miracle.

The following story from the Irish News explains:

A WOMAN who walked away from Knock Shrine despite being paralysed by multiple sclerosis may become the first ‘miracle’ case in the 131-year-old history of the famous pilgrimage site.

 Athlone woman Marian Carroll claims she lived with the symptoms of MS for 17 years and became so ill she could not walk, was blind in one eye and incontinent. But everything changed 21 years ago when she visited Knock Shrine.

 “When I went down to Knock I was like a baby. I couldn’t do anything,” Mrs Carroll told the Western People.

 The 59-year-old says that she wasn’t “looking for a cure” that day. She said that she was wheeled into the basilica on a stretcher and was about to receive Holy Communion when she felt a sharp pain in her heels. She claims that the “most wonderful feeling” came over her and told her if the stretcher was opened, she could get up and walk. When she did, she was instantly free of pain. She says she has remained free of the symptoms of MS ever since that day.

 “There is no doubt in my mind that it was a miracle,” she said.

 Pat Lavelle, manager of the shrine in Knock, confirmed to this newspaper that attempts are being made to have Mrs Carroll’s case classified as a miracle.

 “This is the first case in 131 years,” he said. “The case complies with the two main conditions of a miraculous cure; it’s instant and it’s total,” he said.

 However, Vatican approval for the “miracle” may be problematic as Mrs Carroll did not have a full diagnosis.

 “At that time, it was process of elimination. Nowadays they do scans and verify early on that it is MS,” said Mr Lavelle.

 The shrine manager has contacted everyone who knew Mrs Carroll at the time, including the nurses in the hospital in Athlone who cared for her before her trip to Knock and the ambulance driver and nursing attendant on the day.

 Diarmuid Murray, a GP who runs a practice on the shrine grounds, has gathered Mrs Carroll’s medical details. Her files had to be requested under the Freedom of Information Act as doctors declined to co-operate. The Catholic Communications Office says the case will be forwarded to the Vatican for consideration.