No FoI required

Sadly things can go wrong at hospital

One really positive thing about the Freedom of Information Act is how it has made organisations proactively release information.

I waste many an hour clicking down blind alleys on the internet in the hope of turning up an information gem.

One such organisation that publishes a lot of its material as a matter of course on the web is the National Health Service Litigation Authority (NHSLA).

This organisation has the unenviable job of paying out for medical negligence claims that occur within the NHS. It pays for these claims by billing NHS organisations, mainly hospital trusts, a premium for cover, and then it administers any payouts.

Therefore the NHSLA has a database that contains how much each Trust pays for cover as well as how much has been paid out in claims for that particular organisation.

All of this information is on openly available websites that anybody with an internet connection can click on to. Here are the most recently available figures. NHSLAFactsheet5201011.

From my local newspaper days it seems a crying shame that so few reporters have latched on to this organisation as the data can be used to provide some illuminating articles about the level of care provided by their local hospital.

I used the data this week for a story that appeared in the Sunday Express.

Sunday Express

Beeb and Bernie - Part II

I'm afraid there is no trophy. Sorry.

You may well be away that the BBC has found itself at the centre of a sexism row involving its nominations for Sports Personality of the Year.

All the ten candidates are men and it has been disclosed that for some obscure reason people from “respectable” pornography magazines just as Nuts and Zoo were tasked with picking the nominees.

The BBC has said it will look again at how the process should be managed, but isn’t going to change anything for this year.

So, with that in mind I have decided to right a wrong. I will now announce to a fanfare of applause the FoI News Freedom of Information Officer of the Year Award 2011, otherwise known as the “Poison Chalice” award.

The award, which consists of no cash and no actual prize (so don’t bother to see if it is declared on any gift register) goes to Rachael Ward of the BBC.

“Why her?” I hear you cry. I’m sure she probably will not thank me for this, but it is awarded for displaying courage under fire from superiors. I’ll try to explain more fully.

After a considerable wrangle I eventually wrote a story based upon the fact that the BBC gave a set of Wimbledon men’s final tickets to multi-millionaire Bernie Ecclestone.

Having taken some time to extract this from the Beeb I suspected something might be amiss and sent off the dreaded “meta-request” – a request about a request – or the request of last resort.

When the response came back not only did it give a full account of how the details of Bernie’s tickets were released but also how FoI officer Ward stood firm in front of pressure from her superiors.

Her boss Dominic Coles e-mailed her saying: “Rather than naming Bernie Ecclestone specifically, can we not say two tickets were offered for use by Formula One Management?”  

She could have crumbled under the pressure of the six-figure pay packet, but she didn’t. She held on to the principles of FoI, buttressed by the law itself and sent me out Bernie’s name – much to Bernie’s initial annoyance.

The “cover-up that wasn’t” story appeared in the Mail on Sunday. For those of you interested the full BBC disclosure can be seen here. [RFI20111231 ].

My love-match with “Mr E”

Is that Matthew Davis on the line?

Every year I send an FoI request to the BBC to see how many free tickets the Corporation gets for Wimbledon.

Over the years the request has been modified to discriminate between tickets for No.1 and Centre Court and most recently who had received the tickets.

This year after a little bit of misunderstanding with the lovely people in the BBC’s FoI office I was eventually handed the names of the people who got the prize tickets, those for the men’s final on centre court.

Imagine my surprise when I see on the letter that one pair went to F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone. I knew I had a story and as you can see below it made a nice show in the Sun.

But then things took a turn for the worse when my phone rang on the morning the story was published. The conversation went a bit like this.

Caller: Is that Matthew Davis?

Me: Yes.

Caller: Mr Ecclestone here.

Me (in high voice): What Mr Bernie Ecclestone?

Caller: Yes, that’s me. Listen, I don’t like people who write lies about me. I didn’t get any freebie tickets for Wimbledon. Why would I have to accept freebies?

As you can imagine at this point I was getting a little concerned. Images of my bankruptcy, being forced to live in the street with my children foraging in dustbins flashed before my eyes.

I told him that I hadn’t made it up but had been provided with the information by the BBC, and seeing as it was a FoI response I was happy to forward it on to him. You can see a copy here Beeb’s FoI reply.

Later that day I got another personal call from Mr Ecclesstone, where he admitted being reminded by one of his staff that he did accept a pair of tickets from the BBC, but handed them on to the President of Valencia.

It all ended quite amicably and I had quite a nice chat with ‘Mr E’.

As a part-time media law lecturer one of the things that has always appealed to me about FoI is how the answer should always act as a justification against any potential legal problems, as long as your interpretation of it is correct. Hence the need to make your question as crystal clear as possible.

Come Fly Away With Me (Part II)

Sir High, former Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland

The row that centres on a Freedom of Information request around the free flights job perk offered to Sir Hugh Orde looks set to run and run.

To recap, the PSNI were forced to disclose – against Sir Hugh’s wishes – what sort of arrangement was in place to fund flights for his family.

This disclosure [link] reveals Sir Hugh had it written into his contract that members of his family were entitled to free flights paid for by the PSNI.

However, according to the documents released Sir Hugh, who successfully sued a newspaper over freebie flight allegations, agreed at some point during his tenure to repay 50% of the cost.

Of course the disclosure that his family were allowed free flights has sparked the obviously follow-up question of how much those flights had cost, and what exactly was the agreement within his contract of employment.

A member of the Northern Ireland assembly is already asking questions [link]. So I’ve asked the question here [link].

Sir Hugh, is now President of the Association of Chief Police Officers, an organisation which is expected to be admitted into the FoI regime in the not too distant future.

You can see my previous post on the topic here [link]. I can see this ending up at a Tribunal.

Iraq ‘cover up’

Sir Gus: Hands up everybody who thinks I deserve a knighthood.

Is it me? Why as I get older do things annoy me more, to the point where I can start shouting at the television.

The latest object of my middle-aged rage is Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O’Donnell. You’ve probably heard this story already but the details need repeating.

Sir John Chilcot is the person who was put in charge of the Iraq inquiry, which is investigating Britain’s role in the run-up to and the aftermath of the 2003 invasion.

As part of his remit to scrutinise the decisions that were made by the politicians at the time Sir John and the other members of his panel have had access to a blizzard of document and information.

Amongst them are notes of discussions and private memos relating to meetings between Tony Blair and George Bush – which you might have thought were probably quite important.

So much so that Sir John asked that he be allowed to make sections of them public – particularly as he would be questioning Tony Blair again about the issue on Friday.

Enter Sir Gus (why are they all Sirs I wonder?) who effectively put a veto on the matter and said the contents must remain secret.

So we have a Government inquiry where the Government have effectively muzzled the people they put in charge – something they said they wouldn’t do.

This is what Sir John said about the notes: “The inquiry recognises the privileged nature of those exchanges but, exceptionally, we sought disclosure of key extracts which illuminate Prime Minister Blair’s position at critical points.

“The inquiry is disappointed that the cabinet secretary was not willing to accede to this request.

“This means that in a narrow but important area the inquiry may not be able to publish as fully as it would wish the evidential basis for some of its comments and conclusions.”

It has been disclosed that Sir Gus contacted Mr Blair to seek permission to disclose the contents of the documents.

Reg Keys, whose son Tom was killed in Iraq, said: “If there is nothing controversial in them, why are they shamelessly covered up?”

What really bugs me is that it seems like a return to the bad old days before Freedom of Information when if somebody said you couldn’t have something you just had to lump it.

What if we don’t agree with Sir Gus? What if we think the extracts in the memos should be made public? Why should we protect the former Prime Minister and George Bush, who have both made a mint selling their stories of their time in charge?

It leaves me with only one thing for me to do, ask for the letters using Freedom of Information rules [here]

 and then if they refuse at least I can complain.

Come fly away with me - NOT

Seeing as he sues probably better not put a smarta*** caption

The Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) is an organisation which has volunteered itself to become a new recruit to FoI whenever the Act spreads its wings to cover more bodies.

At the head of ACPO sits the plain-speaking Chief Constable Sir Hugh Orde, who last year gave delegates at the ACPO Information Compliance Conference his views on Freedom of Information and its ramifications for forces in general.

To those who heard his speech it was probably fair to say that some journalists were not his favourite people.

Little did I know at the time that the marathon-running Sir Hugh has had a somewhat chequered relationship with both the press and the Freedom of Information Act.

Essentially this post is about an Information Commissioner’s decision notice relating to the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) but to put it in context we need to appreciate some of the back story.

Before Sir Hugh’s lofty promotion to head up ACPO he was the top man at the PSNI and as such pocketed a salary of £180,000 and lived with his wife Lady Kathleen in a luxury £600,000 home.

As such he also claimed £75 for a wasp nest to be removed and £35.53p for a new window latch. Ironically he did pay for his own theft insurance, just in case he was burgled. This is all detailed in a Belfast Telegraph story [Perks of a Police Chief].

But what really got the press in Northern Ireland excited was the fact that Sir Hugh had a secret lover, who fell pregnant with his child, over the water in England. In articles he was quoted as saying his family were “supportive” of his affair.

This led to chit-chat about whether all his taxpayer-funded trips to England had been 100% necessary – or whether he was mixing pleasure with business so-to-speak.

[Why Sir Hugh’s out of Order], [Orde’s marathon sessions with lover] and [Orde steps out with new love] give a flavour of some of the atmosphere that was surrounding him at the time.

Throw into this mix a damaging and false story in Sunday World that Sir Hugh used PSNI money to fly his son to the US to attend St Patrick’s Day celebrations.

Sir Hugh sued for libel and the case was eventually settled with the policeman pocketing more than enough to buy a new pair of running shoes. [Police chief wins libel settlement].

With all that simmering away on the background somebody asked the PSNI if it had ever booked a flight on behalf of his son, even if his son eventually picked up the bill.

PSNI refused to either confirm or deny whether it held this information saying it was a breach of S.40(5) (personal information). Sir Hugh got involved because he himself told his force he did not want them to confirm or deny if it held the information. The applicant appealed the case and the Information Commissioner sided against Sir Hugh.

In the judgement he said: “It is the Commissioner’s view that, given that the request relates to information regarding the PSNI’s potential use of public resources to arrange travel arrangements on behalf of the former Chief Constable’s son, it was not reasonable for the former Chief Constable to expect the PSNI not to confirm or deny whether it held that information. Whilst acknowledging the expectations surrounding the right to a private family life, the Commissioner nevertheless considers that there is a significant expectation amongst the public regarding transparency about the use of public resources. In the Commissioner’s view it would have been reasonable to expect that the Chief Constable and his son would have recognised this fact and expected that the public authority to confirm or deny whether information was held in the circumstances.”

So PSNI were ordered to say if it held any such information and if it did to then go on to consider a further question which probed the details of what these flights might have been.

So when I hear Sir Hugh quoted about ACPO’s entrance into the FoI club saying: “Any organisation that operates as part of a key public service should be accountable and open to public scrutiny.” You can’t help but be a little cynical.

Clearly I may be more cynical than the next man but just how much of a FoI supporter is he when he has been shown to have incorrectly used the Act to try to shield himself and his family from the glare of public scrutiny.

Some people might have a lot of sympathy for him, saying he and his family had more than their fair share of public scrutiny. Others might say he brought it on himself.

You can read the decision notice [here] and I’ve asked to find out what eventually happened with this case [here].

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].

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.

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.’

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.