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.’