Scottish journalists fear FOI charges

Posted by Martin Stabe on 22 February 2006 at 13:00
Tags: Freedom of Information, Newspapers, Scotland

The Scottish Parliament deliberately drafted Scotland’s devolved Freedom of Information Act to be more liberal than the equivalent UK law. And it seems to have worked out that way. In an interview with the BBC’s “Good Morning Scotland” programme, the Scottish Information Commissioner, Kevin Dunion said open government has been well-received in Scotland:

“Tens of thousands of people have made requests, authorities by and large have responded extremely well and I’ve received over 570 appeals to my office - far more than I had anticipated but it reflects how the act has been enthusiastically used by the Scottish public.”

The interview cames Dunion published the annual report (PDF) for his office’s first year of enforcing the Scottish FOIA. In the Herald, Iain Macwhirter praises Dunion’s work and notes that the general public has been making the most use of the Act — just seven per cent of appeals to the Scottish Information Commissioner came from members of the media.

But there are some storm clouds gathering as well: There is some indication that the Scottish Executive may be planning to impose a fee for each FOI request. Scotsman political editor Hamish MacDonell reports:

… insiders at the Information Commission said Mr Dunion was preparing for a battle with ministers over proposals to levy higher charges, a move which the commissioner feels would undermine the basic principles of the legislation.

A source said: “There is a very real danger of this happening. They [people in the Executive] have been complaining about the cost of answering questions and the drain on staff time. Ministers are reviewing it and a charging system may be the next step.”

One member of the Executive who seems to favour fees — which led to a collapse in FOI requests by journalists when they were imposed in the Republic of Ireland — is Margaret Curran, the minister for parliamentary business in the Scottish Parliament. Curran, reports the Scotsman, feels fees should be charged to stop individuals submitting multiple requests, which are expensive to process.