The move comes amid significant opposition from pressure groups
and media companies, who say that the changes would have hindered
access to information about the activities of public bodies. Of the
324 people or organisations who responded to the Government's
consultation on the plan, 73% objected to it, the Ministry of
Justice said.
"Many respondents considered the proposals contrary to
democratic process," said the Ministry's summary of survey
responses. "Those respondents generally argued that the Freedom of
Information Act 2000 has become a feature of British democracy by
holding public authorities to account and by creating greater
transparency in decision-making and the use of public
resources.
"The proposals would, it was thought, diminish the effectiveness
of the Freedom of Information Act. Many respondents believed that
the proposals unfairly targeted bodies acting in the broad public
interest such as media and pressure groups," it said.
The Ministry said that it would not proceed with the proposed
changes. "Taking account of the range of responses received, the
Government has decided to make no changes to the existing fees
regulations," it said. "It does intend, however, to deliver a
package of measures to make better use of the existing provisions
to improve the way FOI works and to meet the concerns particularly
of local authorities."
The Government had proposed the changes because it believed that
FOI requests were costing central and local government too much in
time and money, and that many of the requests were vexatious.
The Ministry said that it would work with the Information
Commissioner's Office to promote its guidance on using existing
rules to block vexatious requests or ones that harass the public
body. It said it would produce its own guidance on the fees
structure for public bodies, and would encourage public bodies to
release more information voluntarily.
Most FOI requests are free, but once charged-for activity
reaches a certain ceiling the request can be refused to stop FOI
bills soaring. The threshold is £450 for local authorities and £600
for central government.
The proposals were to include more of the activity around a
request on a billed-for basis, meaning that many more requests
would reach the ceiling and therefore be refusable.
More controversially, the proposal bundled together requests
from the same organisation under a single ceiling, meaning that
media organisations as large as the BBC could only have been
allowed a single request every three months.
"The Government does not believe that more restrictive rules on
cost limits of FOI requests are the way forward," said Prime
Minister Gordon Brown today, announcing the climbdown. "We do this
because of the risk that such proposals might have placed
unacceptable barrier between the people and public
information."
