Out-Law / Your Daily Need-To-Know

Government plans FOI extension and greater independence for ICO

06 Jan 2011, 2:16 pm

The Government will extend the reach of freedom of information (FOI) laws to an increased number of bodies. It will also make the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) independent of the Ministry of Justice, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has said.

Clegg has told the Daily Mail newspaper of the plans, which will ensure that FOI will apply to more publicly-funded and charitable organisations and that the ICO is more independent from Government than is currently the case.

School trusts, the financial ombudsman, the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) and Advertising Standards Association (ASA) will all have to release information, the Daily Mail reported.

Some of the bodies listed, including UCAS and ACPO, were included in a list produced by the last Government of bodies that should be covered by FOI laws.

"Recent years have seen some progress on transparency, most notably through the introduction of the Freedom of Information Act," Clegg said in his interview with the paper. "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," said Clegg. "Free citizens must be able to hold big institutions and powerful individuals to account, and not only the Government."

The extension of FOI laws has been debated in recent years, with the previous Labour Government ruling that some bodies should be brought within its reach, but that companies should not, even when they perform the functions of a public body.

The Scottish Government has said that it wants the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act to cover companies that carry out the functions of public bodies, including trusts that operate local authority leisure or culture facilities or companies which run prisons and prison escort services.

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