Government plans to hobble FoI act
As reported here, here and here, the British government are planning to change the grounds on which freedom of information act requests can be refused.
Currently, if a request is going to cost £600 pounds or more, then the request can be refused, but this calculation does not factor in reading time, consultation time or consideration time, and the government wishes to add these factors in. Tim Worstall notes (3rd link above) that this will make it very easy for requests to be turned down:
Consultation time’ ? So, we have a committee meeting to discuss how to collate the information. There are plenty of civil servants who are on the salaried equivalent of £30 or £40 an hour. Ten of them in a meeting taking two hours: Ooops! sorry, no information for you!
This will eviscerate the Act. Which is the point, of course.