Politicians love to hate the Freedom of Information Act.

When they’re not in power they can be in favour of extending the FOI Act to cover more bodies and be more powerful. Yet, when they come to power their support for being held accountable can wane somewhat.

In the spirit of holding power to account it’s quite regular to see a story in the press with a line similar to: “the data was gathered by FOI requests sent by the Labour Party [other political parties are available]”. One might say that the approach of politicians using FOI while a Commission is trying to curb its powers is a little hypocritical.

Trinity Mirror’s Claire Miller, a keen purveyor of FOI and its political overlords, has now started a blog to keep track of those politicians using FOI requests to push their PR lines in the press.

I’m sure Claire would be grateful of any submissions and those parties/politicians using FOI for their own gains will be some of the first to defend the Act when the glorious Commission is collecting evidence.

Matthew Burgess
http://www.mattburgess.co
I am a journalist and author. I am a journalist at the UK edition of WIRED magazine. In 2015, my first book Freedom of Information: A Practical Guide for UK Journalists, was published. My second book Reed Hastings: Building Netflix, was published in March 2020. I created FOI Directory in 2012 and have maintained it in my spare time ever since.