Major newspaper editors have now got together in opposing the British government’s proposed changes to the Freedom of Act Information that would cut down the number of access to information requests and save money.
A group of newspaper editors met Information Minister Baroness Catherine Ashton in an attempt to head off the proposed freedom of information changes on Tuesday. They left the meeting with information rights minister Baroness Ashton largely unsatisfied, despite her being “genuinely conciliatory” about the proposed changes and telling editors that “nothing was decided”, the Guardian reported.
“I can’t remember any time when regional and national editors and broadcast and print are all completely at one,” said the Guardian editor, Alan Rusbridger, said. “I think my sense is that they are troubled by that and that they perhaps went into this without anticipating this united front.”
Baroness Ashton also met the Sunday Times editor John Witherow, Sunday Telegraph editor Patience Wheatcroft, deputy editor of the Independent on Sunday John Mullin and London Evening Standard managing editor Doug Wills.
Press freedom organisation Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) voiced concern Monday about proposed legislative changes affecting Britain’s Freedom of Information Act, which was one of Tony Blair’s New Labour election campaign promises in 1997 and which did not take full effect until January 2005 although it was adopted in 2000.
A report by the Blair government in October said the provision of information to the public under the Act had proved very expensive. Now the government has drafted regulations that would limit the dissemination of information by public authorities and restrict the media’s ability to make requests under the Act. The proposed regulations are being circulated for public consultation until March 8 and following any revisions could come into force in April. Journalists and freedom-of-information groups have been making loud protests during the consultation period.
“We must point out that freedom of information is a democratic right,” RSF said. “It is regrettable that a right such as press freedom is being called into question in a country such as the United Kingdom.” It said, “We support the British media campaign against the proposed amendments and we hope they will not be adopted. It would be deplorable if a government were to consent to the emasculation of a law of which it was itself the instigator.”
The bill also seeks to put MPs beyond the reach of the Act, when surely they should be the most accountable individuals in the UK. In addition, it proposes that Parliament as a whole, the most important of all our public institutions, be exempted from the Act, ARTICLE 19 had said in a statement late last month. “This would put the UK out of step even with the newest and most fragile European democracies, such as Bosnia and Serbia, who have recently legislated to open up their parliaments to public scrutiny.”
The free expression advocate said, “If the bill becomes law, a farcical scenario will ensue where all correspondence on a matter of public policy — say, the closure of a hospital - will be available under the Act — except for MPs’ correspondence. The most accountable public figures in the country will enjoy a protection denied to their constituents.”
