Information Tribunal oversteps the mark

On the whole I think the FOI regime in this country is pretty good, although there are some fairly large loopholes such as the inability to actually bring anyone to book for breaching it.

I've also had a relatively favourable impression of the FOI enforcement agencies - the Commissioner and the Tribunal.* However, I think the case reported here is one instance where the Tribunal has gone too far.

A landmark ruling was made this week which has raised more than a few eyebrows among scientific researchers.

Newcastle University lost its 3-year battle against the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV) over revealing details of Home Office licences to conduct experiments on primates through Freedom of Information requests (FOIs).

...

However the Information Tribunal ruled that a recent decline in animal rights violence meant researchers were unlikely to become targets for extremists. It said: “Refusal to communicate with the public carries its own risks… creating the impression there is something to hide.”

There is an exemption in the FOI Act covering the issue of personal safety and I think it is there for very good reasons. The danger of attacks from the lunatic fringe is proven.

I  think a "recent decline" is not therefore a good enough reason to put names out in public. This looks to me like playing fast and loose with scientists' safety.

*The tribunal arrangements in Scotland are less satisfactory, being expensive and bureaucratic.

Comments

[Martin A]

"However the Information Tribunal ruled that a recent decline in animal rights violence meant researchers were unlikely to become targets for extremists."

Yes, it doesn't make much sense - especially as any such decline may have have been the result of security measures taken by researchers in response to the very real threat from the lunatic fringe, rather than a tailing off of the lunatic fringe's desire to perpetrate violence.

[Tom]

The Information Commission are only human and one does have to wonder at the views held by those persons (and it was people - whose names I think we should know) - it should be enough that the University claims as an organisation to host the activity - the identity of the individual researchers is frankly irrelevant surely = loud, barking vegan on the tribunal?

Non compliance is getting more common as the providers get bolder because the consequences of not complying atrophy. Egregious breaches need porridge pour encourager les autres.

I'm involved with Foi from The Environment Agency who have stated to the ICO that "emails are deleted after 120 days" whilst simultaneously supplying us emails that are 400 days old.... and simply ignoring requests for specific documents.

[The Leopard In The Basement]

I don't like these stories where key sections are presented to us after being taken from what is obviously a longer document or decision and then run with to make up the hookline of the story. Let's face it this hookline boils down to "we reckon the nutter's have calmed down now, so its ok to release the names of vulnerable scientist" - doh! face palm, how silly etc.

The full Information Rights Tribunal decision is linked here with full history of the BUAV dispute with Newcastle University. Whatever your position with regards to primate experiments (I admit to personally being uncomfortable about them) the whole narrative is worth adding to cannon of knowledge with regards FOIA tussles.

http://www.informationtribunal.gov.uk/DBFiles/Decision/i605/[2011]_UKFTT(GRC)_EA20100064_2011-11-11.pdf

The whole issue is about some assessment of risk. You would hope there has to be some time when risk is measured at a reasonable level where scientist can be known to work in a field without concern for their safety, if so, how do we measure improvements?

One of the key points in the decision is recommendations from an organisation called Understanding Animal Research (UAR), an organisation who are described as a "counterpart to BUAV" and who "promotes the view that humane animal research is crucial for scientific understanding and medical progress". The IRT decision says this:

In April 2009, after several years of research and consultation, UAR published ‘A Researchers’ Guide to Communications’.
This advises that the risk from opponents of animal research can be minimised by the adoption of a more open and proactive approach to communicating with the public:

Scientists and organisations that have communicated have not become targets as a result. On the contrary, the more institutions that are
transparent, the less likely it is for any one institution to be singled out.

The extremists are spread thinly, and very few individuals or institutions are currently targets of harassment and intimidation. At the end of 2007, the National Extremism Tactical Coordination Unit (NETCU) announced that crimes related to animal research were at a 30-year low. This trend has continued. .... most types of extremist activity are declining steadily.

In effect it seems that if the Universities want to adopt the position of special exemption and secrecy then they actually draw attention to themselves, hence the full meaning of the quote in the news story becomes clearer when you see it in full (emphasis for the point made and a missing chunk from the original release):

Refusal to communicate with the public carries its own risks, as UAR has explained, by creating the impression that there is something to hide.

I think there are lessons to be had here about how scientists tend to adopt a comfortable assumption of a special status. I think it should always be examined.

[David Holland]

I am with the Leopard on this one. The Decision is well reasoned and for a particular reason I am pleased to see:

We must take into account that in s38(1) Parliament chose to use the word “endanger” and did not refer either to “injury” or to “prejudice”. On the other hand, considering the statutory purpose of freedom of information, balanced by exemptions, we are not persuaded that it would be right to read the word “endanger” in a sense which would engage the exception merely because of a risk.