Bishop Hill UEA's latest wheeze
I recently put an FOI request into UEA asking for minutes of meetings of the Tyndall Centre Advisory Board - readers may remember that Tyndall was involved in the plan to get sceptics cleared from the airwaves, apparently at the instigation of the BBC's Roger Harrabin.
The university's acknowledgement of the request seems to flag fairly clearly how they intend to avoid disclosing anything embarrassing:
If the information you request contains reference to a third party then they may be consulted prior to a decision being taken on whether or not to release the information to you. You will be informed if this is the case.
The legislation provides exemptions for information provided in confidence and for personal information. I don't recall anything about consulting third parties.
Reader Comments (20)
isn't the BBC subject to FOIA?
Yes, but they have a special exemption which makes it very hard to actually get hold of anything.
They are exempt of the information was gathered for the purposes of news...which pretty much gives them an out for EVERYTHING.
Mailman
http://www.bbc.co.uk/foi/about/exemptions.shtml
Which exemption do you think applies? 36?
"Section 36 - Free and frank discussions/advice, prejudice to effective conduct of public affairs
Disclosure of the information would prejudice the ability to have free and frank exchanges of views or to give free and frank advice, or would prejudice the effective conduct of public affairs. The Chairman of the BBC Trust, or another Trustee approves the use of this exemption in each case that it is used."
In which case the BBC Trust (oxymoron alert!) would have final say
oops
forgot to provide the HSE link.
http://www.hse.gov.uk/foi/disclosure-third-party-info.pdf
BH writes:
Wasn't the "third party" trick (or a variant thereof) the excuse they initially used for not disclosing some OO material?
MangoChutney
That is certainly the way that the BBC chooses to interpret the Section 36 exemptions in the FOIA on their website.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/foi/about/exemptions.shtml
Fortunately, the wording in the Act is nowhere near as cut and dried.
http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20100512160448/opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2000/ukpga_20000036_en_1
And the public interest test applies to Sec 36, I'm delighted to say. There is plenty of room for argument.
so worth testing?
and surely when the BBC becomes the news, the public interest is paramount
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2011/9/26/new-foi-guidance-for-universities.html
The ICO expects public authorities to consult with affected third parties, in line with the Part IV of the section 45 Code of Practice; however, while the views of third parties are important, they will not be automatically accepted so as to mean that commercial companies involved with public authorities can veto the FOI process.
You will be refused of course but the Information Commissioner has ruled that the 3rd party has no automatic veto.
Does the ICO expect the consultation with third parties to happen within the normal time limits, or does this stop the clock?
I couldn't find an answer with a quick search through the ICO guidance
When its comes to FOI its clear nothing has changed at the CRU , they still regarded it as something they should avoid if they at all can .
So they're claiming the information requested is 'environmental' and therefore to be considered under Environmental Information regulations 2004. Here they may claim that the application for information relates to 'personal data (of a the third party) of which the applicant is not the data subject...' and that the data requested therefore cannot be released because it would contravene one of the data protection principles of the Data Protection Act 1998.
They will also have to establish that 'the public interest in not disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in disclosing it'. Almost certainly the Information Commisioner will have to decide on both data protection and public interest if the request is refused.
Now the Tyndall Centre must have a communication strategy that the members of the Tyndall Centre Advisory Board must have shaped and acted upon.
It is clear from CG1 and CG2 that UEA-CRU and Tyndall had developed a very close relationship with the BBC that benefitted all parties in communicating Climate Change to the public.
How far did those relationships go? What were the agendas? Who was involved?
We know that these parties had developed a plan/policy to deal with scepticism and sceptics.
All this is important because we now have important results from the British Attitudes Studies concerning Climate Change. There has been a dramatic decline in public support for taking action on Climate Change with more and more people becoming sceptical about the science.
Climategate has had a large effect on public opinion. It is worth repeating, Climategate has had a large effect on public opinion - people no longer trust the message or the messenger.
Now that represents a huge communication failure for UEA-CRU, Tyndall and the BBC.
So if the public are to regain trust in science, and how it is being communicated, lets have all this information in the public domain. It shouldn't need a FOIA request to do that.
Whatever happens, make sure not to fall for delaying tactics. It is important to make sure not to miss the 6 month time limit, ie., if the requested info is not provided within 5 months of the request, promptly file/ lodge a formal complaint and application for a disclosure order with the appropriate commisioner.
MangoChutney
Yes, it will be tested. I have a similar information request to the Bishop's in with UEA.
Richard Verney
It is not a matter of 'falling for delaying tactics' but a systemic problem with the legislation. Public authorities have 20 working days to respond to a request, and usually do so on the last day. If a review of their decision is then requested, that usually takes a further 40 working days. Only at that stage can a complaint be made to the Information Commissioner.
The ICO's workload means that it is weeks, sometimes months, before they allocate an investigating officer and open a file, and then it may be some time before evidence of malfeasance on the part of the public authority comes to light. I have such a case in process at the moment, and the six months limit is long past.
The Information Commissioner has raised concerns about the six months limit with Parliament, as legislation will be required to change the Act. It is unlikely that the government will be in a hurry, in spite of Nick Clegg having sought brownie points in the past by saying that he will make the FOIA really effective.
In the meantime, we have to struggle on with things the way they are.
I randomly picked one set of emails from the climategate sage mark 2 labelled 0289 and makes for very interesting reading. For example:
" Personally, I'm quite unsure that these are reliable temperature
records, BUT if we want to make that case, we have to be convincing".
and:
"In this relation - I am getting more and more concern about our
>> statement that the Early Holocene was cool in the tropics - this
>> paper shows that it was, actually, warm - ice core evidences+glaciers
>> were smaller than now in the tropical Andes. The glaciers in the
>> Southern Hemisphere (Porter, 2000, review paper) were also smaller ".
There's more obviously in this exchange but is well worth the read.
Dec 7, 2011 at 11:36 AM | TonyN
I note and appreciate your further comments.
I am not familiar with the legislation but most time limits are interupted/no longer apply as soon as formal suit is made to the competent authority (eg.,Court, arbitrator etc). The Commisioner is surely playing the role of arbitrator and thus an application to him within the prescribed time kinit should suffice to halt the running of time. It would not then matter if the commisioner sits on the matter for a year or so, as long as the application to him was made within time he would still retain power to order disclosure even if in the intervening period the 6 month period had elapsed. Of course, the legislation could provide differently but in my experience that would be unusual.
richard verney
I don't know whether this has ever been tested with the FOIA, but if you are correct it could apply to the current case that I have asked the ICO to investigate. I'm not a lawyer, but I can see no special provision in the FOIA that would interfere what you are suggesting. Hope springs eternal!