How to thwart the siren voices
I've been thinking further about the refusal of the Cabinet Office to disclose how often John Prescott has actually chaired Cabinet Committee meetings, revealed a fortnight ago.
The reasons for the refusal were as follows: "If Ministers and officials suspected that this information would be released, they would be less likely to make use of the Cabinet Committee system, and this would significantly undermine its effectiveness."
And:"If Ministers and officials suspected that once a decision was reached, information pertaining to the process by which they had reached that point was to be released (such as the timing and sequencing of meetings), they might be less willing to engage in full and frank discussion of the available options."
In other words, information cannot be released because civil servants and ministers would react to this greater flow of information by getting confused and doing the wrong thing, and that isn't in the public interest. This kind of reasoning for a refusal may seem bizarre but is actually quite common.
Some commenters on the Prescott refusal, both here and , have suggested the classic TV series 'Yes, Minister' as the inspiration for this kind of response, and of course one can see their point.
However, I now realise it reminds me of a different fictional work - Homer's .
Odysseus faced the problem of having to sail past the Sirens, whose singing enticed ships off course and into shipwreck. His solution was to plug the ears of his crew with beeswax so they could hear nothing (while tying himself firmly to the mast so that he could enjoy the singing without the risk of being lured into disaster).
So this kind of FOI refusal seems a bit like deciding to stuff the ears of civil servants with beeswax to protect their easily bewildered brains from the siren voices that would lead them into failing to call the right meetings or other forms of bureaucratic ruin.
I hope the analogy is not too contrived. Anyway I've been going through our records in search of refusals which involve the blocking of officials' ears with beeswax, and plan to post some of them next week.
In any case, according to your point of view, such refusals are either based on an unjustifiably low opinion of the character and integrity of civil servants or alternatively a realistic assessment of human nature.
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"they might be less willing to engage in full and frank discussion of the available options"
The Information Commissioner has decided against such a line of reasoning in his two recent Decision Notices regarding the non-publication of Gateway Reviews by HM Treasury and its Office of Government Commerce.
See cases FS50083104 and FS50070196 () available at the newly re-designed Information Commissioner's Office website for July 2006.
The Information Commissioner effectively cites the in his Decision Notices: