Information rulers
Who are the people who can - and quite often do - overrule the Information Commissioner's decisions on what information should or should not be released under FOI?
They are the members of the . Some are lawyers, some are lay representatives. They are not public figures but, as I have discussed previously, their rulings matter.
The Tribunals Service has now sent me an updated list of lay members who handle FOI cases. They are given here. Note that while this should be current in terms of who is a lay member of the IT, the biographical details given may be outdated (but are the latest which I have been sent).
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it is all very well Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú journalists bngin on about UK "freedom of information" legslation, but try submitting a question that the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú does not wish to consider and see what happens. Just by way of example, what has happened to the UK "cash for honours" question? i has disappeared from the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú news agenda. No Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú journalist appears to be interested in pursuing it. Why? isn't it a serious UK political issue? Should the CPS be immune from criticism? Should they be allowed to take as much time as they feel like? If, say, the CPS was an organisation such as NICE, wouldn't you be on their backs asking awkward questions? So perhaps Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Újournalists are being disingenuous when they complain about UK freedom of information.
For my part, I am an ordinary person in the UK. I am not a journalis, but because trained journalists do not appear to be doing the straightforward job of asking simple questions that needs to be done, I regret that I am going to have to start trying to do a job that I am not trained to do and do not particularly want to do myself. but what choice do I have? If you lot won't do it, why should we support you in your whinges about FoI?
Far from being a group of independent people with a representative spread of interests and backgrounds across society they are to a man / woman creatures of the public sector, many of them with current public sector appointments that give them the mindset of the bureaucrat. If push come to shove they are vulnerable to "pressure" from their employers.
If we are actually to have any element of independence anyone who is currently in the employment of, or gets business directly from, any agency covered by the FOI should be barred from the role