freedom of information | ukwatch.net

Brussels: keeping information under its hat

eddie — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 14:57:17 +0000

Brussels concerns itself with every aspect of our lives, but gives little away when it comes to information. This creates distrust. Even the European Ombudsman is now complaining that the hands of the openneness clock are being turned back. It takes a lot of clicks on the mouse to find out that a new European Regulation on openness in administration is on the way. The European Commission sees the Regulation as a way to bring Europe closer to the citizen. Why don’t they turn this around and make rules which would help us get closer to Europe?

The EU continues to give the impression that it is frightened of the public. In 2001, with the introduction of the openness regulation now in operation, the fear was expressed that openness would ‘paralyse’ the policy-making process. The opposite is of course true: openness could strengthen confidence in Europe. The broad public is scarcely aided by the current rules. For the most part it has been professionals – people such as lawyers, researchers and lobbyists – who have been able to profit from them.

Now a new proposed regulation is before us. Preaching transparency and public participation, this proposal must itself surely live up to these criteria. Unfortunately, the silence surrounding the proposal from the European Commission says everything. The problem begins with the vague terms which occupy a central place in its text. The words ‘openness’ and ‘transparency’ demonstrate an administrative mentality, and are simply not achievable through judicial means. Openness of information, on the other hand, is: these words establish a legal situation, a set of rights and duties. The word ‘access’, used in the Amsterdam Treaty, is more ‘citizen-friendly’ and telling, but the Commission’s proposal has little to say about this. The emphasis should be less on Europe’s duty to provide information, and more on the public’s right to have access to it. Only when the Commission’s concomitant duty to provide becomes self-evident can confidence in ‘Brussels’ grow.

What could be improved? The European Commission sticks closely to the American or Swedish document system. This requires that you must first know in which document the information you are seeking lies, and gives you a right only to access to what you ask for. Brussels will be left to determine for itself what it hands over. Unrecognised or unregistered documents are simply not documents at all. The reasoning goes like this: it must have been sent, registered or received, or it didn’t exist. This way of thinking recalls Bill Clinton’s definition of sex: nothing was transferred, so nothing happened.

The existing Dutch law on administrative openness is better. It is based not on a documentation system, but on a true information system. This means that members of the public or journalists need only name the administrative subject for the authorities to have a duty to respond by providing relevant information.

As well as changing the proposal to reflect such concerns, other amendments must be made. The European Ombudsman must be given more space to assess the performance of the EU institutions, if necessary unannounced and uninvited. It would have a hugely preventative effect, if bureaucrats were obliged continually to run the risk of being caught failing to apply the rules on openness, or applying them inadequately. Keeping anything secret must become a genuine exception. Keeping whole categories of documents under your hat, as the Commission is now proposing, does not sit comfortably with the openness preached. The status ‘secret’ must derive from the content and should not be left vulnerable to the self-interest of the official so classifying it.

That documents relating to matters which are sub judice should generally be kept secret is understandable, but this should not be by definition the case, and certainly not if they are subject to what the Commission calls ‘quasi-judicial’ procedures. I hope that the European Commissioner responsible, Margot Wallström understands that this would create enormous problems..

Before proceeding further, however, the Communication should organise a broad debate around the way in which the proposed syetem of openness is expected to function and how the proposal might be improved. Policy-making should not be done from ivory towers, certainly not when the regulation involved advocates participation and transparency. Brussels should listen more, answer questions more readily, and preach less. .

The Dutch government, and any others which operate a genuine system of openness, must do all in their power to persuade those member states which have little tradition of openness that there is only one way to to exercise power democratically, and that is to monitor those who exercise it. If Europe wants to win public confidence, then it must become receptive to questions posed by ordinary citizens, and not meerly experts. Dutch regulations on openness are not perfect, but they are certainly rules from which Europe could learn.

Kartika Liotard is a Member of the European Parliament for the Socialist Party of the Netherlands.

The Police force with no crime

tim — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 17:57:06 +0000

Northumbria Police is one of Britain’s biggest and busiest forces. It employs more than 4,000 officers and has a budget of around £320 million a year. Of that, more than £1 million is spent on its PR department. However, as a freelance journalist based in Northumberland, I am frequently amazed at how peaceful the area is – or at least if you believe the force’s press office. Despite the force now paying to staff its press office on Saturdays and Sundays, there are whole weekends when not one crime is released to the media.

It would be easy to argue that, as a journalist, I only believe in the police being more open because it will help me to do my job. Yes, that’s true. But there is a more fundamental principle here and that is the age-old tradition of the police using the media to warn the public about what is going on – and to help them catch criminals.

For the last decade, I have campaigned for Northumbria Police to be more open with the public – i.e. the people who pay their wages. I have collected hundreds of examples of serious crimes that have either not been released to the media or have been released weeks or even months later.These include rapes, armed robberies and other horrendous attacks that have been kept hidden from the public.

After having a number of meetings with the Chief Constable Michael Craik over the years, I have been repeatedly promised the service would improve. And yes, the budget for the press office, has been boosted – growing from £620,000 two years ago to the £1 million it now consumes. There has also been a big increase in the number of stories about how senior officers are cutting crime figures.

Indeed, every time there is a horrific crime – such as a murder or a knife attack – the PR machine kicks into life with a quote from a senior officer stressing how “rare” such crimes are. As well as stretching credibility, some of these statements are appallingly insensitive. One chief inspector recently went as far as describing a double murder as an “isolated incident”.

In fact, it would appear they are cutting them so dramatically that one recent weekend saw not one crime worthy of being given out by Northumbria. Not one incident from Friday afternoon to Monday morning that was worth putting on the tape-recorded telephone “voice-bank” which journalists now have to rely on for their information. However, through an application under the Freedom of Information Act, I discovered there had been more than 4,800 incidents that weekend, including 161 serious crimes. So why may you ask were none of these released to the public ?

A good question – and one I’ve been trying to have answered for nearly 10 years now. In the past, I have taken the liberty of occasionally writing to or telephoning the senior officer concerned. There then usually followed a reasonable and well-mannered debate in which they would either quote particular “operational reasons” or admit there was no good reason why the public had not been warned.

But now, following the publication of a series of articles in The Guardian, The Times, Press Gazette and other publications, I have been banned from even daring to ask such questions. In a letter, Deputy Chief Constable David Warcup claims crimes are not released for “operational reasons” and the force does not have to “justify” such decisions. Needless to say, my correspondence on the issue now goes unanswered.

As a journalist with more than 23 years’ experience – most of it spent specialising in crime – I appreciate there are times when crimes might have to be held back for genuine “operational reasons”. But there is no way they have to be held back in such huge numbers. No, the simple truth is that the £1 million spent on Northumbria’s press office is more interested in promoting the image of the force’s senior officers.

My contacts tell me that, as part of that strategy, they have to reduce the “fear of crime” and, if that means telling the public less, then so be it. Mr Warcup recently defended the force’s expenditure on PR by saying: “Although crime in Northumbria has fallen significantly in the past 10 years, our research shows that the perception of crime has not. “We have therefore invested a significant amount in services which aim to make sure people have a better understanding of crime in their region.” In other words, he is spending more money making sure people believe the crime figures they put out.

Ironically, since the publication of my comments, I have been contacted by a number of police contacts who agree with my stance. Like me, they are not anti-police. However, as well as being police officers, they are also members of the public – and taxpayers. And, like me, they believe that, in a democracy, the likes of Mr Warcup should have to justify why the public are kept in the dark about what is happening in their area.