Ministers
are to pay half of the information commissioner’s budget bid to clear
the backlog of complaints made under the freedom of information act (FOIA).
The department for constitutional affairs (DCA) has agreed to a boost
of £550,000 to the annual budget of £5 million for the office
of the information commissioner, which regulates FOIA in the UK.
The figure was revealed to MPs on the constit-utional affairs committee,
which is reviewing the first year of full implementation of the UK’s
FOIA.
The commissioner, Richard Thomas, last month told the committee that
he was still waiting to hear about his bid for an extra £1.13 million
to clear by March 2007 the backlog of complaints about responses by public
bodies to FOIA requests. He said that 1,500 complaints were yet to be resolved,
some 700 of which he described as a “backlog”.
In testimony published by parliament, but subject to corrections by
him and committee members, he said: “I will be very frank with you.
I would like to have known how much we were going to get two or three months
ago. I would like to have known the answer straightaway.”
“The new financial year is about to start. Even if I was told
today I have got the £1.13 million, or whatever the figure is going
to be, starting to spend that on 1 April is difficult: it takes time to recruit
people, to train them up and get them in position. So, already I am deeply
anxious that we are going to be in difficulties as the financial year goes
forward.”
He added: “If we got nothing, it would take years to clear the
backlog; if we got 50%, we reckon we would clear the backlog in two years;
if we got the full bid we put in for, 100% of our £1.13 million, we
think we can clear the backlog, we said, 14 months starting in January, so
we think it would be clear by March 2007, but we have lost two or three months
already.”
Baroness Ashton of Upholland, a junior DCA minister, told the committee
in her testimony last Tuesday that the commissioner would effectively be receiving
three-quarters of his bid.
She said that the DCA had agreed to an extra £550,000 and the
commissioner had identified £300,000 of savings.
In her testimony, published by parliament but subject to corrections,
she said: “There is £850,000 available to him. His request was
for slightly more than that, however these are not easy financial times for
all organisations and we think we have given him quite substantial extra support
which will enable him to develop the resources that he needs to be more effective.”
“This was dealt with at an official level and not a ministerial
level in terms of the detail,” she continued. “It did seem to
us, that amount of money would enable him to move quite considerably towards
tackling the issues that he has.”
She said that the commissioner was awaiting a report from consultants
examining “greater efficiencies and management structures”.
“We hope the combination of those two things will give him the
resources he needs to tackle the issues which he is concerned about.”
Asked what chance she gave for the commiss-ioner’s “recovery
plan” to work in light of the money made available, she said: “I
hope the recovery plan will be entirely successful.”
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