Straw now sits on panel set up to review FoI act and expected to propose making some information harder to access

The former cabinet minister Jack Straw, who has been tasked with considering how to tighten up the Freedom of Information Act, led two of the Whitehall departments most likely to reject public requests for information.



Straw’s ministries never ranked higher than 15 out of 21 government departments in terms of releasing information in full, according to a Guardian analysis of government-wide figures.

In 2010, his final year as lord chancellor, the Ministry of Justice was the worst ranked government department, providing none of the information requested more often than any other ministry.

In the six years he was a secretary of state under the act, his departments ranked 16th, 17th, 15th, 20th, 21st and 21st out of between 21 and 23 ministries. Straw was foreign secretary until 2006, and then justice secretary until 2010.

Straw now sits on an independent five-person panel set up to review FoI legislation. The panel is expected later this month to propose making some information harder to access for members of the public, journalists and campaigners.

Critics have previously condemned Straw’s appointment to the panel because he has been a vocal opponent of FoI. In 2012, he said “the insatiable demands of the [FoI] enthusiast have effectively made good decision-making more difficult”, and said the bill should have been “more modest”.

The panel has been asked by Downing Street to examine whether to reduce the “burden” on public authorities of releasing information, and it is expected to recommend that more requests could be rejected on cost grounds.

Since its introduction in 2005, FoI laws have been used to uncover matters ranging from Prince Charles’s letters lobbying government ministers to the MPs’ expenses scandal.

The panel is expected to reinstate ministers’ right to veto information releases, which was undermined when the supreme court ruled last year that it was wrong to use the veto to block the Guardian’s request to see Charles’s letters.

In 2006, Straw’s department granted full information to FoI requesters in only 36% of cases. The average across Whitehall that year was 63%, according to official statistics.

For four out of the five years Straw was a secretary of state under the act, his departments were worse than average at responding within the 20-day deadline demanded by law.

Maurice Frankel, the director of the Campaign for Freedom of Information, said it appeared that Straw had been appointed to the panel “because of his criticisms of the act”. But he cautioned that Straw’s record on releasing information may be a function of the type of request that his departments received rather than because of his attitude towards transparency.

The speed with which the Foreign Office and Ministry of Justice handled FoI requests increased after Straw left, but they tended to withhold information in full slightly more.

Frankel pointed out that “other departments, such as health, took steps to significantly improve their compliance with time limits on responding to requests”.

Asked about his record on FoI as a secretary of state, Straw said requests were handled principally by officials.



“From recollection, very few requests ever came to me before release,” he said. “If they did, I would have turned them round promptly, as I did with all the work in ministerial boxes.

“I was also always keen to see that departments complied with deadlines. For example, I recall that I kept a very close eye on deadlines for parliamentary questions.”

Last month it emerged that before he stood down as an MP last May, Straw had given a corporation for which he was working as a £60,000-a-year paid adviser guidance on how to block the release of documents from the Foreign Office by citing an FoI exemption that allows information affecting commercial interests to be withheld.

The freedom of information commission, chaired by Terence Burns, the chairman of Channel 4, has been asked to decide whether there is “an appropriate public interest balance between transparency, accountability and the need for sensitive information to have robust protection” and “whether the operation of the act adequately recognises the need for a ‘safe space’ for policy development and implementation and frank advice”.

Other members of the commission include the former Conservative party leader Michael Howard, the Lib Dem peer Alexander Carlile and Dame Patricia Hodgson, the chair of Ofcom.

It is expected to propose strengthening the right of ministers to veto the release of material, and to extend the ability of official bodies to refuse to answer requests on cost grounds.

Frankel said there were signs that it may propose extending freedom of information principals to private contractors working for public bodies and could force the wider publication of documents that until now have only been released to the requester.



The FCO defended its record under Straw and said that in the years he was there it managed to either release information or refuse to do so within the deadline of 20 working days in seven out of 10 cases. This was worse than the Whitehall average.

An MoJ spokesman said: “The Ministry of Justice receives amongst the most FoI requests of any government department and deals with sensitive information which must be handled with appropriate care. We are fully committed to disclosing accurate information as required in law and have made continuous efforts to improve performance.”