Daily Mail editor-in-chief Paul Dacre has called for greater openness in government and lambasted the commission on freedom of information for seeking to restrict transparency.
In a personal submission to the commission separate to that of Mail publisher Associated Newspapers, Dacre said the desire to keep things secret by default was incompatible with the digital age.
“At present the default position of Whitehall is that many things should be kept secret,” said Dacre. “In a digital age – where leaks are endemic on the internet, in the printed press and in instant political memoirs – this is unsustainable; there should be a cultural change whereby the default position should be an assumption of openness, unless there are overriding reasons for secrecy.”
The government commission is considering whether the act is effectively balancing the need for secrecy with transparency and whether it places too great a burden on government bodies. However, it has been criticised as an attempt by government to water down the legislation.
Dacre said weakening FoI would only contribute to public distrust of politics. “In the main, I suspect, dislike of FoI is driven by Whitehall’s belief that civil servants should be exempt from public scrutiny,” he said. “This is in my view counter-productive, and perceived by the public simply as a compulsion to cover backsides.”
“Civil servants should remember that with authority comes responsibility. They should also remember who pays their wages.”
Dacre’s submission claims that ministers attempted to pressure him to recommend changes to the Freedom of Information Act while he was in charge of a review of the 30-year rule in 2009.
He said that ministers had told him that proposals to reduce the amount of time before government records are made public were more likely to be approved if he also recommended reform of the FoI Act.
The review recommended the rule should be reduced to 15 years, but did not suggest changes to the FoI Act. The government subsequently agreed to a limit of 20 years, which is being phased in over a decade.
Dacre added that the members of the commission left him “utterly unconvinced” it would take an open approach to the review. It includes those on the record criticising the act, such as former justice secretary Jack Straw, as well as the former reviewer of terrorist legislation Lord Carlisle, who has described Edward Snowden’s revelations about government surveillance as a “criminal act”.
He said: “Not one of the five commissioners is a journalist or historian, the two groups apart from civil servants and politicians with the most direct ‘professional’ interest in official records. There is no one who can be said to represent the public, who make the vast majority of FoI requests, or lobby groups and businesses, who are also major users.”
He added: “I find it very disturbing that, rather than recognising this as evidence of the need for the act, and celebrating its success, the government sees it as a reason for restrictions to be imposed.”
Dacre’s submission, the only one from an individual in a personal capacity, is one of more than 100 responses from organisations including government bodies and newspapers.
Other newspaper groups, including GNM for the Guardian and Observer and the Telegraph Media Group, made submissions in support of the 10-year-old act.
