Private companies that take public money to provide government services should be subject to the freedom of information act (FoIa), according to the new information commissioner, Elizabeth Denham.
She told the BBC that the act should be extended to such companies, which would have the effect of opening them up to greater poublic scrutiny.
“The government could do more to include private bodies that are basically doing work on behalf of the public,” she said.
Denham, who started her five-year term on 18 July, said that there should be a new legal duty on public authorities to record all significant decisions, which would then allow the negotiations to be subject to FoIa requests.
She is also exercised by officials sending messages by private email accounts in order to evade the FoI provisions. She said: “People shouldn’t be using private email accounts to conduct government business... it frustrates the purposes of FoI from a search perspective.”
Denham – who was previously information commissioner in British Columbia, Canada - told her BBC interviewer that she supported the introduction of a “duty to document” law. This would help prevent authorities evading FoI requests by trying to ensure that nothing sensitive is recorded in the first place.
“If you’ve got FoI and you want it to work, the right records have to be created in the first place,” she said.
Her statements were welcomed by the News Media Association (NMA), the newspaper industry’s trade body, which has long campaigned for the FoIa to be strengthened.
Its report on her interview included a comment by Maurice Frankel, founder of the Campaign for Freedom of Information, who said: “The government is encouraging the contracting out of public services but each new contract weakens the public’s right to know because contractors are not subject to FoI.
“It makes no sense for the public’s right to know whether a service is up to scratch to depend on who pays the relevant staff - the public authority or a contractor paid by the authority.
“Either way the public is funding the service and the FoI act should apply. A ‘duty to document’ would help prevent authorities evading FoI requests by trying to ensure that nothing sensitive is recorded in the first place.
“It would also make it harder to argue that FoI discourages authorities from keeping proper records.”
