THIS week the Campaign for Freedom of Information in Scotland (CFOIS) announced a new push to extend FOI and a corresponding crowdfunding website to raise the funds required for this drive. The campaign is being launched in response to a recently published Scottish government consultation paper on FOI laws.

Carole Ewart, convener of the CFOIS said: “It is hugely disappointing that, after all the previous consultations, the strength of public opinion and pressure by the campaign, public groups and even the Scottish Information Commissioner, the government has come forward with such feeble proposals.

“It is clearly necessary that, once again, public pressure needs to be brought to bear to demand that the Scottish government reverses the erosion of FOI rights in Scotland.”

There has, quite correctly, been considerable publicity around the British government’s decision to establish an “independent” commission to consider the future of the FOI Act. The combination of public threats and promises from government ministers and a membership stuffed with known opponents of increased public scrutiny means that the wider Campaign for Freedom of Information is quite right to launch its campaign to protect and expand FOI. 

As you might expect, all the opposition political parties have come out publicly against any plans to curtail our human rights by restricting FOI. After all, wasn’t it only recently that Unesco — Margaret Thatcher’s favourite arm of the UN — tweeted that “FOI (was) an essential human right”? The fact that the commission — a public body — is not itself subject to FOI, gives a significant hint as to the rationale behind its creation.

Here in Scotland the campaign had hoped for more positive news on the FOI front. After all, the Scottish government made a point of promising further legislation to extend FOI to other bodies delivering our public services. CFOIS has consistently identified bodies such as housing associations, arms-length companies set up by public authorities, voluntary-sector organisations and private companies that remove our FOI rights as they take over delivery of our public services.

However, the much-awaited consultation paper has been a huge disappointment. Not content with largely failing to address any of the major public concerns and demands expressed in opinion polls and petitions, a substantial part of it is devoted to defending previous decisions to exclude housing associations from coverage. Presumably this is an attempt to address considerable pressure by the CFOIS, the expressed opinion of the Scottish Information Commissioner in a special report, and a public petition from housing tenants considered by the Scottish Parliament.

Unfortunately some arguments the paper uses to exclude housing associations, such as the level of regulation already covering these bodies, are later used to justify inclusion of independent special schools and secure accommodation providers. The paper suggests including a small number of other bodies, such as private prisons and grant-aided schools, but there is no place for the private contractors that still run our schools and hospitals or maintain our trunk roads, arms-length companies or many other public service providers.

While there are a few positive steps like the suggested move towards a more generic “class-based” approach to including bodies, it is worrying that the paper seems to start a move towards artificially splitting up of public services, suggesting that some are “core.”

Recent work by Strathclyde University researcher and CFOIS volunteer Calum Liddle has suggested that public authorities are now refusing an increasing number of requests, and that the last extension of coverage contained clear loopholes.

This new consultation paper will do nothing to address the increasing erosion of FOI rights.

CFOIS is urging people and organisations to submit responses demanding the Scottish government address these areas seriously. As Ewart says: “Our FOI rights, the foundation of many of our essential human rights, are under threat. We all need to add our weight to the campaign to defend them.”

• The CFOIS crowdfunding website can be found at www.indiegogo.com/projects/save-our-freedom-of
  -information-rights#/story.