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Tory minister says transparency laws are ‘malign’
By: []
Date: 2021-12
A government minister has been criticised for calling the Freedom of Information Act (FOI) a “truly malign piece of legislation”.
Lord Callanan, a minister at the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, said that charging the public fees for requesting government information was an “excellent idea”.
He made the comments during a parliamentary debate last week, while defending the government’s decision that transparency laws should not apply to a new scientific research agency.
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Callanan said: “I fail to see how the processology of government benefits at all from FOI disclosures. I find that people just modify their behaviour and communication to take account of the fact that private conversations may be released in the future.
He added: “I genuinely do not think that it achieves anything at all.”
Transparency campaigners said the minister’s comments “reflect the government’s deep dislike of being held to account”.
Public authorities are ordinarily subject to FOI laws, but the government has insisted that its new research agency, the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA), should not have “the burden of processing” questions from the public.
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