🚨NEW

FOIs are essential and they are under threat!

@openDemocracy has released its new report 'Access Denied' today which uncovers the govt's failure to comply to FOI requests, with the 2020 FOI disclosure rates "lowest...since records began in 2005".

opendemocracy.net/en/freedom-of-…
The news follows on from previous reporting by @openDemocracy, which revealed the existence of the 'Orwellian' Clearing House, a unit operating within the Cabinet Office accused of 'blacklisting' journalists:
Indeed, @allthecitizens have encountered numerous instances of the Cabinet Office and other departments refusing to answer FOI's.

As with our investigations into Palantir, where they took 145 days to respond, and only did so after a warning from the ICO:
Or our efforts to uncover how much the government was paying for PPE, where the government repeatedly applied a Section 43 (commercial interests) exemption, redacting huge sections of high-value public sector contracts:
Most shockingly, in our endeavours to get answers on ministers' use of private message apps, we sent 50 FOI requests, in a campaign that took over 700 days, and only found out through legal action about a policy obliging officials to delete instant chats:
Such is the fixation of the government in trying to hide from scrutiny, that six government departments have spent over half a million pounds in the last four years trying to block information being released under the FOI act:
theguardian.com/politics/2021/…
Even when information is made available to journalists and the public, it has been found on more than one occasion to contain discrepancies when compared to official statements:
theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/o…
The extent of the problem has even begun to shock other Conservative MPs:
and attacks on transparency are now coming from all sides.

It was recently reported that incoming Information Commissioner John Edwards intimated that the public could start being charged for the service, while the campaign that helped bring about the act might now face closure: ImageImage
As yesterday's report highlights, while efforts to close avenues for FOI requests increase, "government departments are cynically exploiting a legal loophole to deny timely access to information"
Tory SpAds are now also allowed to 'approve' transparency disclosures.

When government is allowed to hijack a public service which is supposed to remain impartial, accountability is completely undermined, perhaps permanently.

Democracy dies in darkness
opendemocracy.net/en/freedom-of-…

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More from @allthecitizens

25 Oct
🔴A damning report by @openDemocracy called #AccessDenied has revealed the ways in which the UK government has attacked the FOI Act.

"Secrecy is now a signature of Boris Johnson’s rule" the report says.

A 🧵on some of the findings of the report.

#AccessDenied report highlights how transparency in 2020 in terms of FOI disclosure rates by the govt has been the lowest ever. 1/8 Image
@openDemocracy report implicates the Cabinet Office of being even less transparent in comparison to other depts, pointing to how it blocked "requests from MPs about its use of public money to conduct political research" 2/8 Image
Read 10 tweets
23 Oct
We worked with @A__W______O to try to force govt to tell us why it had lifted mitigations in schools.

We spent weeks & weeks amplifying voices of scientists such as @dgurdasani1 warning of danger of this & calling for child vax.

You’ll never guess what happened next..
This wholly preventable surge in teenage cases has now spread to adults. Meanwhile, our booster roll-out has been sluggish. The result is a lot of risk for a lot of people, according to report in today’s @FT
Only half the people eligible for a third dose have come forward. One scientist on JCVI suggests to @ft it’s because people are ‘taking their cues from politicians’, believe the pandemic is over & ‘feel psychologically safe’
Read 4 tweets
15 Oct
NEW: Today, news broke that Immensa, subsidiary of Dante, may have supplied 43,000 incorrect test results between 8th September and 12th October at their clinic in Wolverhampton. THREAD:
news.sky.com/story/covid-19…
As first reported in the @BylineTimes, Immensa were granted a £119m testing contract, without tender, when the firm had only been in existence for 4 months.

In total, Immensa won two Covid-related contracts, totalling over £169.4m:
NHS Test & Trace announced that they were suspending testing operations at the Immensa Wolverhampton clinic following the "vast majority" of results coming back as negative:
gov.uk/government/new…
Read 7 tweets
14 Oct
🚨BREAKING: Private Covid testing company Dante Labs appears to have been using lax data privacy laws in order to advertise its genomic sequencing services to customers. THREAD:
Hundreds of companies have been making money from the huge private Covid-19 travel testing industry created by the UK government. Among these, some companies also offer DNA sequencing which offers ‘insights into your health, life and risk for hereditary disease’.
Dante Labs owns Immensa Health, which has been awarded £169,435,000 in two contracts for PCR testing of Covid-19 samples by the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC).
contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/notice/b608182…
Read 16 tweets
12 Oct
NEW: 🚨'Cabinet policy obliges ministers to delete WhatsApp messages'

Great report by @Haroon_Siddique in @guardian on our legal victory today & the shocking new evidence we revealed in court

With @Foxglovelegal

theguardian.com/politics/2021/…
What we were able to reveal to today is that it's actually Cabinet Office policy to insist ministers & advisors set their message apps to automatically delete.

The government is literally shredding its records in real time.
We would have *literally no idea* of this secret govt policy if we hadn't brought this case.

The Cabinet Office is an FOI black hole. The only reason we now know about this message deletion policy is because it was forced to reveal it in the course of this legal claim
Read 5 tweets
12 Oct
BREAKING: We have won permission to have our case heard in the high court!

We are THRILLED. Thank you to everyone who has supported this vital case & to our partners @Foxglovelegal
A comment from Clara Maguire, director of the Citizens:

‘This is a good day for democracy’
Thank you so much to everyone who’s helped us get this far. The fight is now on for the next stage. 👊👊👊

crowdjustice.com/case/stop-disa…
Read 4 tweets

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