Thread by @GavinFreeguard

It’s taken 4 months but Cabinet Office has finally answered my #FOI request for names/membership of Cabinet Committees:

They’re refusing to release the info, citing ‘future publication’

(Background:

https://twitter.com/GavinFreeguard/status/1503321862603948034

)

They’ve applied a public interest test about releasing the info now versus some undetermined time in the future (this is a real flaw with section 22 – they don’t have to say when it will be published).

They say there's a ‘public interest in cost effectiveness’ & allowing govt to deal with the necessary ‘preparation, administration & context of publication’.

We’re talking about a short Word doc published as a PDF.

We should be worried if that much prep is needed.

Bonus: I also asked for info about PPSs. A month and a half after they published the latest list, they told me it’s been published. (I’d already spotted it anyway.)

But it’s not for the dates I requested. That info is *not* available on GOV.UK.

There’s also no link between the various PPS lists, even though GOV.UK has a ‘Collection’ function (published ones are here, fyi: gov.uk/search/all?key…)

This is still better than what they do for Cabinet Committees (when they actually publish the information), which is to overwrite the previous list, so you can’t find previous lists on GOV.UK: gov.uk/government/pub…

Thank goodness for the National Archives, webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/*/https:…, but there’s no signposting to that, etc

The whole episode shows that the 'default closed' mindset still persists in parts of govt. It also shows govt's mgmt of information is still sorely lacking in 2022.

Needless to say I'll be appealing, but the whole thing has been a farce.