Police FOI in Ireland and Birmingham
Interesting to note that the will now become subject to freedom of information. And this is a good reminder that the UK FOI system is much more wide-ranging than some international counterparts in terms of the extensive list of public bodies that it already covers.
Indeed some of the most interesting disclosures in the UK have come from police forces. Here's one reported in today's , about the lack of body armour for police support officers, which actually provides a good example of the use of FOI by an MP (Tom Watson) to get information that he could not obtain from ministers.
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Given their performance on FOI, perhaps body armour for MPs would not be unreasonable :)
So everyone apart from the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ seems to be subject to the FOI act, when can we expect the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ to do the decent thing and release the Balen report?.
I note with interest that one of your editors used this site to deny pro-Palastinian bias which was claimed in the Wall Street Journal!, yet at teh same time did not allow us the readers to comment on it!.
Typical ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳, you judge everyone else, however, you refuse to allow us to judge you.
Maybe a comment on th Scottish situation would be a good idea? Scotland has its own FoI, and there are no suggestions to restrict it. I think Kevin Dunion wrote an excellent article for some Scottish papers on this recently.
Interesting to see Richard Brunstrom, Chief Constable of North Wales Police, stongly in favour of FOI, and against the Maclean Bill to remove Parlaiment from the FOI Act.
See his blog at:
Its very encouraging to see a senior police officer saying they are "a passionate supporter of openness and transparency in public life"