Avoiding the request
The experience of feeling you're sometimes not getting a full answer to your question is one shared by FOI requesters and political interviewers.
It may be frustrating, but are you still finding out something? Yes, in the field of interviewing, according anyway to participants in Avoiding the Question, a ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio 4 documentary which I have produced for transmission this Sunday at 10.45pm.
Some say you can learn a lot about party positions and internal tensions from exactly where interviewees do and do not feel the need to equivocate. And that the different ways in which different politicians evade questions helps to form their public image.
If you've ever thought Margaret Thatcher came across as aggressive, John Major ineffectual, Tony Blair smug, David Cameron smarmy and Gordon Brown mechanical, maybe this is more to do with how they've avoided questions than actually answered them.
So similarly can you learn something from the nature of those FOI requests that public bodies (yes, even the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳, as I expect some commenters to point out) refuse and the way in which they refuse them?
Not always - as I've previously written, . But certainly sometimes.
Perhaps some public authorities might therefore volunteer to undergo the which three MPs agreed to do for Radio 4's iPM programme last week - strictly giving yes or no answers. But it's not easy - witness Norman Baker and his vegetarian sausages.
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