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Written question asked by Lord Mawson (Crossbench) on Thursday, 19 March 2015, in the House of Lords. It was due for an answer on Monday, 30 March 2015. It was answered by Lord Faulks (Conservative) on Wednesday, 25 March 2015 on behalf of the Ministry of Justice.

Freedom of Information

Question

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what estimate they have made of the proportion of requests under freedom of information legislation which originate from journalists as opposed to members of the public since that legislation was enacted; and what assessment they have made of the cost to the public purse of the freedom of information scheme to date.

Answer

There is no requirement for journalists to identify themselves as such when requesting information from a public authority under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Therefore we hold no reliable data as to what proportion of requests they are responsible for.

In 2012 the Ministry of Justice commissioned a costing exercise, ‘Strand 3- Investigative Study to inform the FOIA (2000) post-legislative review’, which concluded that in central government the average cost of handling a request for information was £184. It concluded that for central government the cost of dealing with FOI requests in 2011 was £8,5m.

For non-central public authorities the study concluded that the average cost of handling a request for information was £164, however, there is no data as to how many requests are received by these, so a total cost has not been estimated.

Secondary information

Type
Written question
Reference
HL5905
Session
2014-15
Subjects
Freedom of information Expenditure Journalism
Contains statistics
Yes
Link
View this Written question on www.parliament.uk