Appearing yesterday before the Commons’ Justice Select Committee, Graham said that the ICO is now dealing with nine tenths of the appeals it receives against public bodies’ Freedom of Information Act (FoI) decisions “very quickly”.
However, he said that reductions in the body’s grant are bringing it to the point at which he’s having to leave posts unfilled, and warned that there’s the threat of a backlog.
“The squeeze has been relentless,” he said. “I can only spend ‘grant in aid’ on FoI. I can’t subsidise it from data protection [budgets].
“It is a funny way to run a £20m organisation. I am cash rich on data info, and very cash poor on the FoI side.”
Graham also called for the ICO to be granted powers of compulsory audit for public sector bodies, enabling it to scrutinise organisations’ data handling operations in an attempt to curb data losses. “The health department is supportive of the idea, but DCLG [the Department for Communities and Local Government] is strongly opposed,” he said.
“Until local government gets the message, local tax payers will continue to be hit with civil penalties for really stupid mistakes.”
Graham also voiced concerns over the effect of government reorganisation on the transparency agenda, citing the example of some functions of the Serious Organised Crime Agency being merged into the new National Crime Agency, which is not expected to be subject to the FOI regime.
He said: “We have to be ever vigilant. It seems to be bizarre that with all the talk about openness and transparency on the one hand the restructuring of the delivery of public services may be leading to less rather than more.”
Graham also said that he was worried by the increasing use of ministerial vetoes to prevent the release of information approved for release by the ICO or the Information Rights Tribunal.
He said that at the time the FOI legislation was debated in Parliament, “the clear intention was that the veto would be invoked rarely”. But he said that it had been used six times, with the last four vetoes occurring in the past 18 months.
The information commissioner also said he was worried by comments made last month by justice minister Helen Grant that the government was considering cutting the amount of time public authorities could spend on investigating FOI requests.
He said: “It doesn’t follow that the least burdensome requests are those of the most merit.”
And he emphasised that, despite the costs, FOI helped reduce costs on the public purse by making public service deliver more accountable.
He said: “We must be making a massive saving by organisations abandoning practices that don’t pass the ‘blush test. Much more can be delivered through the open approach.”