CAATnews Feb-March 2007 - Parliamentary

The Saudi deal – take action

An Early Day Motion is a sort of parliamentary petition through which opinion on particular issues is gauged. EDM 595 on the "Serious Fraud Office Investigation into the Al Yamamah military contract" has been tabled by a mullti-party group of MPs – Roger Berry (Labour), John Bercow (Conservative), Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat), Angus MacNeil (Scottish National Party) and Elfyn Llwyd (Plaid Cymru). It reads:

"That this House notes the recent decision that the Serious Fraud Office end its investigation into BAE Systems plc and the Al Yamamah military contract with the Government of Saudi Arabia; further notes that the UK is a signatory to the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions and that Article 5 of this Convention requires that the investigation and prosecution of foreign bribery `shall not be influenced by considerations of national economic interests’ or ‘the potential effect upon relations with another State’; believes that the early termination of this investigation for reasons other than the legal merits of the case sends the clear message that companies trading with countries that governments claim to be of strategic importance are above the law and can bribe with impunity; further believes that the decision is likely to cause irreparable damage to the UK’s reputation as an anticorruption champion; and calls on the UK Government to re-open the investigation of this case."

Please ask your MP to sign the EDM – either by writing to him or her at the House of Commons, Westminster, London SW1A 0AA or by emailing them. Most MPs’ email addresses can be found on the parliamentary website at www.parliament.uk and following the link to ‘MPs’.

Freedom of Information

The government has announced proposals to make it easier for public authorities to refuse Freedom of Information (FOI) requests. This would severely restrict the amount of information obtainable under the Act and would mean that many of CAAT’s FOI requests would be denied.

At the moment, an FOI request can be refused if the cost of dealing with it exceeds £600 for a government department or £450 for any other public authority. In calculating these limits, the authorities can take into account the costs of finding and extracting the requested information. The proposal is that, in future, reading, consulting and deciding would also be costed. Nearly all CAAT’s requests to central government involve the consideration of public interest issues and would exceed the new cost limits.

It is premature of the government to have reviewed the Act at this stage. The Information Commissioner has yet to rule on several CAAT requests, referred to him over a year ago. The same exemptions (commercial confidentiality and international relations) have been quoted in all cases. Once the Information Commissioner has ruled, and possible appeals against his ruling heard, precedents will be established. This will mean that departments know what kind of information they must provide, which should speed the process and cut the costs.

The Government has also proposed that the cost of unrelated requests made by the same individual or organisation to an authority be aggregated and refused if their combined cost exceeded the £450 or £600 limits. This appears arbitrary as the requests CAAT has made tend to be in batches in connection with a particular piece of research.

ANN FELTHAM