Freedom of Information, but only if no questions are asked
The Advanced Research and Invention Agency - ARIA - is the brainchild of the recently departed Prime Minister’s svengali, Dominic Cummings.
It is to be modelled on the US’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DARPA.
Like DARPA, ARIA is to fund cutting edge, high-risk, high-reward technology projects.
But unlike DARPA, Mr Cummings and the Government believe ARIA needs to be granted ‘extreme freedom’ and exemption from Freedom of Information (FOI) laws. DARPA, even though its focus is on developing emerging technologies in the field of national security, is subject to US FOI laws.
ARIA is a public agency and is set to receive £800 million of taxpayers’ money. It would not be unreasonable to expect the Government to have a well thought through, credible explanation for ARIA’s proposed FOI exemption.
To draw out the rationale behind their approach, Unlock Democracy wrote to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) seeking clarification.
Our enquiry secured an uncharacteristically blunt and honest reply from BEIS.
The Government wants to exempt ARIA from FOI because "Despite its size, ARIA will be very much in the public eye; we [BEIS] expect the number of FOI requests to be disproportionate to its size and therefore inhibiting."
To paraphrase the Government, ‘ARIA is a public body which many people are going to be interested in and will want to ask lots of questions about. This could be a hindrance.’
This baseless justification for exemption could be applied to any public organisation or Government department subject to FOI.
Unlock Democracy will not let this pass. We are considering our options because if BEIS gets away with this, this could set a dangerous precedent for the non-applicability of FOI legislation.
The UK is seeking a new role in the world.
Setting high standards of transparency in Government could be part of our agenda but not when the tests applied to public agencies to determine whether FOI should apply to their activities are, ‘Are people going to be particularly interested in their work? Will FOI requests be a bit irksome? If so, FOI exemption is granted’.
That approach to FOI - frustrating it, delaying it, or simply rejecting it - is already adopted widely around the world by countries the UK should not be seeking to emulate.