Leading Liberal Democrats have made two recent interventions on freedom of information legislation.

Today, Alistair Carmichael called for all private contractors doing public work to also be subject to FOI requests and promised strong opposition to any attempts from the Conservatives to water down the FOI system.

The call comes amidst reports that ministers may extend FOI requests to charities. From the Press Gazette:

The Government is considering strengthening the ministerial veto on Freedom of Information disclosures but dropping other proposed changes to the act, according to a report in The Times.

It is also considering extending the act to cover charities and private sector companies which work on public sector projects, the paper reports.

The Goverment’s Independent Commission on Freedom of Information was set up to review the act last year in the wake a Supreme Court decision which over-rode a ministerial veto and ordered the disclosure of letters sent by Prince Charles to ministers.

The commission has faced a huge backlash from media groups, charities, trade unions and  civil society bodies because its consultation document suggested it was only looking at ways to reduce the “burden” which FoI places on the public sector.

Alistair Carmichael said:

Liberal Democrats have always been clear that the public deserve to know how their money is being spent and how decisions on their behalf are taken. In government we managed to extend FOI considerably but it must go further and extend FOI to all private contractors doing public work.

However good the apparent plans are to extend FOI request to charities sound, the Conservatives look like they want to fundamentally water down the FOI system as a whole which makes such a change useless. We will strongly oppose any attempts to gut the FOI system which is an important tool for the public and journalists in holding those in power to account.

Last week, however, Tim Farron told the Guardian that he wanted the group reviewing Freedom of Information to be broken up.

The group looking into it strikes me at least to have a bias towards limiting access to FoI requests for quite spurious reasons,” said Farron. “I’m sure there is a cost – an administrative cost and a time cost – to providing this information, but that’s the price you pay for living in a liberal society.

I’m all for reviewing legislation 16 years since it came in – I think that’s a perfectly sensible thing to do – but if you start off your exercise with a group of people whose instincts are to rein in the powers then that’s illiberal.

One of the group is controversial Liberal Democrat peer Alex Carlile. His views on civil liberties are at odds with many in the party. Tim was pretty magnanimous:

Farron said he liked Carlile and described him as having been “a great servant to the party”, but added: “I think it’s probably not wise to have people on the committee whose positions are known and tend to be stacked in one direction.

“And it’s not just Alex Carlile, it’s others as well whose views are already known. They’re entitled to those views and I respect those views, but it would make me feel a lot easier if that panel included people who have other points of view as well.”

It strikes me that both Farron and Carmichael are saying sensible things but a bit of joined up thinking wouldn’t go amiss. It would have been useful if Carmichael had referenced Farron’s comments in some way so that there was a sense of continuity and coherence.

The pair of them get a stern look from me for not mentioning that the strongest FOI legislation on these isles is in Scotland – and that’s because it was introduced by a Lib Dem Justice Minister, Jim Wallace.

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social