Transparency Actually Makes Politicians More Accountable

Ben Worthy

The Daily Mail supports it, Tony Blair called himself a ‘nincompoop’ for going near it, and David Cameron said it was ‘furring up the arteries of government’ (whatever that means). Transparency is one of the powerful buzzwords of the late 20^th and early 21^st century, but continues to be debated, discussed and (sometimes) disliked. Even today, questions over openness can be seen in everything from covid contracts to ‘partygate’ and now, it seems, ‘Beergate’.

However, there have been powerful voices claiming that transparency is being abused, misused or has counter-productive effects. My research has helped to show that, while it is not perfect, it can make for a better democracy.

Since the 1990s there has been a flurry of changes from Freedom of Information or Right to Information Acts, Open Data publications to Lobbying meeting regulations across the world.  My research has looked particularly at the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act 2000 in the UK, which gives a legal right to ask questions of public bodies, from central and local government, to schools , hospitals and local libraries. I’ve also explored Open Data, and what happens when local government publishes all its spending details.  

The big question behind my research is: does transparency actually work? In one sense, we do now know more. If you want to find out who gifted Boris Johnson a Leather Business Bag and Bottle of Wine and a marble desk tidy, or to know who the top 10 lobbyists are to the UK government, you now can. FOI helped give us the MPs’ expenses scandal and the Owen Paterson kerfuffle.

My research has shown something more. Openness makes politicians and public bodies answer more questions, and be more accountable over a whole range of issues, whether it is the Police explaining the fact that 9 in 10 car thefts go unsolved or the government acknowledging the difficulties involved in making levelling up happen. Our own experiment with making requests to parish councils found that using an FOI law not only is more likely to get a response, but was also more likely to make a public body publish what they have on their website. So, yes, transparency works.

As interesting as if it works is the issue of where it works. Despite the headlines about central government, FOI requests are most often used for local government, and our past studies found that for every 1 request to central government 4 go to local government. FOI and transparency is, like a lot of politics, actually local. It is about potholes, house building and immigration officers ‘embedded’ in local authorities.

But 20 years on from the FOI Act, there are worrying signs for the future. In my evidence to the recent Select Committee investigation, I argued that if transparency needs one thing it is care and support, and that seems to be lacking.  There is growing evidence of neglect and efforts to avoid scrutiny.

One of the biggest fears for transparency campaigners is that FOI laws could create an incentive to hide instead of open up. Could the presence of such laws lead to officials and politicians trying to hide from them, or even fight them? The particular concern is that openness laws might empty out the official record, so that meetings go un-minuted, conversations go unrecorded and that important audit trails simply disappear. In 2018 the Scottish Information Commissioner spoke of claims of political interference and some ‘deliberate delaying tactics and requests being blocked or refused for tenuous reasons’ under the separate Scottish FOI Act. The RHI Inquiry in Northern Ireland revealed worrying signs of poor record keeping and avoidance of minutes at senior levels, with allegations of interference. 

Added to this, there is evidence of outright avoidance at the top levels of government. Back in 2012 Michael Gove was found to have used private emails in an attempt to hide from FOI, as apparently advised by his then Chief of Staff Dominic Cummings. Now there are worrying  signs that WhatsApp is being used undermine the reach of laws to get the documents, so key decisions or lobbying meetings ‘disappear’ from the record.

More generally, the poor performance of central government in dealing with requests is leading to a wholesale undermining of FOI. Work by the IFG has shown a worrying downward trend. A request to central government in 2005 had a 20% chance of not being answered but in 2021 the chance of refusal stands at more than 40%.  This creates what I call a collective irresponsibility-the more people in government don’t play the FOI game, the harder it is to punish wrong-doing and the worse the system gets.

To borrow from George Orwell, transparency is about finding out what politicians don’t want you to know. It can bring greater accountability and make for a more informed public. The problem is that whether it works depends on those who dislike it the most.

Research

See our experiment with FOI and Parish Councils here and my recent evidence to the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Select Committee here.

You can read more about my research on my blog Open Data Study.  

Ben Worthy is a Senior Lecturer in Politics at Birkbeck and Director of the MSc in Government, Policy and Politics