Immigration risks and FOI
The Conservatives Labour ministers of trying to cover up failings in immigration policy because of the way the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Office responded to a freedom of information request. This follows a about how immigration officials had been allowed "to take risks" when tackling a backlog of applications to live in the UK.
This article was based on a ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Office FOI disclosure. It's been followed up in the .
The shadow home secretary Chris Grayling : "More and more evidence is now emerging to suggest that the government broke freedom of information laws and tried to cover up a deliberate change of policy designed to encourage much higher levels of immigration."
The government of course rejects this. But in any case the funny thing about all this is that the "evidence" is contained in documents which have been for seven months.
They were published on the on 9 April.
The ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Office was forced to disclose them by a , which also accused the department of missing deadlines and "failure to engage with the Commissioner's investigation".
So what does this tell us? To start with, perhaps opposition politicians and journalists (yes, me included) should read the FOI disclosure logs of government departments more carefully.
But perhaps it also tells us something about the relationship between the web and the media. Documents are available on the internet for anyone interested to read for several months - yet it's only when the mainstream media focus on them that other journalists and politicians get interested.
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