Registering risk with Andy Burnham

Which side is he really on?

The question everyone is asking today is surely this: What does our new prime minister think about freedom of information policy?

There’s not a lot to go on. Over the years he hasn’t expressed much interest in the topic, either in Westminster or in Manchester.

But one possible view of Andy Burnham is that he’s followed the standard politician’s trajectory of being keener on FOI when in opposition than in government.

This is nicely illustrated by the story of the Department for Health’s risk registers.

As a health minister in the previous Labour government, he declined to publish the departmental risk register, on the grounds that: “Putting the risk register in the public domain would be likely to reduce the detail and utility of its contents. This would inhibit the free and frank exchange of views about significant risks and their management, and inhibit the provision of advice to Ministers.”

But in 2012, having moved to opposition, he learnt to see the virtues of transparency. He now demanded the release of a Department of Health risk register relating to the then government’s NHS reorganisation policy. This was in line with ICO and tribunal rulings, which the Cameron coalition eventually blocked by use of a ministerial veto.

Naturally his new stance required devising arguments (of varying plausibility) as to why the issues surrounding this transitional risk register were completely different to those surrounding the strategic risk register previously withheld when Labour was in power.

Later, as any good opposition politician should, he also made use of FOI to gather material to attack government policy. He criticised health bodies who cited commercial confidentiality to withhold information.

On the other hand, back in 2007, in a free (unwhipped) Commons vote, he had opposed a measure to ensure that information about MPs’ parliamentary expenditure remained subject to FOI. He was thus one of a few dozen MPs who tried and failed to keep expenses details out of the public domain.

This was before the eventual publication of the extraordinary facts involved which created a massive political crisis in 2009, and in which he was caught up in a comparatively minor way.

However he has consistently promoted transparency on one topic, as part of his admirable personal commitment over many years to the cause of the Hillsborough victims and their families.

He pressed determinedly for a full inquiry including release of documentation and for the public service ‘duty of candour’ in the law that is currently going through parliament.

The Thatcher government’s response to the Hillsborough tragedy was a topic that I investigated using FOI around 15 years ago when I worked for the BBC. I talked to him about it at the time, he was keen to do so, and I can remember him telling me earnestly that “We’re on the same side”.¹

More recently, as Mayor of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority he would have found himself and his office subject to FOI again.

The authority was rebuked earlier this year by the Information Commissioner’s Office for its failure to comply with the official code of practice on publishing FOI statistics. However it has to be said that this is a widespread problem amongst public bodies.

Burnham now takes national power at a time when earlier hints of government plans to constrain FOI appear to have been set aside.

I can’t see those possible restrictions reappearing in the near future. Apart from anything else, it would be tactically extremely foolish for the newly formed government, generating press antipathy and bad publicity. Those factors ought to feature on any decent risk register.

Assuming that FOI policy stays with the Cabinet Office, the cabinet minister directly responsible will be Louise Haigh, the new First Secretary of State and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, a close Burnham ally. She will generally have a very influential role within the government.

In opposition she did speak enthusiastically about FOI: “It has saved time and money and helped countless services improve for the better but crucially it has enshrined in law the right to know about the decisions being taken in our name. Make no mistake, we will fight to defend it.”

In particular she campaigned strongly for FOI to be extended to private contractors delivering public services, which would be an important strengthening of the law and the rights of citizens to information.

This much needed reform was theoretically Labour government policy under Starmer - as a ‘longer-term’ measure to be taken forward ‘in due course’. An important question is whether Haigh will use her influence to ensure it is implemented.

So we wait to see if ‘in due course’ has now arrived, or if alternatively things will seem different when viewed through the prism of holding power.

1. This was certainly more positive than my one conversation with Keir Starmer about FOI. I was talking to him at an event when he was leader of the opposition, and he asked me what I was doing now that I had left the BBC. I told him I was writing a book on how best to make FOI requests. He replied “Oh good, good”, in a tone that was acceptably polite but entirely lacking in enthusiasm, and then turned to talk to somebody else.