LONDON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 24th November, 2020) The UK Cabinet Office headed my minister Michael Gove is running a secretive unit that advises other government departments on how to handle Freedom of Information requests and block journalists and researchers who invoke the act passed in 2000 to have access to sensitive information, openDemocracy, a UK-based political website funded by US billionaire George Soros, has reported.
According to the report published on Monday, requests that are deemed to be sensitive are monitored and input by a unit called the "Clearing House."
"There is evidence to suggest that the Clearing House's Primary function is to monitor and obfuscate FOI requests submitted by journalists and campaigners that the Cabinet Office perceives as reputational risks," the 39-page document said.
It claimed that journalists from openDemocracy, The Guardian, The Times, the BBC, and many more, as well as researchers from Privacy International and Big Brother Watch and elsewhere, have been included in the lists.
The report quoted Conservative lawmaker David Davis as saying that the unit operation is against the spirit of the 2000 Act, while Labour shadow Cabinet Office minister Helen Hayes considered it "extremely troubling."
"If the cabinet office is interfering in FOI requests and seeking to work around the requirements of the Act by blacklisting journalists, it is a grave threat to our values and transparency in our democracy," Hayes said.
It also quoted a government spokesperson as saying that that unit�s work is to guarantee that there is a standard approach in the way government consider and respond to FOI requests.
According to openDemocracy, in 2019, central UK government departments granted fewer and rejected more FOI requests than ever before, while in the last five years, the Cabinet Office, Treasury, Foreign Office and Home Office have all withheld more requests than they granted.
