Evidence to the Parliamentary Inquiry From the Information Commissioner:
CHRISTOPHER GRAHAM: “Well, fees would impose their own
burden,
because there’s a cost in levying a fee, for a start. I
think any fee that you
contemplated would be unlikely to meet the costs of actually
dealing with
Freedom of Information requests and there would be a certain
amount of
cost in actually issuing the invoice. I wish public
authorities would actually
use the provisions of the Act to turn away some of the most
burdensome
stuff. We’ve got clear exemption in section 14 of the Act
for the manifestly
vexatious request, but public authorities who are
complaining about how
terrible life is and how burdensome it is because of all of
these sad, mad
and bad people who
are bombarding them with questions are most
reluctant to use the section 14 power, despite the fact that
our guidance is very clear,
guidance supported in a decision of First-tier
Tribunal only this
week, who are very firm in their dismissal of a completely
unreasonable
obsessive requester, and public authorities just ought to be
a bit braver
about saying no.”
If
these vexatious requesters are indeed Sad,Bad Madmen, why is the Information Commissioner’s Office spending millions of pounds fighting such cases?
