Gordon Brown says he wants to strengthen the FoI Act

Gordon Brown says he wants to strengthen the FoI Act

The Economist claims that the sorry saga of MPs’ allowance-fiddling has had one positive spin-off: politicians no longer dare claim that such information should be kept secret. This week Gordon Brown, the prime minister, said he wanted to strengthen the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act of 2000, allowing citizens to probe the “dark recesses of power [where] too much information is held”.

Mr Brown is (allegedly) admired by transparency campaigners for binning a plan by his predecessor, Tony Blair, that would have crippled the act by imposing limits on the number of information requests an individual could make, and on their complexity. Now, with the public anxious about how its money is being (mis)spent, he has the chance to open things up more.

Uncovering the next scandal (The Economist, 4 June 2009)