Back in May 2008, Martin Rosenbaum at the BBC Freedom of Information blog asked:
What do business and government say to each other? Many people want to know, some of them hoped that a freedom of information law would help them find out.
Well, yes indeed. But what about the BBC itself? The BBC has its own public affairs department to lobby Government on its behalf. And, revolving doors being what they will, when charter negotiations come up it can usually save money and hire a civil servant or two to cut a deal with former colleagues.
Still, it does hire the occasional public affairs company. So what does it tell the world about such stuff?
Here is a reply [pdf] to a Freedom of Information request made in January 2008. The request asks for details of lobbying firms employed by the Beeb. It weighs the arguments carefully…
In favour of disclosing, the Chairman recognised:
- There is a public interest in transparency in relation to the political process, including the lobbying of Government by various organisations; and
- There is also a public interest in seeing how Government decisions are reached in relation to publicly funded organisations such as the BBC.
In favour of withholding the Chairman noted the following:
- There is a public interest in the BBC being able to effectively lobby Government, so that it can continue to provide the best possible service to the licence fee payer. To do so the BBC needs to have access to candid advice so that those managers lobbying and liaising with Government have all relevant information before them. It is only with the benefit of free and frank advice that those managers can lobby for the BBC’s interest in the most effective manner … the likely effect of disclosure in this instance is that such free and frank provision of advice from consultancies such as HRA would not be forthcoming in the future.
- It is in the public interest that a good relationship is maintained between the BBC and the Government. Disclosure of this information is likely to hinder this dialogue and prevent an effective working relationship.
- It is clearly in the public interest to have full and proper records of decisions made at the BBC, so that future decisions at the BBC can be made with the benefit of past experience. The prospect of disclosure is also likely to adversely impact upon the recording of such advice and discussions in the future.
And the result? Darkness reigns…
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Hi Adrian -
Thanks for your interest in this. Does it disclose a troubling inconsistency?
Well, I know that some people think that those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. There are other people who think they have just as much right to throw stones as anyone else.
In any case we all manage to live and work surrounded by inconsistency and paradox. That’s because human heads, like those of robots, have paradox-absorbing crumple zones ( http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=paradox-absorbing+crumple+zones ).
(By the way, the full BBC letter actually gives rather more information than your summary suggests. )
Keep up the good work.
Martin, I like the FoI blog and I don’t blame you for the inconsistency, it’s a fact of sprawling organisational life.
Still, it is a shame that the BBC doesn’t RSS that page, and that the PDFs have no OCR capability so you literally have to search through them and transcribe by hand.
It looks like the most grudging form of compliance possible and the compliers have an opportunity at least to make their obfuscation less opaque!
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