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The UK Government: Change the Freedom of Information Act
R K.
started this petition to
The UK Government
The Freedom of Information Act 2000 was supposed to allow the public to scrutinise public spending. It was supposed to enable the public to hold government accountable where things have gone wrong. It was even hailed as the 'cornerstone of a mature democracy'.
But your 'right to know' abruptly ends whenever you start asking about profit-making deals with private contractors. When these deals are paid for from public money, clearly they ought to be covered by the FOI rules. But in fact they aren’t, because Parliament has created the “commercial confidentiality exemption” to conceal them.
This is outrageous! This petition demands the repeal of section 41 and 43 of the FOI Act to remove this “Commercial Confidentiality”, as these sections only exist to cover up exploitation of the public purse.
From now on, full transparency should be required for any spending of public funds.
But your 'right to know' abruptly ends whenever you start asking about profit-making deals with private contractors. When these deals are paid for from public money, clearly they ought to be covered by the FOI rules. But in fact they aren’t, because Parliament has created the “commercial confidentiality exemption” to conceal them.
This is outrageous! This petition demands the repeal of section 41 and 43 of the FOI Act to remove this “Commercial Confidentiality”, as these sections only exist to cover up exploitation of the public purse.
From now on, full transparency should be required for any spending of public funds.
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