Source · Select Committees · Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee
Recommendation 2
2
Accepted
Paragraph: 20
A greater level of transparency is required about the Clearing House.
Recommendation
A greater level of transparency is required about the Clearing House. To further allay concerns about the Clearing House, a greater volume of data on its performance should be published. As a minimum, the Cabinet Office needs to publish the same level of Clearing House information as previously on the number of referrals to the Clearing House split by Department and month. Echoing our predecessor Committee, this should be disclosed on a quarterly basis. The Cabinet Office should also publish data on casework volume split by referral category and timeliness against ICO and legal guidelines.
Government response summary AI-generated
FOI compliance statistics are already published on a quarterly basis on gov.uk and states that in 2021, the Cabinet Office’s performance consistently met and exceeded the ICO’s published standard. The government has shared the letter from the Director General for Propriety and Ethics to the then Information Commissioner setting out the reasons why they believe that an internal review rather than an external audit is a proportionate response.
Summary of the government's response below — read the verbatim text to verify.
Paragraph Reference:
20
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government · verbatim extract
Accepted
The Government notes the Committee’s concerns about the level of transparency about the Cabinet Office’s Clearing House function. Information about the Cabinet Office’s role in Freedom of Information (FOI) and the Clearing House function, including a list of departments within the Clearing House’s remit, the referral criteria and an exemplar referral form, is available on gov.uk and is in line with information published by previous administrations. The Clearing House in operation today is a small-scale advisory function, rather than the standalone unit that existed in the Ministry of Justice and the then Department for Constitutional Affairs. As such, the Government’s present view is that creating statistics on the number of cases referred to be published on a quarterly basis would be a disproportionate use of resources for a de minimis function. The Government has previously released the figures to the Committee of the number of “round robins” in 2020.1 Round robins are requests made to more than one department and that have repeat characteristics. The figures for this category of referral are available because each newly identified round robin is allocated a unique reference number for the list which is circulated to departments twice-weekly. To illustrate further the minimal scale of this function, of the 35,279 FOI requests made to government departments in 2021,2 only 250 were identified as round robins. 1 Letter from Rt Hon Steve Barclay MP, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster on Cabinet Office’s Freedom of Information Clearing House, dated 1 February 2022 2 https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/freedom-of-information-statistics-annual-2021/freedom-of- information-statistics-annual-2021-bulletin 2 The Cabinet Office Freedom of Information Clearing House: Government Response The Committee will note that the terms of reference of Sue Langley OBE’s review include the question as to whether there is sufficient information available to the public and what further information should be published, and we look forward to receiving her recommendations on this point.
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