Friday, May 02, 2025
Is Government transparency at an all time low?
The site says that Whitehall departments and government agencies responded in full to just 29% of Freedom of Information (FOI) requests in 2024 — down from 34% in 2023, which was itself a record low at the time:
The Cabinet Office, which oversees FOI policy across government, responded in full to just a quarter of all “resolvable” requests. Six departments — including the Treasury and Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) — granted full responses to 25% or fewer of requests.
This steep and sustained decline in transparency is part of a broader trend. In 2010, 57% of FOI requests were granted in full. Since then, the figure has dropped or flatlined in 12 of the last 13 years.
Before winning last July’s election, Keir Starmer had promised to end “the outrageous way government departments refuse freedom of information requests.”
Responding to the new figures, Labour MP Phil Brickell told us that he “hopes the new government will put an end to the culture of obfuscation that pervaded under the Tories.”
“The freedom to access information about what is going on in government is a vital right in any functioning democracy,” Brickell added.
Democracy for Sale has been working with public interest lawyers to fight government secrecy and force the disclosure of important information.
We recently won a major legal battle forcing the government to disclose key documents about the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) – an £800 million Dominic Cummings project that ministers had previously made exempt from FOI law.
The new FOI statistics - published by the Cabinet Office in the annual FOI bulletin - show not only fewer disclosures, but worsening delays.
Under FOI law, public bodies must respond within 20 working days. In 2024, only 71% of requests were answered on time – the lowest figure since monitoring began.
The Department for Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) responded to fewer than two-thirds of requests on time, while the FCDO met the legal deadline in just half of cases.
The National Archives granted just 11% of requests in full last year — and failed to respond at all to 70% of them. A sharp rise in requests relating to military service records transferred from the Ministry of Defence was cited by the Cabinet Office as the reason. Critics say the department's failure to adapt is damaging public access to historical records.
FOI expert Martin Rosenbaum said there were “massive and unacceptable problems in some departments with late replies” and called on the government to “ensure that all departments consistently meet their legal deadlines”.
This is a trend that needs to be reversed,
