Campaign for Freedom of Information

The Campaign for Freedom of Information is an advocacy group that promotes and defends freedom of information in the UK. It seeks to strengthen the public’s rights under the Freedom of Information Act and related laws and opposes attempts to weaken them. It does this through campaigning, the publication of briefings and other reports and research. The Campaign also provides advice to the public, assistance to people challenging unreasonable refusals to disclose information and runs training courses on freedom of information.

The Campaign is a not-for-profit company, unaffiliated to any political party, (registration number 1781526) governed by a board of non-executive directors. It is funded mainly by grants from charitable foundations, donations and income from training. Maurice Frankel has been its director since 1987.

The Campaign was founded in 1984 by citizen campaigner Des Wilson to secure a freedom of information law in the UK. The organisation was officially launched on 5 January 1984 with the support of the 3 main opposition party leaders of the time and 150 MPs from all parties. The Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, opposed FOI in principle saying that a legal power to force ministers to disclose information would weaken ministers’ accountability to Parliament. They worked to keep FOI on the political agenda until the climate became more favourable, while seeking to introduce specific rights to information through private members’ bills. Several private members’ bills that the Campaign drafted and promoted reached the statute book as the:

The Campaign also drafted a bill to reform section 2 of the Official Secrets Act 1911, a catch-all provision which made the unauthorised disclosure of any official information a criminal offence. The Protection of Official Information Bill, introduced by Richard Shepherd MP in 1988, would have replaced section 2 with a narrower measure that included a public interest defence. The bill was defeated after the government imposed an unprecedented three-line whip on its own MPs at second reading requiring them to vote it down. Mrs Thatcher’s Conservative government later introduced the Official Secrets Act 1989, which repealed section 2 of the 1911 Act, but rejected all efforts to insert a public interest defence.

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