Michael Gove – Teflon Man

In 1991, a This Week special asked whether Kenneth Baker was ‘the Tories’ Teflon man’. 20 years later the current Education Secretary is fast becoming the Coalition’s prime candidate for the tag.

This weekend, in the latest round in the battle for transparency within the Department for Education, the Information Commissioner asked Michael Gove to release a series of private emails that he had previously refused to publish. These particular emails are just a handful of those believed to have been withheld from the public, which potentially contain information about the award of public money and the cancelled Building Schools for the Future Programme.

Six months after the Guardian first highlighted concerns about email exchanges within the Department, the ICO’s ruling confirms that Gove and his Department did not act in accordance with the law when they refused to reveal them.
Despite promises in the Coalition agreement to be the most open Government ever, over the last six months Gove has refused requests from journalists, bureaucrats and Parliament for information that should be in the public domain.
In Autumn, ignoring his own Department’s official guidance, he refused to publish private emails requested under the Freedom of Information Act because he did not believe they were covered by them. In December the Information Commissioner clarified that they were.

Gove later said he was relying on alternative guidance provided by the Cabinet Office. I have since tried to obtain this guidance but the Government has refused to release it, will not confirm when it was issued and will not confirm whether it exists in written form.

In an extraordinary appearance before the Education Select Committee this January, I asked three times whether, to his knowledge, private emails relating to Government business had been deleted but could not get a clear response. This week it transpired that at least 130 emails covered by the Act have been deleted.

The ruling this weekend does not signal the end of this farce. Following the Information Commissioner’s decision, Gove cannot argue the emails are not covered by FOI. He can however, still refuse to publish them under a right of appeal which he is widely expected to exercise.

The length of time this has been allowed to continue is significant and unhelpful. The case has been under investigation since August 2011. There is no clarity about whether private emails are still being deleted. This weekend, the Commissioner chose not to issue an enforcement notice which would order the emails to be disclosed, instead issuing a ‘decision’ which means Gove has 35 days to do so, or appeal. Given that Ministers were operating under a policy which the ICO says granted their advisors a ‘blanket exemption’ from the Act, this seems weak.

The Commissioner is still investigating whether emails were deleted with the intent to prevent disclosure. If they were, this is a breach of the Act and could result in a fine to the Department. But any prosecution has to be brought within 6 months of the offence occurring. The longer this drags on, the fewer the repercussions. As a result any action is unlikely to discourage this Department or any other from resisting the publication of information in future.

There is no certainty about how much longer this will drag on before the information is released. The refusal to publish emails that may tell us why new schools were abandoned or how public money is being spent at a time when school budgets are being cut makes a mockery of the Freedom of Information Act. In the meantime, the clamour for repeal or substantial amendment to the Act has grown louder. For those of us who believe in open Government, this shameful farce must be brought to an end and quickly.

Lisa Nandy is the Labour MP for Wigan