Listening to Radio 4 this afternoon, I heard Andrew Dilnot (former head of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, and now the Principal of St Hugh's College, Oxford) examining the way in which headlines emerge from the statistics and raw data of everyday life.
The 'headline' was about the apparent relationship between public policy (in this case, metrics for healthcare) and outcomes (in this case, an apparent difference in the success of treatment in adjacent English and Welsh hospitals). The relevant factor was that increased devolution had given the Welsh Assembly the latitude to adopt different policies about the management of healthcare provision. But this post isn't about the details of what they found - if you are interested, you can get to an archived copy of the programme via the link above.
The aspect which caught my attention was this: during their researches, the production team asked some of the hospital trusts for data about their mortality rates. The response from some hospitals was "we won't release that data unless you submit a Freedom of Information request". This suggests a fundamental misunderstanding of the FOI Act. The Act establishes a general right to access information covered by a public sector body's publication scheme. All you need to do to exercise that right is ask for the information in writing. It doesn't have to be on paper - an email will do. Nor do you have to 'cite the Act', or even mention it.
It seems that whatever the legislation says or intends, some people's instinct is still to try and use it to create an obstacle.
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