Ulster Unionist Party Leader Mike Nesbitt MLA, has expressed his utter amazement at the revelation that the Office of the First and deputy First Minister sought to avoid a Freedom of Information request on the grounds that it might cost Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness votes.
Mr Nesbitt said:
“The Freedom of Information Act 2000 created a public “right of access” to information held by public authorities.
“There are of course legitimate exemptions, but until recently, no-one ever attempted to argue that information should be held back because of potential electoral consequences!
“Incredibly, that is exactly what happened in Northern Ireland, where OFMdFM argued that information requested by the Newsletter should not be disclosed, because to do so “could … prejudice ministers electoral prospects and would most certainly have a chilling effect on the future development of corporate risk registers.”
“In other words, please do not make us tell people the truth about what we are up to, because then they won’t vote for us next time. Extraordinary! And utterly unacceptable. The argument is supposed to be about whether the public interest is best served by publishing or withholding information. But do Messrs Robinson and McGuinness make that argument? No! Their argument is all ‘me, me, me’.
“This is worthy of North Korea or some former eastern bloc country during the Cold War. The idea that some information should not be made available to a newspaper and the general public because it might have electoral consequences for a political party is totally anti-democratic.
“If this had happened with regard to the Office of the Prime Minister and not the Office of Northern Ireland’s First and deputy First Ministers, then it would be a political scandal and be on the front page of every National newspaper.
“The comments are a revealing insight coming so soon after the Ulster Unionist Party had to complain to the Information Commissioner to force OFMdFM to publish market research they had commissioned regarding the development of the old Maze Prison site.
“How much more proof do we need that there is an anti-democratic culture in OFMdFM, who operate a siege mentality at the heart of an Administration which simply does not trust the voters and wants to keep them as ill-informed as possible, lest they realise what is really going on?”