The head of an influential transport safety group has launched a scathing attack on the Department for Transport (DfT) for its failure to respond to FOI requests on important road safety information.
David Davies (pictured), executive director of the Parliamentary Advisory Council on Transport Safety (PACTS) wrote a blog on the group's website accusing the department of withholding four reports on road safety.
He noted the reports and made the following commentary:
- 'The Summary of responses to the Roads Policing Review call for evidence which closed in November 2020. Does it really take two years to summarise 159 responses?
- 'A research report on the effectiveness of road safety targets, delivered January 2021. Are the findings too inconvenient for the DfT who commissioned it but dislikes targets?
- 'The e-scooter rental trials monitoring report. Long completed by the consultants, ministers said it would be published in September 2021. Other data on the number of trips, distance, by whom etc are routinely published [by] the DfT? What is so special about e-scooters?
- 'Research by BritainThinks into road safety semiotics. This would provide useful guidance to communication practitioners. What is so scary for the DfT about publishing it?'
'Most of the content of these is factual, unremarkable, and of the sort that is routinely published elsewhere. We can see no good reason for withholding it. In fact, putting it into the public domain would allow much more informed public debate about the issues and, we believe, assist the government to make decisions,' Mr Davies wrote.
PACTS had made repeated requests and appeals citing the FOI, but the DfT claims an exemption on the grounds that the Government intends to publish these reports, Mr Davies states 'even though previous publication dates have been missed and no new timescales for publication have been set'.
Highways has had a similar response for at least one of the above reports.
The leading transport safety figure went on to accuse the DfT of withholding 'inconvenient news as long as possible and to release it at the point most advantageous to ministers'.
He argued this was against the spirit of the FOI and allows the government to effectively bury inconvenient information until it is out of date and its value reduced.
Mr Davies questioned whether it was time for the Act to change.
The DfT was approached for comment.
