ARIA: Scoping Our Planet Programme Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Science, Innovation & Technology
Lord Grocott
Main Page: Lord Grocott (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Grocott's debates with the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology
ARIA: Scoping Our Planet Programme
Lord Grocott Excerpts(1 day, 20 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Lord Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)
I am sorry; I have been told the clocks are not working. There has been a little bit of a mix-up but we will get there.
Lord Grocott (Lab)
I have a question for the Minister; I am pretty sure that the answer will be that he has no idea, and that will not be any reflection on him because I do not have any idea either. What has been the total cost to the public purse of the implementation of freedom of information legislation for all the numerous organisations, large and small, across the public sector?
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
Perhaps unsurprisingly, I do not carry that figure in my head. I can tell my noble friend that ARIA has spent 300 hours over the past few months dealing with requests under the Environmental Information Regulations alone, so he can imagine the scale of requests that can come through other things. I am sure the cost of providing information requests to public bodies has been very high.