The Home Office has been pressuring its central government colleagues to keep all draft documents confidential, even if there are requests to publish them under the Open Government Act (Woo). The Department of Health, Welfare and Sport has repeatedly refused to release specific Covid-19 documents based on Woo’s requests, Follow the Money writes today.
FTM is considering filing an appeal to the court to reduce the penalty paid to VWS.
Until now, the Interior Ministry has maintained that there is no guideline stating that the concepts contained in the Woo Act should not be evaluated. In other words: draft documents are always rejected in the case of Woo’s application. But a memo uncovered by Volkskrant journalist Eric Verwell explains that “when dealing with Woo’s application, the most relevant conceptual documents are inventoried, but they are not substantively evaluated.”
“If VWS has not started issuing penalty payments before, it will certainly not do so in euros.”
This contradicts Woo, who states that you should also evaluate draft documents “at the passing level” for other factual information that could be made public. If the government fails to comply with its obligation to release the documents, a judge can impose a penalty. But today a judge decided to reduce the penalty to a symbolic one euro because the government fails so often, according to another FTM article by Bas van Beek, Lucien Hordijk and Jan Hein Strop.
This mainly concerns documents related to the corona virus from the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport, says Bas van Beek from Follow the Money, who has also submitted various Woo applications to the ministry that have not been decided. He mentions, among other things, the face mask deal with Sywert van Lienden. “Normally, the judge must then impose a period for making a decision. In the case of VWS, we already had to do this three times in a row. But now the judge has said that this penalty is not sufficient incentive for VWS.
Pay multiple fines
The judge’s conclusion: The penalty simply doesn’t offer any relief. That’s why the amount has been reduced to one euro per day, says Van Beek. “The court really doesn’t know anymore.” Even imposing multiple fines doesn’t seem to help, so the judge loses his stick behind the door. If VWS hadn’t started issuing penalty payments before, it certainly wouldn’t do so with one euro.
The proposal to stop paying these fines comes from VWS itself. Follow the proposed funds to bring the matter to a hearing so that the documents can be received through other options. “Of course it is not our business to impose these fines. The judge can also decide that the court will evaluate the most important documents and apply the reasons for the exception itself. We are strongly considering opposing this measure.
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