Lord David Clark was asked by Tony Blair to set out the Freedom of Information rules

THE peer who helped set up the UK’s freedom of information laws said the system has been failing because civil servants remained “obsessed with secrecy”.

Lord David Clark of Windermere lamented what had become of the system as he appeared at a debate jointly held by the Open Democracy news site and SOAS, the university in Bloomsbury.

Twenty years ago, he was asked by then prime minister Tony Blair to set up a system where people could ask for information from public bodies, but he said use of the Freedom of Information Act – brought into force in 2005 – had later been stymied by a civil service who “could not get their head around the concept”.

He told the online meeting: “Almost daily I get people talking to me about FOI, and they all come up with the same stories now.

Public bodies are confident enough often to deny they’re subject to the Freedom of Information Act. When they are pressed, they say ‘well, we’re too busy’.”

If within realistic cost expectations, information is supposed to be supplied with 20 days. Releases have formed the basis of journalists’ investigations, as well as allowing residents to dig further into decisions that affect their area.

But there are a list of exemptions now regularly used to avoid providing information, and the number of successful applications has plummeted over the past decade.

Appeals against refusals go to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), but cases are usually added to a long queue.

Mr Blair later said it was his biggest mistake in government. Lord Clark said that bodies should have simply been more open with what information they held in the first place.

“You can then, when you get a freedom of information request, just refer them to the open information,” he said.

“I hoped that the system would actually become embedded as a new generation of civil servants and public servants emerged who were not hooked on the obsession with secrecy, convenient as it is. I think we failed in that.”

The meeting heard from Conservative MP David Davis, who said that FOI should be strengthened. “I think we need to put more pressure on the ICO to be more aggressive,” he said, adding that a new Official Secrets Act being discussed should not remove public interest clauses.

And he told the meeting: “We should remove commercial confidential­ity frankly as one of the exemptions as I actually think it’s pernicious” Campaigners have long argued that this rule has meant we do not see crucial information even if public money is funding an important contract.

Former shadow chancellor John McDonnell said that the recent controversy over former PM David Cameron’s lobbying work should act as a key moment where people demanded more transparency, describing the controversy as an “opportunity” for change.

“The level of obfuscation in response to freedom of information requests has become an art form,” he said.