Latest news: DfT fail to respond to our FOI requests…again

The fact that our legal proceedings have been slow is due to the ongoing refusal of the Department for Transport to act transparently and disclose essential documents – the same refusal the Select Committee report called “completely unacceptable” and deliberately “evasive”. Today, we received yet another example of this behaviour.

For two months, the DfT has diverted our lawyers’ correspondence down the route of FOI requests, already taking a further extension of 20 days; the deadline for which was today. Astonishingly, they wrote today at 17:15 (just minutes before their second deadline) to say they will take yet another extension in order to further consult with Govia and complete ‘public interest considerations’.

At this point, it is fair to say that the DfT have done everything they can to evade their responsibility to the public; denying us our urgent right to clarity on the Southern Rail crisis. This evening, we instructed our lawyers to write back to the DfT with three separate complaint letters, expressing in the strongest possible terms our objection to this unwarranted delay.

The Department for Transport have also failed to send us a copy of their FOI policy, which they are obligated to provide. Their argument so far that they cannot reveal documents due to ‘commercial interests’ should be viewed in light of the following:

Paragraphs 74 – 75 of the Select Committee report:

74. “Until we recently managed, after several attempts and considerable time and effort, to extract information from the Department, GTR’s contractual performance benchmarks, and data relating to GTR’s performance against them, were entirely opaque. It is completely unacceptable that changes to the contractual benchmarks were not published in an open and transparent way. It is also unacceptable that the data required to scrutinise GTR’s performance against its contractual benchmarks are not made readily available. The Department’s evasive and opaque answers to our questions hindered our inquiry and delayed publication of this Report.
75. The DfT must take urgent action to increase the transparency of GTR’s performance against its contractual obligations. In the interests of open and transparent scrutiny, we recommend that the Department immediately require GTR to publicly report its performance against each of its contractual performance measures in each Reporting Period since the commencement of the current franchise and on an ongoing basis.”

Letter from Committee Chair to Paul Maynard, 9^th September:

“I do not accept that it is necessary, or in the public interest, to keep this information confidential. While the information may be commercially embarrassing, and reflect badly on the Department, I do not see that publishing it would confer a commercial advantage on GTR’s competitors.”

The DfT have not only failed to reveal the full franchise agreement and remedial plan, but have also failed to respond to our urgent letter regarding health and safety concerns during the strikes, sent on 19^th October. With all the scenes we’ve witnessed this week on Southern Rail, the dangers are getting worse, not better; and this lack of response is deeply troubling. Our lawyer, Mathew Garbutt, has written again today to urge that they engage with us on this vital matter of health and safety monitoring.

What happens next?

The deadline for a full response to our Letter Before Action is November 14^th and the extended deadline for our FOI requests is the 17th – so, we will have more to report from both deadlines in mid-November. This also means that we have two weeks to lobby our MPs as hard as possible to recognise that any solution to the Southern Rail crisis hinges on achieving this transparency.

In refusing to reveal the franchise documents, remedial plan or any evidence of the claim of Force Majeure (the claim being used to justify GTR’s breach of contract); the Department for Transport are preventing any way of moving forward, and neglecting their responsibility to the public. It is exactly this refusal to act that locks us into a deadlocked and increasingly unlivable situation on our railway.