THE Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOI Act) gives anyone in Britain the right to request recorded information from public authorities. This legislation operates on the principle of a public right to know, unless there is a good reason to withhold it. Requests must be responded to within 20 working days.

The Act was one of the most progressive pieces of legislation to come out of the Blair period, although he now disavows it. Blair has long been a critic of the laws, introduced while he was prime minister. He says he “regrets introducing FOI because it has hugely constrained ministers’ confidence in having frank discussions with advisers.”

It seems, though, that this Act is not being implemented by public bodies in accordance with the law. I applied to the Metropolitan Police in August 2024 requesting information about any data held on me. I had an immediate response to inform me that my request had been logged and would be dealt with. Despite several complaints since I have been given no data or any reason for not being given access to it.

After the demised of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), the media made a big issue out of the right of former GDR citizens to access the files kept on them by the security services, but when it comes to our own security services it seems that right does not apply.

The Metropolitan Police simply responded with: “We would like to apologise for the delay and assure you that we acknowledge that by not responding to your request within the statutory time frame outlined by the Data Protection Act 2018 we have breached your rights. This is never the intention of the MPS and we take the data rights of individuals very seriously.” So seriously, that I am still waiting for a proper response over a year later!

I am sure there is a file or several held on me, as I had been an active member of the Communist Party, played a part in the peace movement and I also worked for many years as a documentary film-maker for the GDR — a “communist country.” There is little doubt in my mind that there are files on me held in government offices. I also have circumstantial evidence to support that supposition.

Once, on my return from visiting the GDR, my luggage did not arrive at Heathrow. I later received a telephone call from the lost luggage office at Heathrow and the employee, either naively or intentionally, told me that my luggage had been delayed “because MI5 had been examining it and had found newspaper cuttings about CND in my case.”

On another occasion, while I and my wife were abroad filming, my next-door neighbour reported hearing voices in my house and furniture being moved about. He called the police, but they found no evidence of a break-in and nothing appeared to have been stolen. Was this another attempt by the security services to check me out or was it just ghosts?

I wonder if I will ever hear from the Metropolitan Police again? If I could afford a lawyer, I would take them to court under the Act, but as an ordinary citizen with limited resources that would be too costly. As the cliche has it, “there is one law for the rich and another one, or none, for the poor.”

The recent admittance by MI5 that it illegally obtained communications data from the mobile phone of the former BBC Northern Ireland home affairs correspondent Vincent Kearney demonstrates clearly how the security services target journalists, even those working for the BBC, so my own suspicions that they spied on me are certainly justified.

Despite my own experience, the FOI has been an invaluable tool for investigative journalists, as we see regularly in Solomon Hughes’s pieces in the Star.

I wonder, however, now that government figures and those in leading positions are very much aware of this and make every attempt to hide what they’re doing by deleting emails and other electronic trails or use methods of communication that are difficult to access, how long it will continue to be the useful tool it is.