I received an email from (we’ll call him Mr X) pointing out that on my page about flawed government studies and neonicotinoids, I explicitly name the authors of the report.
Mr X stated
that the names are confidential, and should not be disclosed. He stated he:
“would therefore ask me, under
the Data Protection Act 1998, to remove the names from the webpage”.
The page refers to the UK Bumblebee study that came under serious criticism from independent scientists and also from EFSA, who conducted a very significant review of the study. I’ll come back to this point later.
My personal view is that transparency regarding the activities of civil servants and government officials is important in the name of trust and public confidence given that:
Below, I outline my response to the request for the removal of names, for the benefit of other readers who may find themselves in similar circumstances when they endeavour to highlight the activities of civil servants to the wider public.
Please note that I have added additional words in [ ] for the benefit of the reader, and for external links, I do not supply live, direct links due to risks of broken links at a later date, so please copy and paste the link into a new window in your browser.
Dear Mr X
I write concerning your email to this website on 26th January 2017, in which
you requested I remove the names of authors of a FERA [UK government body – Food And Environment Research Agency] report,
as disclosed on the page https://www.buzzaboutbees.net/flawed-government-bee-studies.html.
I write to inform you your request is denied.
Civil Servants do not have automatic right to privacy, especially when
a case can be argued for 'Public Interest'. The Civil Servants concerned were advising the government, and performed a
study using public funds. Indeed, reasonable disclosure can be expected.
I refer you to several documents:
https://ico.org.uk/media/1187/
section_40_requests_for_personal_data_about_employees.pdf
Pages: 6 and 7; paragraphs 16 to 20.
Example from a relevant ruling:
Department for Business, Enterprise, and Regulatory Reform v.
Information Commissioner and Friends of the Earth; case EA/2007/0072
"Tribunal concluded that senior officials, as “spokespersons” of an
organization, could have “no expectation of privacy” and therefore could have
their names disclosed (para. 101)"
In respect of this case, a letter from the European Ombudsman was cited, to the
effect that:
"data protection rules are being misinterpreted as
implying the existence of a general right to participate anonymously in public
activities."
I am able to make a case to support the reporting
of all names included on the page.
It is worth noting that the study was initially published, with all names visible, and the report was fully available for download by the public. It was only following public criticism that names were removed, but you'll note that embarrassment does not entitle the authors to privacy either.
Thirdly, the study is cited elsewhere on the
internet, with all names disclosed.
If you care to look, it is normal practice for civil servants to disclose names
on reports, across various departments. No matter how embarrassing or
inconvenient it may be for FERA or their employees, there is no reason why they
should be exempt.
In any case, at an EU level, the author names, and
panel names at EFSA are fully disclosed. Just one example, of which there
are many: https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/pub/4578
"Miguel Angel Miranda, Dominique Bicout,
Anette Botner, Andrew Butterworth, Paolo Calistri, Klaus Depner, Sandra
Edwards, Bruno Garin-Bastuji, Margaret Good, Christian Gortazar Schmidt,
Virginie Michel, Simon More, Søren Saxmose Nielsen, Mohan Raj, Lisa Sihvonen,
Hans Spoolder, Jan Arend Stegeman, Hans H. Thulke, Antonio Velarde, Preben
Willeberg, Christoph Winckler"
Finally, at least some of the UK FERA Civil Servants have indeed already had their names mentioned in various publications, in relation to FERA, EFSA, Bees, and neonicotinoids.
They also appear
elsewhere on the internet, so they can hardly claim to be 'shy'. Again,
just because they might not like it, doesn't mean the names cannot be
published. Had they produced a quality piece of work with public funds in
the first place, perhaps they would have allowed their names to remain on the
report.
“The conclusions of this scientific statement were reached on the basis of the evaluation of the study report by Thompson et al. (2013),and additional raw data made available by the study authors to EFSA.
The study investigated the exposure of bumble bee colonies placed in the vicinity of crops treated with neonicotinoids and its major effects on bumble bee colonies.
The current assessment concluded that, due to the weaknesses of the study design and methodology, the study did not allow to draw any conclusion on the effects of neonicotinoids on exposed bumble bee colonies, and confirmed that the outcome of the conclusions drawn for the three neonicotinoid insecticides remains unchanged."
https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/pub/3242