Full text of Lord Falconer's speech

The DCA has released the full text of the speech given by Lord Falconer at the Lord Williams of Mostyn Memorial Lecture last night. Interestingly, on the proposed changes to the FOI fees regime, Lord Falconer said "we are consulting on whether it is right to include reading, consideration and consultation time" (emphasis added). This statement contrasts with the consultation document, which only sought views on the draft regulations themselves.

Martin Rosenbaum over on Open Secrets has commented on another part of the speech, in which Lord Falconer talked about the proposal to allow authorities to aggregate unrelated requests for the purpose of calculating the cost limit. Lord Falconer said that if the requests were "genuinely different then aggregation should not apply". This isn't, however, what the draft regulations say.

Today's Independent has a further article and leader on the lecture:

Freedom of Information Act misused, says Falconer

Leading article: The retreat from open government