- Burials
- Care proceedings reform
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- Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007
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- EU funding
- Flu pandemic
- Forced labour
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- Forms of address
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- Funding for the victim and witness voluntary sector
- Human rights
- Justice impact test
- Mental Capacity Act 2005
- Mentally disordered offenders
- Pleural plaques former claimants payment scheme
- Referral orders
- Regulatory offences
- Rehabilitation of Offenders Act
Press releases and communications advice
What information does this cover?
- press releases
- lines to take
- associated communications advice, including press handling strategies
Working assumption
Press releases and lines to take that have been used should be released.
Draft press lines that have not been approved by ministers or the relevant official and lines that have not been used should be withheld under section 36(2)(b)(i) and section 36(2)(b)(ii) and section 36(2)(c) (free and frank advice/prejudice to the effective conduct of public affairs). In the case of environmental information, regulation 12(4)(e) should be cited.
Communications advice and handling strategies should generally be withheld under the same exemptions.
Reasons for the working assumptions
Press releases and lines to takePress releases and lines to take are intended for the public domain and will usually have been prepared, and used, in response to a media report or following a request for information from a journalist. Departments should consider the use of section 21, information accessible to the applicant by other means, though in many instances will be able to provide the information on a discretionary basis.
Officials are sometimes required to prepare draft releases and lines to take in advance of a decision or announcement by ministers. Such drafts are necessarily speculative and may not reflect the minister's actual decision or view. Releasing drafts could, therefore, give a misleading impression of government policy.
Releasing press releases or lines to take that have been prepared and approved but not used, could still give a misleading impression of government policy. Where the government position has not been stated publicly, ministers should have the freedom to alter their decisions.
Communications advice and press handling strategiesCommunications advice and press handling strategies are likely to have been prepared in advance of a policy announcement or in anticipation of a major event. As such, the information contained in such documents will be speculative and officials will be required to 'second guess' eventualities which may not occur. Ministers and officials need to be prepared to deal with events and follow up to announcements and if officials thought that handling strategies prepared in advance were liable to be disclosed, they may be inhibited in the advice that they offer.
To be effective, communications advice and handling strategies need to contain frank discussion and comment about a particular policy or likely sources of attack. Releasing such information could inhibit officials' willingness to make candid assessments of government policy, to the overall detriment of the policy formulation process.
Referral points
Any request for an internal review of an earlier decision to only partially release, or to withhold, a press release and communications advice, and any such case appealed to the Information Commissioner or Information Tribunal must be referred to the Clearing House.
