 Mae'r llwyddon wedi'u cyfnodd yn ystafell o awddiad yng ngyfnodd yn y UK, a mae'n ddargani'r Gweithio Gweithio Gwybryd yn gyntaf i'r Gwran Fyryd Rhyddau Raiol, ac mae'r cyfnodd proses ystafell yn gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio. A oes y ffrindio yma, byddwn ni wedi cyflwyng Arryslu, ymrwyng ar gyfer Llegell Llegell, felly mae'r ysgol yn ddalig o'r pethau o'r ddechrau Fywerthol ac mae'r ddechrau gennym ac yn cyfaint o'r ddisgol o'r ddweud roedd yn cyd-sigio gweithio, yn ddiddordeb Fywerthol yn Llyfridol. Ond o'r cyfrifiadau, mynd i ddweud hynny ymgyrchynu hefyd, fe ddafodd yn ymwyf yn gyfrifiadau i chi argymau cyfansol, Which is a unit operated by a very central government department called the Cabinet Office. And what happens is when government departments and agencies receive a sensitive request or a round-robin request, those get flagged to the clearing house. And what we also discovered was that the clearing house also circulates a list of requests, mainly originating from journalists and campaigners across other government departments and which also contains advice on from the Cabinet Office on how other government departments should be responding to such requests. So it all started back in August 2018 following a tip-off. I submitted a freedom of information request to get hold of documents about the clearing house, mainly the list of requests that they circulate in the Vice-Given and I used what do they know pro to manage my freedom of information request and unfortunately my freedom of information request was rejected and I had to go all the way to the courts so that was earlier this year so three years in the making and we managed to get hold of the documents that we was after. Prior to our investigation about this clearing house there was nothing on the official government website to explain to the request of what this process is which to me is highly concerning and it was only when we actually went to the courts the cabinet office published more information about its processes literally a couple of weeks before the hearing including a list of sort of triggers for when request, sensitive request should be forwarded to this clearing house but earlier this year thankfully the judge ruled in our favour and the judge really slammed the cabinet office for such lack of transparency. Now why should people be concerned about this clearing house in the UK? Why should requesters be so concerned? Well there's actually what we've discovered a lot of concerns and for context the cabinet office has you know one of the worst FOI records in central government and they really do tend to lead more towards withholding information rather than disclosing it. They do have a tendency to be secretive and for the cabinet office to advise other government departments and agencies on how to respond to requests it doesn't quite sit well with me and the advice that has been released is questionable the clearing house also asks government departments to send them the drafts of FOI responses before they sent out to the requester and it indicates a certain level of control on what can and cannot be released to the public. We also know that it is contributing to delays experienced by FOI requesters so we had one campaign that has worked very very hard on trying to access documents about the infected blood scandal a huge scandal in the UK charting back from the 1980s and he sent off a freedom of information request to one government department that got forwarded to the clearing house and then we managed to get hold of internal documents where one can see the treasury interacting with the clearing house the clearing house is saying actively discouraging this department not to release information but the treasury was saying yes we really do want to give this information and that whole process lasted for five months and we will know that well we know in the UK that request to be answered within 20 working days and very recently actually last week I believe we found that the clearing house was interfering with FOI requests about an incredibly tragic grandfathered tower of fire tragedy that killed 72 people and we know that other journalists have their requests have been flagged to this clearing house a times journalist or that he managed to get hold of documents where it was found that his freedom of information requests have been flagged to this central clearing house because he's a journalist and there was another journalist who found that the clearing house was working to block the release of documents to journalists even though the department for international trade were very happy to release the information so yes our open democracy investigation into the clearing house has had a huge impact journalist politicians across the political spectrum they've demanded an inquiry into this process and in the summer we eventually did manage to spark parliamentary inquiry which is really good news it's going to happen later this year they are currently gathering up accepting evidence which I have about to file tomorrow but no it's and we also reported that the cabinet office is conducting its own inquiry into the clearing house which is quite funny considering how earlier this year they rubbish our reporting and they said that we were ridiculous and tendentious and so there we have it hopefully this parliamentary inquiry will lead to positive change in the way FOI requests have dealt with in central government departments I know I've sped through those slides and yes that's it thank you for having me thank you so much and that's really really interesting and yet that very very quick tour does not do justice to the amount of wonderful work you guys are doing over there we very much support it we have done our evidence as well for the inquiry and I encourage anyone else in the UK that is interested in this to look into that and submit their own evidence if they if they have any