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Panopticon is pleased to announce the return of its auditory offering, the Panopticon Podcast.  Episode 5 sees (or, rather, hears) Christopher Knight sharing his estimable experience and insight on the intersection between public law and data protection.

How can you use data protection arguments in judicial review without irritating judges or sending them to sleep? How to regulate data protection issues in the public sector without encroaching on other public authorities’ functions? Fresh from his readeption to his rightful place as Public Law Junior of the Year 2025 (having first ascended in 2022), Christopher answers these questions and more, and vaticinates where and how public lawyers may seek to deploy data protection arguments in the coming years.

You can listen and subscribe on all the usual platforms, including Apple, Spotify, Podcast Index and Podcast Addict.

Section 1(1)(b) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (“FOIA”) creates the right to have information held by a public authority communicated to a requestor. But as night follows day, this is not an absolute right. Part II of the Act sets out a series of exemptions to the right in section 1(1)(b). Some of these are absolute exemptions. Others are qualified. Section 2(2)(b) FOIA provides as follows:

(2) In respect of any information which is exempt information by virtue of any provision of Part II, section 1(1)(b) does not apply if or to the extent that–

                        …

(b) in all the circumstances of the case, the public interest in maintaining the exemption outweighs the public interest in disclosing the information.

This is the public interest balancing test. But what if a public authority relies on more than one qualified exemption? This was the issue in Department for Business and Trade v Information Commissioner [2025] UKSC 27. Where information falls within multiple qualified exemptions in the FOIA, does section 2(2)(b) require the public interest in maintaining each of those exemptions to be aggregated (“the cumulative approach”), or does it require the public interest in maintaining each exemption to be considered separately (“the independent approach”)? Continue reading →

An individual suffers a data protection breach and claims compensation – often as part of a group. What kinds of consequence can they claim for? How serious do those consequences need to be for there to be a viable claim? These are pivotal issues in data protection litigation, from both commercial and legal perspectives. The Court of Appeal’s very recent judgment in the Equiniti litigation is hugely important on these fronts: see Farley and Others v Paymaster (1836) Limited (trading as Equiniti) [2025] EWCA Civ 1117. Continue reading →

The case is of interest for the Upper Tribunal’s construction of section 11(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (“FOIA”).

The appeal concerned a request for information that was held in audio form by the second respondent, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (the “MCA”). The appellant, Mr Walawalkar, on behalf of Liberty Investigates, requested distress calls made to the coastguard over a period of a week from people in the English Channel. Mr Walawalkar requested that the calls be provided in transcribed form if the audio calls could not be disclosed.

Section 11(1) FOIA provides as follows:

(1) Where, on making his request for information, the applicant expresses a preference for communication by any one or more of the following means, namely–

(a) the provision to the applicant of a copy of the information in permanent form or in another form acceptable to the applicant,

(b) the provision to the applicant of a reasonable opportunity to inspect a record containing the information, and

(c) the provision to the applicant of a digest or summary of the information in permanent form or in another form acceptable to the applicant,

the public authority shall so far as reasonably practicable give effect to that preference (emphasis added).

The key question in this appeal was whether the “so far as reasonably practicable” test in section 11(1) FOIA is an “all or nothing” test or a “sliding scale”. Continue reading →

On 20 March 2025, the day after the Bar Tribunal and Adjudication Service held its public sanctions hearing in relation to Mr Navjot (“Jo”) Sidhu KC, the Independent Press Standards Organisation (“IPSO”) published its decision of 5 March 2025 dismissing the complaint which Mrs Luna Sidhu, the wife of Mr Sidhu, had made against The Times on 28 November 2024.

Clause 2 of the Editors’ Code of Practice (“the Code”) provides: Continue reading →