We all love nuggets, be they of gold or chicken. A couple of short recent Upper Tribunal judgments reached under FOIA may not be finger-lickin’ good, but are nonetheless worthy noting as a tasty morsel or two. Continue reading →

If you think you understand how the DPA 2018 has implemented EU law in the shape of the GDPR (Part 1) and the Law Enforcement Directive (“LED”) (Part 3), and that is that, you may want to think again. What the DPA does not just depend on the language and the Part, but may also require consideration of the scope of EU law. R (El Gizouli) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWHC 60 (Admin) is such a case. Indeed, it is the first decided case of significance to consider the DPA 2018 at all. Continue reading →

Sometimes a case comes along which, whether through range of issues or over-enthusiastic pleading, seems to touch on more or less every data protection provision going. To this end, at least for the DPA 1998, we give you the lengthy treatise of Sales LJ that is: Cooper v National Crime Agency [2019] EWCA Civ 16. Continue reading →

A rare foray into the Criminal Division of the Court of Appeal for the Data Protection Act 1998 recently, as the Court considered the nature of the reverse burden imposed by the section 55 offence in Shepherd v Information Commissioner [2019] EWCA Crim 2. In short, Jay J held that section 55, properly construed, imposed only an evidential burden on a defendant rather than a legal burden. Continue reading →

News comes our way of a consultation exercise being run by the ICO on its new proposed ‘Access to Information Strategy’. You can read more about it here. Titled ‘Openness by Design’, it is a proposed strategy which will – in particular – aim to improve standards of openness, transparency and participation on the part of public authorities, including by increasing the impact of enforcement activity through targeting of systemic non-compliance. That is probably the most significant headline of the draft, but there are a number of aims to improve confidence in the openness and accountability of public authorities, by greater proactivity on the part of the ICO. Consultation responses are sought by 8 March 2019.

Christopher Knight

A couple of recent Upper Tribunal cases have been handed down on the section 35(1) FOIA exemption for the formulation or development of government policy and for Ministerial communications. Both concern documents produced at the highest levels of Government. Both nudge the jurisprudence on a little bit, and both are worth being aware of for those concerned. Continue reading →