PUBLIC SECTOR EARNINGS – MORE INFORMATION

Posted on | by Timothy Pitt-Payne KC

The Cabinet Office has now published details of quango employees earning more than £150,000.  The information has been added to the list-  published at the beginning of June – of the highest earning senior civil servants, and the consolidated list is available here.  According to the Cabinet Office website, information has been withheld for 24 individuals:  there is no explanation as to whether this was simply because the individuals objected, or for other reasons. 

Further information about special advisers was published on 10th June, including a list of those earning more than £58,200 a year (sadly,  Tamzin Lightwater does not appear).

WATCH THIS SPACE

Posted on | by Timothy Pitt-Payne KC

The Coalition’s Programme for Government contains a great deal that is of interest to information lawyers: see here.  But when and how will any of this be given legislative effect?

The Queen’s Speech was delivered on 25th May 2010. The website of the Prime Minister’s office gives a list of the proposed Bills , with further information about each one. Three of the proposed Bills have potential implications for information law.

(i) The Public Bodies (Reform) Bill will enhance the transparency and accountability of quangos: though it is not clear as yet whether enhanced information access rights will play a role in this.

(ii) The Decentralisation and Localism Bill will (among other matters) require public bodies to publish online the job titles of every member of staff and the salaries and expenses of senior officials.

(iii) The Freedom (Great Repeal) Bill is intended to cover a wide range of subjects, to be announced in due course: it may include an extension to the scope of FOIA, and also various provisions in relation privacy (e.g. relating to CCTV cameras, and the DNA database).

Of these Bills, it is the third that is likely to be much the most significant. 

UNFINISHED BUSINESS

Posted on | by Timothy Pitt-Payne KC

Various changes were made to FOIA by the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010, which was passed during the “wash up” at the end of the last Parliament.  See section 46 of and Schedule 7 to the Act. In particular:

• The exemption in section 37(1) of FOIA (relating to communications with the Sovereign and with other members of the Royal Family) was extended. In relation to the Sovereign and the heir to the Throne, the exemption was made absolute .

• The period at which a record becomes a “historical record” was altered (this is often referred to as the “30 year rule”). Under FOIA as originally enacted, a record became a historical record at the end of 30 years beginning with the year following that in which it was created: see FOIA section 62(1). Information contained in a historical record could be exempt by virtue of sections 28, 30(1), 32, 33, 35, 36, 37(1)(a), 42 or 43: see FOIA section 63(1). Under the 2010 Act the period of 30 years is reduced to 20 years . Provision is made for a 10 year transitional period in introducing this change . However, in respect of section 36 (so far as it relates to certain information concerning Northern Ireland), section 28, or section 43, the time after which these exemptions can no longer be relied upon will remain 30 years not 20 years .

The reforms to the 30 year rule followed the Dacre Review, published on 29th January 2009 (see our earlier post here).

As yet it remains unclear when, or whether, these amendments will be brought into force.  This is a significant piece of unfinished business left over from the last Parliament.

LATE EXEMPTIONS – THE LATEST TWIST

Posted on | by Anya Proops KC

The question of whether a public authority can seek to rely on exemptions at a late stage in proceedings is one which arises in many tribunal appeals. Certainly, it is not at all unusual for a public authority to argue before the tribunal that it now wants to rely on exemptions which have never previously been identified. Historically, the Tribunal has taken the view that it has a discretion to refuse late reliance on exemptions and, in practice, it has tended to refuse late reliance save where there are exceptional circumstances (see further earlier paper on this issue which you can find here and see also an earlier post here). However, one tribunal has very recently taken a rather different view of the matter. In particular in Home Office v IC (EA/2010/0011), the tribunal held that in fact it had no discretion to refuse late reliance, particularly in view of the way in which the exemptions had been provided for under FOIA. This departure from tribunal orthodoxy is no doubt going result in a significant amount of debate, not least because there are now competing tribunal decisions on the issue of late exemptions. It may be that the matter will be resolved as and when the appeal in the case of DEFRA v IC & Birkett is heard in the Upper Tribunal. However, this remains to be seen. So watch this space.

WITHHOLDING INFORMATION HELD FOR PURPOSES OF JOURNALISM

Posted on | by Anya Proops KC

The BBC is an organisation which is subject to the duties imposed under FOIA only in respect of information held ‘for purposes other than those of journalism, art or literature’ (Part VI of Schedule 1 to FOIA). On Wednesday, the Court of Appeal handed down a judgment which considered the question of how information held by the BBC should be approached if it was held for a number of different purposes, including but not limited to journalistic purposes – see the judgment here. The Court of Appeal held, irrespective of whether the information was held for multiple purposes, provided that one of the purposes included a genuine journalistic purpose, the information was exempt from the application of the duties embodied in FOIA. In reaching this conclusion, the Court of Appeal rejected the proposition that the question whether the information should be disclosed should be decided by reference to the ‘dominant purpose’ for which the information was held. The Court of Appeal also gave guidance on the meaning of the concept of ‘journalism’. In particular, it agreed with the tribunal that the three elements of functional journalism were (a) the collection, writing and verification of material; (b) the editing and presentation of material for publication; (c) the upholding of journalistic standards by supervision, training and review of journalists and their work. The Court of Appeal went on to hold that the BBC had been entitled to treat a report examining the BBC’s coverage of events in the Middle East as falling within the journalism exemption. In reaching this conclusion, the Court of Appeal confirmed that the fact that the report had been used by the BBC for strategic managerial purposes did not prevent it falling within the journalism exemption.

PRIVACY ACROSS THE POND

Posted on | by Anya Proops KC

On Thursday, the US Supreme Court unanimously held that a Police Chief did not violate a police officer’s 4th amendment rights by reading personal text messages which the officer had send via a pager provided to him by his employer – see the judgment here. The 4th amendment guarantees a person’s privacy, dignity, and security against arbitrary and invasive governmental acts. The text messages were sent on a pager provided by the officer’s employer, they included a number of sexually explicit messages. The texts were reviewed as part of a process of examining whether officers were using the pagers excessively for personal use. In a judgment which rejected a broad right of privacy for workers, the Supreme Court recognised that interferences with privacy may be justified where there is a reasonable suspicion that rules are being breached by the employee. Notably, the Supreme Court recognised that, in an age of fast-evolving technology, the law of privacy should develop flexibly rather than through the introduction of broad, rigid rules.