Tag: FOIA

Media Law and Practice – new book from OUP

Posted on | by Timothy Pitt-Payne KC

Hot off the press is a new book from OUP on “Media Law and Practice”, edited by David Goldberg, Gavin Sutter, and Ian Walden. 

This is a multi-author book, written by a team of practitioners and academics.  It covers a wide range of media topics, including ownership, regulation, intellectual property, defamation, and commercial communications.       

I contributed a chapter on Information Law:  this discusses data protection, freedom of information, and human rights issues, including articles 8 and 10 of the Convention.  One of the book’s features is that it deals with new forms of communication (including blogging), as well as traditional print or broadcast media.  So I had to address questions such as, how would the “special purposes” defined in the DPA (ie artistic, journalistic and literary purposes) apply to web-based publications?

The impetus for the book comes from the Institute of Computer and Communications Law, based in the Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary, University of London.  All three editors are members of the Institute.  It’s a major centre for research and teaching in areas related to information law, including intellectual property, telecoms regulation, computer law, and media law.

The book is available online from OUP’s website.

The application of FOIA to public service broadcasters

Posted on | by Ben Hooper

Two High Court judgments were handed down last week on what has become known as the BBC’s “derogation” – its limited entry in Sch. 1 to FOIA, under which FOIA applies to the BBC only “in respect of information held for purposes other than those of journalism, art or literature”. Channel 4 and S4C (the Welsh television channel) have entries in Sch. 1 to the same effect.

 

The cases were Sugar v. BBC and BBC v. Information Commissioner. The former concerned a request for an internal BBC report into Middle East reporting, the latter concerned four sets of requests for various items of financial information relating to the BBC’s programme output. In both cases, Irwin J rejected the submission advanced by all parties that a test of dominant purpose should be used when applying the derogation (i.e. that where information was held for a variety of purposes, it would outside FOIA if it was predominantly held for the purposes of “journalism, art of literature”). Instead, Irwin J applied a de minimis approach and held that, on a proper construction of the derogation, “the BBC has no obligation to disclose information which they hold to any significant extent for the purposes of journalism, art or literature, whether or not the information is also held for other purposes.” (See para. 65 of Sugar).

 

It is as yet unclear whether this aspect of the judgments will be challenged on appeal. Unless and until it is, it would seem that the scope for applying FOIA to information held by the public service broadcasters is more limited than was previously thought to be the case.

Reforming the Information Tribunal

Posted on | by Timothy Pitt-Payne KC

A letter was circulated yesterday (4th August) to “stakeholders” of the Information Tribunal, giving information about the implications for the Information Tribunal of the new unified tribunal structure.

The new structure involves a system of First Tier tribunals and Upper Tribunals. The Information Tribunal will be one of a number of tribunals that transfer into the General Regulatory Chamber (GRC), one of the First Tier tribunals.

According to the letter, from January 2010 information rights cases will generally be heard in the GRC, with an appeal to the Administrative Appeals Chambers of the Upper Tribunal on a point of law. However, in some circumstances cases will be heard in the first instance in the Upper Tribunal. This will be where the appeal is complex, unusual, or particularly important. In additional national security appeals (under section 28 of the Data Protection Act 1998 or section 60 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000) will go straight to the Upper Tribunal.

The procedural rules for those tribunals moving into the GRC in September 2009 have now been finalised and laid before Parliament. This includes the Charity Tribunal, the Estate Agents Appeals Panel and the Consumer Credit Appeals Tribunal. For those jurisdictions moving to the GRC in January 2010 – including the Information Tribunal – any further specific procedural rules will be added by amendment once Parliament has approved the transfer. Approval is expected later this year.

House of Lords Grants Permission in Ofcom

Posted on | by Anya Proops KC

Last month the House of Lords granted the Information Commissioner permission to appeal the Court of Appeal’s judgment in Office of Communications v IC [2009] EWCA Civ 90 (‘Ofcom’). In Ofcom, the Court of Appeal considered the question of how the public interest test under regulation 12(5)(b) of the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 (‘EIR’) applied where a number of different exceptions were engaged in respect of particular requested information. It held that, rather than conducting discrete public interest balancing exercises under each individual exception, the public authority could effectively bundle all the public interest considerations relevant to the applicable exceptions into a single compendious public interest balancing exercise. The Commissioner has now been granted permission to appeal the judgment to the newly constituted Supreme Court. 11KBW’s Ahlaq Choudury is acting on behalf of the Commissioner.

Podcast on employment vetting

Posted on | by Timothy Pitt-Payne KC

Thanks to CPDcast, I have recently recorded a podcast on the subject of employment vetting.  It deals with various subjects, including CRB checks and the new ISA barring regime.  If you want to listen, it’s available here.  I hope to be able to post a code here in a few days (with the agreement of CPDcast) which will enable readers of this blog to listen for free.  It’s also worth looking at the rest of the site; they are very strong on information law subjects.

11KBW Information Law Seminar

Posted on | by Panopticon Blog

11KBW last night hosted a successful and well-attended information law seminar. The seminar was chaired by James Goudie QC and papers were presented by Tim Pitt Payne and Anya Proops. Tim presented a paper which considered issues of surveillance and employee banning lists and vetting (‘The Surveillance Society In and Out of the Workplace’). Anya presented a paper on recent FOIA developments (‘Recent FOIA Developments: Parliamentary Crises, Ministerial Vetoes and Beyond’). 11KBW would like to thank all those who took the time to attend. If you are legal practitioner and are interested in attending future 11KBW information law seminars, please contact our Head of Marketing, Lucy Miller (lucy.miller@11kbw.com; 0207 632-8500).