Impact on Freedom of Information Law

Update January 2012

The Protection of Freedoms Bill was placed before Parliament on 11 February 2011. In addition to dealing with many other ‘freedoms’ the Bill also proposes changes to the existing Freedom of Information Act 2000 (“FOIA”) as part of the Government’s commitment to greater transparency.

The Bill has just completed the Committee Stage in the House of Lords and needs to go through the Report Stage and 3rd Reading in that House before final Consideration of Amendments takes place and the Bill receives Royal Assent.

Key changes to FOIA are:

• extending the regime to cover subsidiary companies even if not wholly owned by a single public authority – a significant gap in the original legislation; and
• imposing an obligation on public authorities to disclose datasets in a reusable format. The definition of dataset is likely to capture research data pre analysis, which is understandably causing concern and is currently the topic of heated debate in the House of Lords.

The Bill will extend FOIA to more bodies and will increase the obligations on all bodies covered by FOIA. In the context of the wider Government changes proposed for transparency and Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO”) consultations, the impact of the changes on the majority of education institutions which are public authorities for the purposes of FOIA will be potentially complex and onerous. They will affect not only those institutions but also those working with them.

We are monitoring the passage of the Bill through Parliament and will issue a further briefing when the final form of the legislation is known.

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