Protection of Freedoms Bill

I am not going to give an absolute guarantee of that sort without proper notice at this stage. However, I would have thought that it is fairly obvious that if something has been through the courts or the tribunal, or at whatever stage the Government decide that they are not going to appeal any further, and the courts have decreed that that sort of information ought to be available, it would be proper to provide the later information because it would be the same information that was being requested, other than the fact that it was at a later time. It would still be the same request being made, and it would have been decreed that that was appropriate. We would be bound by that decision. Perhaps I might move on to the noble Baroness’s second amendment, with which I have even greater problems. In Amendment 151F, she proposes that no Bill may be submitted for Royal Assent where information directly relevant to that Bill has been requested under the Freedom of Information Act and where an appeal against an information notice issued by the Information Commissioner in the course of an investigation into the handling of the request is under consideration. As the Committee will be aware, under Section 51 of the Freedom of Information Act the Information Commissioner has power to issue an information notice in order to obtain such information as he may reasonably require to consider a case. However, information notices are usually issued only in circumstances where information requested to assist in the determination of a case is not forthcoming. Under no circumstances would I expect a public authority to withhold information from the Information Commissioner to frustrate or delay his inquiries. That would clearly be contrary to the effective operation of the Freedom of Information Act. However, there may be circumstances where a difference of opinion exists, between the public authority on the one hand and the commissioner on the other, which results in the issuing of an information notice. It is entirely reasonable—the noble Baroness accepts this—that the public authority should have the option of appealing against such a notice, as is happening on this occasion, where there are legitimate reasons for so doing. I fully appreciate the frustration that may be felt by requesters when they do not receive the information they want as quickly as they would like, but it would be inappropriate and disproportionate to delay the passage of a Bill while such an appeal was under way for entirely legitimate reasons. It would also introduce an inappropriate political dimension into the FOI appeals process. The commissioner, who is, as we know, independent of government, would inevitably be mindful of the likely impact on the passage of the Bill were he to issue an information notice.