Category: Freedom of Information

The proposals to change the human rights regime outlined in Ministry of Justice (MoJ) Consultation,  “Human Rights Act Reform: A modern Bill of Rights”, are truly awful.  This is especially the case when combined with the proposed restrictions on Judicial Review that helps ensure that public authorities process personal data lawfully in accordance with Article 8 (A.8) of the Human Rights Convention. As will be seen in the next few blogs, the human rights legislation that protects us all and underpins

Members of Parliament are concerned about last week’s resignation of the Health Secretary and this is not because Mr. Hancock breached his own COVID regulations and was caught canoodling in front of a CCTV camera.  The concern arises because the CCTV images were covertly taken from inside Mr. Hancock’s Ministerial Office and disclosed, without authority, to The Sun newspaper. If this can happen to a Cabinet Minister, MPs are wondering, what is the level of state surveillance that can be

A brief blog on two recent publications in the press that herald the appointment of a malleable Information Commissioner to replace Ms. Denham in October.  According to these documents, the replacement Commissioner could well be expected to make decisions that favour Government policy (e.g. in data sharing; with respect to the National Data Strategy). The first publication is the column that appeared in the Financial Times (FT) on February 27th; it is written by Oliver Dowden,  Secretary of State for

The Government has just inserted clauses into the DPBill that allows the Secretary of State to issue a “Framework for Data Processing”, initially for each Government Department.  This Framework has the status of statutory guidance and “will set out the manner in which government should process (personal) data”. In effect the Framework is like a statutory Code of Practice; its aim is to “improve the transparency and clarity of existing government data processing”. The Framework, according to the official explanation,

At great risk to my mental health, I have extracted the relevant parts of the Party Manifestos.  Here they are without comment. URLs for each manifesto is at the end; address of my psychiatrist available on request.  CONSERVATIVE There is no explicit mention of data protection, freedom of information or privacy. “The next Conservative Government will scrap the Human Rights Act, and introduce a British Bill of Rights. This will break the formal link between British courts and the European Court