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Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill

Let us take the charitable view and suggest that the cases involved a properly constructed freedom of information request to a public authority, and that, for some reason, the bureaucrats involved had no idea what the law says, and were therefore prepared to provide information that they should not have provided, in contradiction to the laws that are already in place to give protection. Let us say that the information was put into the public domain in that way. If that is the case, it raises two important questions. First, was any action taken subsequent to the release of that material? Was it referred to the Information Commissioner? Was the public authority involved reminded of its duties under law? Was there any subsequent action? [Interruption.] The right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border says from a sedentary position, ““They just did it””. Yes, and they will continue to just do it if his Bill is enacted, because somebody who is ignorant of the provisions of the Data Protection Act 1998 and of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 as it is currently constituted is just as likely to be ignorant of the provisions of his law.