Law Lords and the Balen Report
The Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú yesterday at the House of Lords involving freedom of information and the 'Balen Report', an internal report about the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú's Middle East coverage which was written in 2004.
This is a which has often been written about on this blog (for example, here and here) and has not yet ended.
Some of the headlines (like and ) on this decision are misleading, so it is important to be clear about the implications of the latest ruling.
Yesterday's Law Lords decision was not about the merits of whether the report should be published. It was about the procedural legal matter of whether the Information Tribunal (which supported publication) has the jurisdiction to rule on such cases, where the Information Commissioner has previously decided that the request was outside the realm of FOI in the first place because it involved information held by the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú for the purposes of journalism. Material of this kind lies outside the Freedom of Information Act, and the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú has argued that the Balen Report falls into this category.
The Lords determined (against the views of the Court of Appeal and the High Court) that the Tribunal does have the right to consider such cases, so its ruling in favour of publication is valid. The substantive arguments on whether the report should be made public can now move on to the High Court, assuming the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú maintains its stance.
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