Intellectual Property Law

Tribunal orders disclosure of legal advice on public interest grounds

Breaking new ground in FOI law, the Information Tribunal is reported to have ordered that legal advice given to Merseytravel should be disclosed because the public interest in seeing the advice outweighed the legal professional privilege of that advice. Thanks to the UK Freedom of Information Blog for spotting this major story.

Apologies to that blog for using the extract from the Information Tribunal ruling, but it's worth republishing here:

"Weighed in the round, and considering all the aspects discussed above, we are not persuaded that the public interest in maintaining the exemption is as weighty as in the other cases considered by the Tribunal; and in the opposing scales, the factors that favour disclosure are not just equally weighty, they are heavier. We find, listing just the more important factors, that considering the amounts of money involved and numbers of people affected, the passage of time, the absence of litigation, and crucially the lack of transparency in the authority?s actions and reasons, that the public interest in disclosing the information clearly outweighs the strong public interest in maintaining the exemption, which is all the stronger in this case because the opinion is still live. To quote Bellamy : ?there is a strong element of public interest inbuilt into the privilege itself. At least equally strong countervailing considerations would need to be adduced to override that public interest?. In our judgement, the countervailing considerations adduced here are not equally strong; they are stronger. The opinion should be disclosed."

Full post as published by IMPACT on February 21, 2008 (boomark / email).