PARTIES MAY APPEAL AGAINST DECISION NOTICES IN THEIR FAVOUR

December 2nd, 2010 by Robin Hopkins

Shepard v IC and West Sussex County Council (GIA/1681/2010) involved the Commissioner upholding the appellant’s complaint against the local authority, and issuing a decision notice in his favour. That notice required the authority to search for specified information and to provide it to the Claimant if found. The authority informed the appellant that its search had been fruitless. Apparently therefore, it had complied with the decision notice, but the appellant received no information.

At first instance, his appeal failed, partly on the grounds of the well-established principle that a successful party should not be permitted to bring an appeal. The Upper Tribunal disagreed, and granted permission to appeal, observing that the aforementioned principle “surely relates to judicial decisions by courts and tribunals; it does not necessarily apply to decisions by administrative first-instance decision-makers or independent office-holders”.

Nor was the wording of FOIA itself a barrier to such appeals: section 57(1) expressly confers a right of appeal on both parties, and not simply “the losing party”. Furthermore, both the steps prescribed in a decision notice and the timing of such steps are matters of discretion for the Commissioner. Unlike the enforcement of a decision notice, such questions of discretion are within the Tribunal’s jurisdiction.

It is not clear, however, whether a challenge to a first-instance Tribunal’s refusal to entertain an appeal lies by way of an appeal to the Upper Tribunal or by way of judicial review. A test case (combined references of CH/1758/2009 and JR/2204/2009) will determine this question shortly. In the present case, the Upper Tribunal therefore granted permission to apply for judicial review as a precaution.

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TRIBUNAL’S STRIKE-OUT OF ‘ACADEMIC’ APPEALS

December 2nd, 2010 by Robin Hopkins

In Edwards v IC and the Ministry of Defence (EA/2010/0056), the Tribunal has exercised its power to strike out a party’s case under Tribunal Procedure (First-Tier Tribunal) (GRC) Rules 2009. This was done partly on a lack of reasonable prospects of success, and partly on jurisdictional grounds: some of the appellant’s grounds of complaint invited the Tribunal to “monitor or influence” the way in which the Commissioner had carried out his statutory duties, or the way in which the public authority had done so. The Tribunal has no jurisdiction over such matters. 

Perhaps more interestingly, this was a case where the appeal was in effect academic, as the requested material had already been given to the appellant. The grounds on which a Tribunal may strike out an appeal are contained in rule 8(3) of the 2009 Rules: lack of reasonable prospect of success, non-compliance with an order or failure to co-operate with the Tribunal “to such an extent that the Tribunal cannot deal with the proceedings fairly and justly”.

At first glance, it is not obvious how any of those three exhaustive categories accommodate appeals which have become academic due to events post-dating the handling of the relevant request. The Tribunal in Edwards has provided its answer. The key provision is rule 8(3)(b), which concerns the fair and just dealing with proceedings. By rule 2(2) of the 2009 Rules, this includes considerations of proportionality, costs and resources. Rule 5 empowers the Tribunal to regulate its own procedure. In particular, rule 5(2) allows it to give a direction in relation to the conduct or disposal of proceedings at any time.

The combination of rules 2 and 5 can therefore suffice to engage rule 8(3)(b) and support a strike-out even where questions of jurisdiction or lack of reasonable prospects of success are not in play.

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LITIGANTS MAY – WITH THE TRIBUNAL’S LEAVE – PUBLISH PLEADINGS WHILE A CASE IS ONGOING

September 8th, 2010 by Robin Hopkins

Mr Todd has lodged an appeal against a decision notice of the Commissioner involving the BBC. He will be a litigant in person at the Tribunal hearing. He applied to the Tribunal for permission to publish on his blog the pleadings lodged by the Commissioner and the BBC, so as to “recruit advice and assistance from other members of a wide community of on-line democratic activists who may have relevant and informal contributions to make to my case”. In other words, he argued that publication would help him achieve equality of arms.

Neither the Commissioner nor the BBC objected to his doing so in this particular case. The Commissioner, however, contended that litigants had no automatic right to publish pleadings in a ‘live’ case, but could only do so with the leave of the Tribunal on a case-by-case basis. The BBC on the other hand, contended that the Tribunal had no power to authorise such publication under the Tribunal Procedure (First-tier Tribunal) (General Regulatory Chamber) Rules 2009.

The Tribunal agreed with the Commissioner (see its ruling here), and authorised the publication of the pleadings in this case. It is therefore theoretically open to litigants in person to take this approach – but only with the permission of the Tribunal. Importantly, the Tribunal’s reason for allowing publication in this case appears to have been the lack of objection by the other parties and not Mr Todd’s ‘equality of arms’ argument, which it expressly rejected. It seems then that the views of the respondents will be crucial to any such applications in future.

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UNHELPFUL PRESENTATION OF REDACTED MATERIAL COULD BREACH SS. 1 & 16 FOIA

August 10th, 2010 by Robin Hopkins

The Tribunal’s recent decision in Gradwick v IC and the Cabinet Office (EA/2010/0030) dealt with sections 23 and 24 of FOIA. Its concluding dicta also dealt with some procedural matters with potentially substantive implications, particularly concerning redacted material. Public authorities may find these dicta worth noting, both when preparing to disclose redacted material and when preparing for Tribunal hearings.

In response to a FOIA request, the Cabinet Office had decided to disclose some extracts from its Manual of Protective Security but to withhold others. Due in part to administrative complications, it did so by compiling a document consisting solely of the former rather than blanking out parts of the original manual. Relying on FOIA’s reference point being information rather than documents, the Cabinet Office sought to justify this approach in the face of criticism from the Tribunal. The Tribunal however, remarked that “it is at least arguable that a document which sets out the passages that contain the information to be disclosed, but which has the effect of obscuring the nature and extent of the information which has been withheld, does not inform the party making the request whether or not it holds information of the description specified in the request, for which exemption is claimed”.

This approach to the presentation of information could, it observed (without deciding the issue), constitute a breach of section 1 (duty to provide information) and/or section 16 (duty to assist) of FOIA.

The Tribunal indicated that it prefers the following approach:

“Within the practice established by the Tribunal and its users to date, a document characterised as having been redacted has come to mean one in which the extent of the omitted material is indicated by blank spaces and in which, to the extent possible, headings or other indications are retained or inserted to give a fair indication, to both panel members and those presenting submissions, of the broad nature of the information that has been withheld. Annotating the resulting document to indicate the exemption relied on to justify each omission is also a valuable assistance in cases where different exemptions apply to different sections of the document or information.”

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HOW BUSY IS THE TRIBUNAL?

January 22nd, 2010 by Timothy Pitt-Payne QC

The First-tier Tribunal (Information Rights) – as we must now learn to call it – has recently published on its website a list of its current cases (updated to 20th January 2010).  This gives an interesting insight into the volume and type of work reaching the Tribunal.

Cases are numbered by year of receipt, and in the order that they are received: for instance,  EA/2009/100 is the 100th case received in 2009.  This means that the case numbering system indicates how many appeals were received in a particular calendar year.  On this basis, the Tribunal seems to have received 123 cases in 2009, and 30 (so far) in 2010;  which suggests a sudden sharp increase in its workload.

The list shows 102 live cases.  Of these, only one is identified as a Data Protection Act case.  11 cases are identified as involving the Environmental Information Regulations.  All of the other appeals (90 cases) are brought solely under the Freedom of Information Act.

As the figures suggest, free-standing DPA cases before the Tribunal are rare.  There are also few DPA cases that reach the ordinary courts.  But many FOIA cases involve DPA issues.  So a significant volume of DPA case-law is being generated by the Tribunal; but most of this is in the context of FOIA, and in particular the data protection exemption in FOIA section 40. 

 

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NEW TRIBUNAL, SAME OLD WEBSITE

January 18th, 2010 by Timothy Pitt-Payne QC

The website for the new First-tier Tribunal (Information Rights) is at the address formerly used by the Information Tribunal:  see here.

The website includes the Practice Statements that were issued under the old rules (i.e. the Information Tribunal (Enforcement Appeals) 2005), but as yet it does not include any practice directions made under the new rules.  We are however aware of a practice direction dated 18th January 2010 on confidentiality and redaction of documents (referred to in Anya’s post of 15th January).

The website also includes a redrafted version of the appeal form.

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NEWS FLASH: INFORMATION TRIBUNAL RIP

January 15th, 2010 by Anya Proops

Today, we should all pause and reflect on the passing of the much loved Information Tribunal. With effect from this coming Monday (18 January 2010), the Information Tribunal in its existing incarnation will cease to exist and all work which has hitherto been done by the Tribunal will be transferred to the new General Regulatory Chamber. The transfer is to be effected in accordance with the Transfer of Functions Order 2010 (SI 2010/22) (“the Transfer Order”). It is important to be aware of the following systemic changes which will result from the transfer:

 

1.                   from 18 January 2010, all appeals under FOIA will be heard either in the First-tier Tribunal (Information Rights) (“the FTT”) or in the Upper Tribunal (“UT”);

2.                   the question whether particular appeals are to be heard in the FTT or the UT is, in principle, to be determined by the new tribunal rules governing the operation of the FTT and the UT (see paragraph 2(3) of the Transfer Order);

3.                   there are in fact two sets of rules which are relevant in this context:

 (a) the Tribunal Procedure (First-tier Tribunal)(General Regulatory Chamber) Rules 2009, SI 2009/1976 (“the FTT Rules”) (as amended very recently by the Tribunal Procedure (Amendment) Rules 2010, SI 2010/43); and

(b) the Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rules 2008, SI 2968/2008 (“the UT Rules”) (as amended by SI 2009/274, SI 2009/1975 and SI 2010/43);

4.                   as matters currently stand, these Rules say very little as to how FOIA appeals are to be allocated as between the two different tribunals, save that all appeals under s. 60 FOIA (appeals against national security certificate) must be heard in the UT (see paragraph 24 of the Tribunal Procedure (Amendment) Rules 2010, SI 2010/43). It is understood that, apart from appeals brought under s. 60 FOIA, the issue of allocation of appeals as between the two tribunals is likely to be determined on the basis of (forthcoming) practice directions rather than by reference to the Rules per se;

5.                   the FTT Rules and the UT Rules will apply in respect of all new appeals brought under FOIA (i.e. appeals which are commenced on or after 18 Janaury 2010);

6.                   in respect of appeals commenced prior to 18 January 2010, the tribunal will have a discretion as to whether to apply: (a) the old rules (i.e. the Information Tribunal (Enforcement Appeals) Rules 2005); (b) the new rules; or (c) a combination of the two sets of rules (see further paragraph 3 of schedule 5 to the Transfer Order which contains the relevant transitional provisions);

7.                   the FTT Rules and UT Rules will in due course be supplemented by practice directions – see further the new practice direction on confidentiality and redaction of documents (dated 18 January 2010). 

 

 

 

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