The legislation will apply to a wide range of public authorities, including Parliament, Government Departments and local authorities, health trusts, doctors
• surgeries, publicly funded museums and thousands of other organisations.
The main features of the Act are:.
a general right of access to information held by public authorities in the course of carrying out their public functions, subject to certain conditions and exemptions; .
in most cases where information is exempted from disclosure there is a duty on public authorities to disclose where, in the view of the public authority, the public interest in disclosure outweighs the public interest in maintaining the exemption in question; .
a new office of Information Commissioner, and a new Information Tribunal, with wide powers to enforce the rights created; .
a duty imposed on public authorities to adopt a scheme for the publication of information. The schemes, which must be approved by the Commissioner, will specify the classes of information the authority intends to publish, the manner of publication and whether the information is available to the public free of charge or on payment of a fee. .
Data Protection Law.
As with the 1984 Act there are eight Data Protection Principles in the Act. However, the new Principles are not exactly the same as those in the 1984 Act. Except to the extent that any data controller is able to claim an exemption from any one or all of them (whether on a transitional or outright basis) the Principles apply to all personal data processed by data controllers. Controllers must comply with them, irrespective of whether they are required to notify and whether or not they are actually notified. The United Kingdom's existing data protection legislation, the Data Protection Act 1984 , meets many of the requirements of the Directive. However the Directive goes beyond the present law in a number of respects.
