Page 257 - Law and the Media

Law and the Media
The FIA is intended to have wide application across the public sector at national, regional and
local level. A large number of authorities, bodies and offices will fall within the scope of the
FIA. Schedule 1 to the Act sets out a list of public authorities that will be subject to the FIA,
including:

Government departments
Local authorities
NHS bodies (hospitals, doctors, dentists, pharmacists and opticians)
Schools, colleges and universities
The police
The House of Commons and the House of Lords
The Northern Ireland Assembly
The National Assembly for Wales.

Schedule 1 also includes a long list of other public bodies ranging from various official
advisory and expert committees to regulators and organizations such as the Post Office,
National Gallery, and the Parole Board. Other public authorities can be named at a later date.

The FIA also provides that certain organizations can be named as public authorities for the
purpose of certain relevant parts of their work. Public authorities can be designated in one of
the following ways:

By order of the Secretary of State designating any body or the holder of any office
that satisfies certain specified conditions (Section 4(1)).
By order of the Secretary of State in respect of any body that satisfies certain
conditions and appears to exercise functions of a public nature or provides any
service which is a function of a public authority under a contract with that authority
(Section 5).
An entity that falls under the definition of a publicly-owned company for the
purposes of the FIA (Section 6).
By specification in relation to the principal authorities of national and local
government, the armed forces, the national health service, education services, the
police and other public bodies and offices (Schedule 1).

The fact that a public authority ‘holds’ information does not extend to holding that information
on behalf of another person or authority. For example, the right to access would not extend to a
Member of Parliament’s constituency papers just because they were held in his government
department. However, it does extend to information held elsewhere on behalf of an authority,
for example in a private repository.

14.3.3 Access to information
The FIA provides a statutory right of access to all types of information, whether personal or
non-personal. Furthermore, a person now has the right under the FIA to be told whether certain
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