The court considered a claim for legal professional privilege by the Department.
Held: The Tribunal had properly directed itself that there was a strong public interest in non-disclosure inbuilt into legal professional privilege but: ‘In the light of the consistent line taken by the Tribunal as to the weight to be attached to the public interest against disclosure inbuilt into legal professional privilege (an approach I have found to be the correct one) it was incumbent upon the Tribunal in the instant case to give significant weight to that interest. Further, the Tribunal was obliged to consider whether the weight to be given to the public interest considerations militating against disclosure were countered by considerations of at least an equal weight which supported an order for disclosure.’
The Tribunal had failed to attach appropriate weight to the exemption and said: ‘The inbuilt public interest in withholding information to which legal professional privilege applies is acknowledged to command significant weight. Accordingly, the proper approach for the Tribunal was to acknowledge and give significant weight to be afforded to the exemption in any event; ascertain whether there were particular or further factors in the instant case which pointed to non-disclosure and then consider whether the feature supporting disclosure (including the underlying public interests which favour disclosure) would have equal weight at the very least.’
Judges:
Wyn Williams J
Citations:
[2009] EWHC 164 (QB)
Links:
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – HM Treasury v The Information Commissioner Admn 21-Jul-2009
Disclosure of Government’s Legal Advice
The interested party sought to obtain the legal opinion on which the Prime Minister had based his assertion that the Financial Services and Markets Bill complied with Human Rights. The respondent refused claiming protection under the section, and . .
Cited – British Broadcasting Corporation v Sugar and Another Admn 2-Oct-2009
Disclosure was sought of a report prepared by the BBC to assess the balance of its coverage of middle east affairs. The BBC said that the information was not held for purposes other than those of journalism, art or literature. One issue was whether . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Information, Legal Professions
Updated: 16 August 2022; Ref: scu.314297