One form of overriding legislation may be the audit regulations,
which for a period of days at the time of the annual audit allow
members of the public to:
"(a) inspect the accounts to be audited and all books, deeds,
contracts, bills, vouchers and receipts relating to them, and (b)
make copies of all or any part of the accounts and those other
documents." [s 15(1) Audit Commission Act 1998]
I don't know if this extends to Scotland - if not presumably the same
measures are likely to be repeated in Scottish legislation.
The only exemption is for "personal information about a member of the
staff" and this includes employees and office holders. I'm not sure
whether a councillor is an office holder. I assume the answer is
they're not, as councillors' expenses have been revealed to the
public (in item by item detail) as a result court orders enforcing
this right of access (and in one case about 3 years ago led to the
conviction of 13 councillors for fraudulent claims).
Its a limited right of access, in that it operates only for a short
period of time each year. Perhaps that would still be enough to
exempt the data from the non-disclosure provisiosn under s 34 of the
1998 Act?
Maurice Frankel
Campaign for Freedom of Information
At 1:32 pm +0100 28/9/01, Broom, Doreen wrote:
> My worry is that there may be some overriding legislation which
>allows him to have access to that information and is therefore not solely a
>DP issue eg Access to Information Act.
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