Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee 06 November 2025
Yes, I think that it will. As Kevin Dunion has said, one of the really important things that the bill does is bring the law up to date and make it ready for the modern world. When we did our research on the UK Freedom of Information Act 2000 back in 2010, we found that publication schemes were already antiquated and were not really being used.
That leads me on to an important thing that the proposals in the bill aim to do, which is to make the proactive disclosure side of the law much stronger. That will really push our legislation to the forefront of freedom of information laws around the world. One of the difficulties with such laws is that we often think about them as reactive entities that are all about people making requests, but, as some of the data from the survey showed, most people expect and want information to be published online. They do not want to have to make a request for it.
Therefore, one of the big steps forward in the bill is the emphasis that is put—not only through the purpose provisions, but through the greater control arising from the proposed code of practice on publication—on the proactive side of things that is often lost and neglected.