Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee 27 November 2025
The policy intention behind the bill is not to add costs. As you will be aware, the 2002 act does not require anybody to create any new information; the requirement is simply to provide information that already exists. However, the intention of the bill is to effect a culture change with regard to proactive publication, and the view is that that will reduce costs.
The committee will have heard that, in itself, the bill will not automatically lead to any new designations. However, if there were new designations, those bodies would also be required to conform to proactive publication.
The view is that the codes of practice on proactive publication that would come from the Information Commissioner would make it very clear to organisations what they would require to do to comply with the duties, but obviously that would apply only to information that already exists. I know that the Information Commissioner spoke last week about the consequences that could flow from proactive publication, which could lead to organisations providing information in a different way and in more of a standard data format. Every committee in the Parliament would probably recognise that as an issue.
As you know, the legislation does not require new information to be provided. I hope that proactive publication would make it easier for the public to get information, reduce the number of FOI requests and ensure that any FOI requests were cheaper to process.