Introduction

All information rights legislation, with the exception of the Environmental Information Regulations, takes second place to other statutes. Thus, if another statute states that data must or must not be shared, the Freedom of Information Act and the Data Protection Act may not apply. Similarly, under the Data Protection Act, the exemptions for non disclosure apply only to that Act, and there must be other legislation that permits the data to be shared in the first place. It would be difficult to provide a definitive list of the legislation that may apply, but some was mentioned in Chapter 7; it includes the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, Children and Adoptions Act and other Children's Acts, and the Local Government Acts (particularly 2000).

Under the Freedom of Information Act care must be taken to conform with the Enterprise Act 2002 before sharing data; and under the Data Protection Act you may need to take the Finance Act 1988, the Local Goverment Finance Act 1992, the Local Government Act 2002 and the Housing Act 2004 into consideration. These were explained in Chapters 6 and 10. When releasing documents account must be taken of the various copyright Acts, in particular the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (as amended).

There are some other Acts and regulations on the periphery of the information rights field that also have an impact on the release of information and relating to information rights, and this chapter selects some of them for study .

Human Rights Act 1998

All elements of information rights legislation are based on this Act. It came into force in October 2000, at the same time as the Data Protection Act, and encompasses the 16 rights listed in the European Convention on Human Rights and its subsequent additions. Article 1 of the European Convention is an introduction, not included in the Act, and Article 13 is not part of the Act. The rights are: