Public Interest Immunity

HL Deb 12 December 2001 vol 629 cc205-6WA

Baroness Batch

asked Her Majesty's Government:

Where a document is made subject to a public interest immunity ruling by the High Court, on whose authority and in what circumstances such a document could be made publicly available. [HL1726]

The Attorney-General (Lord Goldsmith)

Where the High Court upholds a public interest immunity certificate, the effect is that the documents covered by that certificate should not be disclosed in the proceedings in question. Disclosure for other purposes is a matter for the party having control of the documents, but where the nature of the documents is such that PII has been claimed for them, it follows that voluntary disclosure would be highly unlikely. If documents for which PII had been claimed successfully in one set of proceedings subsequently became relevant, and so in principle disclosable, in other proceedings, any further PII claim would fall to be determined by the court or tribunal hearing those proceedings.