Derek McDowell (Labour)

I second the amendment.

The existing provision effectively says that the Secretaries General must justify a decision to refuse. The presumption in the section is in favour of the release of information, so a Secretary General must show that releasing the information would damage the public interest. The section, as amended by the Bill, would effectively reverse that onus, so that the Secretary General will have to state that the public interest would be served by releasing the information. It makes it much easier for a Secretary General to satisfy himself or herself on a public interest test and close down the process by issuing a certificate. In this amendment, we are seeking to qualify the issue of the certificate by saying that the Secretary General must be satisfied that, on balance, the public interest would be better served by refusing to grant the request. We are trying to reverse the onus once more from its position in the amending Bill.