Ms Emily O'Reilly:

As Information Commissioner I cannot comment on the motivation of individuals making requests. I do not take that into account. They are applying as journalists but they are also members of the public. A member of the public could request a particular record as validly as a journalist. How would one draw a distinction?

In regard to the Chairman's first point, if I reflected on the records that I had seen, some of which I did not rule to be suitable for release, I do not recall many that would have tilted the world on its axis. Much information is kept secret or out of the public gaze for irrelevant reasons or simply for the sake of it. Public bodies could make life easier for themselves if they took an honest look at their records and asked themselves if there is any genuine reason they could not be put on their websites. As members will be aware, Sweden traditionally had a liberal regime whereby everything was published. It has been argued that the public in the UK were better served under that country's equivalent of the Official Secrets Act than the people of Sweden. So much information was publicly available in Sweden that people assumed there was nothing to find, whereas in the UK it was assumed that lots of interesting information was hidden away and people went searching for it. Journalists will always do their thing and I do not think they can be put into a separate category from members of the public who, for example, are looking for a particular record based on interests in a community project or their own intellectual pursuits.