How does the Act affect my business?
The Act affects your business in an indirect way. Under the freedom of information act, there is no direct right of access to information about your company, for example. However, if your company submits information to the government, and the government has information about your company in it's regulatory function, then that information may be made available to the public, if members of the public ask for it. There are exemptions for various kinds of commercial confidentiality, but simply stamping everything you give to the government as confidential in confidence is not enough to ensure that it will not be disclosed. There's another way in which the freedom of information act can affect your company. You can use the freedom of information act to obtain information about other companies so that if you have a competitor who's regulated by the same government body, you can ask for information about your competitor. Under the act, there is no specific provision that says the competitor has to be notified. There is such provision in some other countries but not in the UK. The information commissioner has said that in most circumstances, if information about a company or person is requested, then there should be notice given to that company or person. The person or company should be entitled to make representations to argue about why that information should not be disclosed. In the United States this has often led to cases before the courts, called reverse freedom of information act cases, in which someone asks information about a company from a government department. The company finds out about it and the company goes to court to stop the government department from disclosing the information. That's the way the freedom of information act can affect your company.
