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Sep172011
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Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Extending the statute of limitations
Sep 17, 2011 FOI The Scottish Government is apparently considering extending the statute of limitations for offences under the FOI Scotland Act.
Section 65 of FOISA. Section 65 provides that once a request has been made to an authority, it is a criminal offence for the authority, its employees or contractors to alter or destroy the information with the intention of preventing disclosure. Any such offence must be prosecuted within six months of the time when the offence was committed. In practice it is very difficult to prosecute an alleged offence within that timeframe. So the Amendment Bill would extend the period for summary prosecution.
Reader Comments (3)
The limit should be ten years.
And the punishment should be prison.
Scottish law is probably different from English law and my knowledge of either is slight but I have wondered if the use of Malfeasance or Misfeasance is of benefit in stopping public servants from abusing their powers with respect to FOI. From wikipedia (sorry!)
Under English law, misconduct (or misfeasance) in public office is an offence at common law.[1]
The Crown Prosecution Service guidelines on this offence[1] say that the elements of the offence are when:
A public officer acting as such.
Wilfully neglects to perform his duty and/or wilfully misconducts himself.
To such a degree as to amount to an abuse of the public's trust in the office holder.[2]
Without reasonable excuse or justification.
The similarly named malfeasance (or misfeasance) in public office is a tort. In the House of Lords judgement on the BCCI Malfeasance Case it was held that this had 3 essential elements[3]:
The defendant must be a public officer
The defendant must have been exercising his power as a public officer
The defendant is either exercising targeted malice or exceeding his powers.
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