Clause 30 - Inspection of documents and questions at audit
Public Audit (Wales) Bill [Lords]
11:15 am
Mr Bill Wiggin (Shadow Secretary of State for Wales, Local and Devolved Government Affairs; Leominster, Conservative)
The amendments deal with inspection rights during audits of local government bodies. Subsection (1) allows the accounts that are to be audited to be inspected by ''an interested person''. Amendment No. 32 proposes the replacement of that phrase with ''a person'' to find out what the Government mean by ''an interested person''. Clause 30 sets out the fact that the rights of information and documents do not apply to personal information, which is defined restrictively in subsection (4). Amendment No. 33 would widen the definition of personal information from just the fact that the person is employed and/or paid by the body.
I want to probe whether the clause has been drafted adequately to set out clearly what information people are restricted to obtaining. It is also interesting that the Bill makes no reference to the Data Protection Act
1998, which presumably covers all rights to information. Will the Minister explain why the clause has been so drafted?