united-kingdom interpretation foia
FOIA to Office of Parliamentary Counsel to gain insight to the intentions of statutory minutiae
<p>Has it ever been done to FOIR the office of parliamentary counsel to find out whether certain minute idiosyncrasies judged by courts to be nonetheless unequivocal so as to reflect intentional distinctions were in fact reflective of intention to nuanced distinctions or simply coincidental oversights?</p>
<p>I'm thinking of things that actual MPs may be far too busy to have awareness of in the scope and level of details of their parliamentary debates, but the lawyers actually drafting the legislations' language would have considered in detail.</p>
<p>As an aside would their drafting notes kind of like &quot;code comments&quot; in source code be recorded anywhere and would they even be subject to FOIA if so?</p>
<p>And if one were to do this, what impact would it have on the judicial interpretation subsequently?</p>

<p>Any such documents would be protected by parliamentary privilege. See <a href="https://ico.org.uk/media/for-organisations/documents/1161/section_34_parliamentary_privilege.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">this primer</a> on the interaction between freedom-of-information requests and parliamentary privilege.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[Parliamentary privilege] is a set of
constitutional law principles, originating in the Middle Ages and
partially codified in the 17th century onwards, which provide
certain rights (or privileges) to allow Parliament to work
effectively and independently, without interference from the
monarchy, courts or other authorities.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It includes:</p>
<ul>
<li>&quot;Internal papers prepared by the officials of either House
directly relating to House or committee proceedings, eg
briefing papers or notes of committee meetings.</li>
<li>&quot;Correspondence between members, House officials,
ministers and government officials, where the
correspondence directly and specifically relates to House
or committee proceedings.&quot;</li>
</ul>
