with widespread enthusiasm, and was described at the time as being "almost too good to be true" by one advocate of freedom of information legislation. The final act was substantially more limited in scope than the initial white paper. Parliamentary debate A draft Bill was published in May 1999; the Bill was extensively debated in the House of Commons and the House of Lords, and received royal assent in November 2000. Act Applicability The Freedom of Information Act creates a statutory right for access to information in relation to bodies that exercise functions of a public nature. Three different kinds of bodies are covered under the act: Public Authorities, publicly owned companies and designated bodies performing public functions. Public authorities In principle, the freedom of information act applies to all "public authorities" within the United Kingdom. A full list of "public authorities" for the purposes of the act is included in Schedule 1. Government departments, the Houses of Parliament, the Northern Ireland Assembly, the Welsh Assembly, the armed forces, local government bodies, National Health Service bodies, schools, colleges and universities, police authorities and Chief Officers of Police are included within this list, which ranges from the Farm Animal Welfare Council to the Youth Council for Northern Ireland. A few government departments are expressly excluded from the scope of the act, principally intelligence services. As government departments are closed and created, the act must be continually updated. Schedule 4 of the Act empowers the Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs to add a body or officeholder to Schedule 1 as a public authority if they are created statute or prerogative; and its members are appointed by the government. Hybrid public authorities It is important to note that for some public authorities listed under Schedule 1, the act has limited effect. For example, the BBC is subject to the act only for information which is not held for the purposes of journalism, art or literature, to prevent its journalistic activities from possible compromise. The scope of this provision was considered in the recent High Court decision of BBC v Sugar, an internal BBC document examining the BBC coverage of the Middle East for potential bias. The appellants in that case argued that the document had been produced for both operational and journalistic reasons, and so should not be covered by the partial exemption provided in the act. The High Court rejected this