PLP backbencher Walton Brown has filed a legal action against Craig Cannonier and several civil servants after he was identified as submitting a Pati request.

According to a writ dated April 11, Mr Brown has launched an action against the Minister for Public Works, the permanent secretary for the Ministry of Public Works, the Cabinet Service Executive and the Cabinet Secretary. The action is linked to an incident in the House of Assembly on May 15 last year. Responding to parliamentary questions by Mr Brown about stone taken from Blackwatch Pass, Mr Cannonier gave a reply which indicated he knew that Mr Brown had submitted a Pati request on the subject.

According to Section 12(4) of the Public Access to Information Act: “The identity of a requester shall be kept confidential and, except with the consent of the requester, may not be disclosed to any person other than a person who is required to deal with the request under this Act.”

In a subsequent statement the Progressive Labour Party said the incident was disconcerting, noting that ministers are not involved in the Pati process, so Mr Cannonier would have had to been informed of the identity of the requester by someone else in the ministry.

Mr Cannonier later apologised, saying the incident was an honest mistake. Information commissioner Gitanjali Gutierrez conducted an inquiry into the incident, finding that civil servants were handing Pati requests without official written protocols about how to do so.

She labelled the incident involving Mr Cannonier as the culmination of a “perfect storm” of events, adding: “The same lack of written procedures and inconsistent practice may be found across public authorities during the transitional years [of the Pati Act].”

Mrs Gutierrez also stressed the importance of confidentiality as those making Pati requests cannot do so anonymously.

“Once a requester’s identity is revealed, the extent of the harm to both the individual requester’s life and the public’s perception of the security of their right to confidentiality is difficult to anticipate, as the events related to this investigation have shown,” she wrote in a report.

“We currently do not have a mechanism that allows a requester to ask for records anonymously. Thus, maintaining a requester’s confidentiality protects them from retaliation and other negative consequences when they file Pati requests in certain circumstances.”