The ideological battle over the scope of the Protection of Information Bill continued on Thursday with the ANC rejecting the need for a defined list of state agencies that may classify documents.

The chairperson of the ad hoc committee handling the bill, Cecil Burgess, suggested that asking the state law advisor to make a list was like "counting the grains of sand in the Sahara".

DA MP Dene Smuts said a list supplied by the attorney general in the past had put the figure at 648, confirming her argument that far too much was being filed by too many officials.

She rejected the notion that current procedures needed to be cast in stone in the bill in order to protect all information in the hands of the government from wrongful use.

"Why should the intelligence community tell everybody how to look after their information?" Smuts asked, adding that safeguarding information held by departments like home affairs was a matter of "pure administration".

"Do we need a law (for that)?"

Burgess countered: "We need a law and we need it fast."

He said this was because the lack of clear legislation in the post-apartheid era had meant "we cannot punish people" who published secret information.

The argument goes to the heart of the ideological disagreement between the ANC and the opposition over what information needs to be filed as secret in the interest of national security and by whom.

A public outcry over the draft law last year saw the ANC narrow its original scope by removing a provision for classification in the "national interest" and classing commercial information in secret files.

It outraged the media and rights groups and led an opposition MP to remark it created a situation where you can "classify a grocery list".