Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill

I am always obliged to have a point that I am making reinforced, even at length. What the hon. Gentleman says is the truth of the matter. Everyone in this country would say that the House of Commons or the House of Lords was the pre-eminent public authority. My point about the Government’s silence on that matter is that surely they, who included the Lords and the Commons in the 2000 Act, would be the greatest advocates for maintaining the integrity of the inclusion of those bodies. We are given to understand that the Leader of the House thinks that the Bill is valuable, or should be debated, and that is commendable. It is right that it should be debated if the subject is causing anxiety to my right hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border and those who support his Bill, but it was also possible for the Leader of the House to say, when the Bill was being debated, ““We stand by the integrity of the 2000 Act as it was drafted.? It is not that Ministers are not well advised; they know perfectly well how the Bill is constructed and the relationship of its ingredients. We are saying that we should retain the House of Commons as a public authority, and that strikes at the very heart of the private Member’s Bill introduced by my right hon. Friend. I have listened with great interest, Madam Deputy Speaker, to the exchanges on what is and what is not in order in a discussion on the Bill, but there is a serious difficulty to consider. The removal or continuation of public authority status has consequential effects that touch on the only other subject that the Bill mentions: communications with members of the House of Commons. The two issues are intimately related. Of course, communications is only one of the many instances of areas in which there would be consequential effects, but it is the one that is specified in the Bill. When considering the removal of the Commons as a public authority, we are therefore considering what that means for a wider range of interests, and for our work, doings and proceedings—not proceedings; I rapidly withdraw that, on the ground that I understand a little bit about privilege. Hon. Members have said, appropriately, that the 2000 Act that the Bill seeks to amend, and which we in turn seek to amend—I hope that I have got the rubric right—is a trust with the people, in which we say that no institution or public authority is so grand that it is exempted. It is a curiosity that the House of Commons Commission decided to pursue a case without seeking any advice from Members on whether that was truly appropriate. I was unaware of that at the time; I am slow in these matters. In fact, no consultation has taken place, but the Government had previously ensured great consultation on the 2000 Act, and had received many observations. This is a valuable opportunity to look at some of the responses from. Members of this House. I am mindful that the concept of ““public authority? applies to almost everything that is important in our public processes and public life. As always, I am extraordinarily grateful to the Campaign for Freedom of Information for its diligence and pursuance of argument and reason. It lists, in a useful note, some of the public authorities that now give information that seems to trouble some Members. I am thinking of the expenses of chief constables, and one of the areas in which I have had particular difficulty, local authorities. All people sometimes have a natural reluctance to explain what they think is sensitive information. That may be an innate human response, but the truth is that it is, as often as not, the people’s money that is being spent, and I maintain that they have an absolute right—I go too far, because nothing in life is absolute, except death. [Hon. Members: ““And taxes.?] I have listened to my hon. Friends on the Public Accounts Committee, and they assure me that taxes are not absolute. That a touch of the golden days should arise is startling. The matter is as near to a certainty as possible; I put it that way. We are talking about a trust in the purpose of our construction of democratic government. How do we know, without access to information, the appropriateness of every detail of the running of our Administrations? It is like shining a torch into a dark place—that is all that it is about—so that the public may judge whether such things are appropriate. We are all traduced—it is the fate of Members of Parliament to be caricatured, to be told that they are ineffective, to be this, that and the other—but that is the nature of our times and was probably always the nature of the times of this nation. We must be resolute in understanding that if we have a claim, whatever its nature, on the public purse that, just like the chief constable of the Thames Valley police, just like the chief executive of a local authority and just like public services in the national health service, our salaries, expenses and so on are a matter of legitimate concern or interest. It is not just being nosy, as we should be able to judge the effectiveness, the character and the honour of those who purport to spend public money in the interest of the public. I have discussed the expenses of public authorities, including the police. There are exclusions, but how far, for instance, do expenses go? What detail is required of Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, in the period April to July 2005? On 9 May 2005, he had a business meal at a restaurant in London that cost £44.16.