Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill

I am glad to hear that my hon. Friend thinks that it is not much of a meal. I am pleased that in those terms the commissioner is a diligent steward of public funds. He gave a floral tribute that cost £20. That is trivial, but it is reassuring that we can scrutinise those records. It is not my intention to delay or push on, but that is why it is important that in the absence of the Bill failing—and should it somehow squeak its way through—that our amendments succeed, even though it is a Friday and it is true that right hon. and hon. Members have many commitments in life. There are benefits, too, that the Campaign for Freedom of Information highlighted in the briefing that it sent out, including the argument that the disclosure of aggregate annual figures has already led to a reduction in the overall level of Members’ travel expenses. If we want to look further, we could consider the disclosure of more detailed information about the expenses of Members of the Scottish Parliament. The briefing states:"““We think it would be wrong for Parliament to exempt itself from a disclosure regime which it has applied to the whole public sector?—" that is what I have been trying to say. It continues:"““The detailed expenses of ministers, judges, chief constables, councillors, civil servants, local authority chief executives and other public figures and officials are all disclosable under the Act. A number of these are included in an Appendix?—" to the briefing sent to every Member of Parliament. It continues:"““The particular case for exempting MPs’ expenses alone has not been made.?" I shall not go through the entire briefing, as that would extend the debate beyond the argument. I want to return, however, to the point first made by the hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) and by the hon. Members for Lewes (Norman Baker) and for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) about the special position of the House. It has been pointed out that we are the second and third entries in the annexe to the originating Act that the Bill endeavours to amend—in turn, we are endeavouring to amend the amending measure. Our special case is that we make the law. How can it be right for us to direct that a law should apply to everyone else but, having found it inconvenient or not meeting what the Information Commissioner or one or two individual Members wanted, we should do something that no other public authority in Britain can do—change the law? That is what we are doing, but do we really think that it is quite right? Does it not look like the most extraordinary form of special pleading? Many people feel aggrieved, and I can think of a particular chief executive in the west midlands who is outraged at the fact that her salary should be made public. She thinks that it is like looking into her bank account. I can understand her concern. What if we suddenly started to say, having asked for this information to be published, ““Now that I’ve found it inconvenient I think I should be exempted in some form or other?? That would be a profound corruption of public standards. I can see that my good friend from Glasgow, the right hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton, West (Mr. McAvoy), disagrees with the burden of that argument. Nevertheless, we have never liked particularisation of individuals or an individual class as against that of the public class in general.