Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill

Indeed. Some of us may believe that the 2000 Act contained too many exemptions. The Act that was passed was but a pale shadow of the White Paper that David Clark, the then Minister, produced. He became the first Minister to be sacked for implementing his party’s manifesto. Nevertheless, the 2000 Act is full of exemptions and covers the concerns that hon. Members who have not examined the facts might legitimately have. The correspondence of Members of Parliament with a public authority about a constituent’s personal affairs is normally protected by the exemptions to which I referred. They include: matters that are not publicly accessible; information that is supplied in confidence, and information that is likely to cause detriment to the confider if disclosed. Even if correspondence is not marked ““confidential?, the nature of the relationship between a Member of Parliament and his or her constituent, and of a Member of Parliament with a public authority, establishes an implicit expectation of confidentiality that the courts recognise. Everyone accepts the confidentiality of such correspondence—it is one of the most commonly understood matters in our conduct of public affairs. When constituents write to us, they sometimes include the most personal details. They expect their problem to be treated confidentially. One or two may write, ““Will you please treat this confidentially?, but most do not because they know that that is the way in which we deal with our correspondence. It is universally understood. Similarly, if we write to a public authority about a constituent, we would not expect it to publish the letter and no public authority would think of doing so. An implicit understanding has been built up over generations about the relationship of a Member of Parliament with his or her constituents and a Member of Parliament’s position in advocating and representing constituents and their concerns to a public authority. We do not need to meddle with that. It works well.