Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill

I would be accused of inconsistency if the very last words that I said prior to taking the last intervention were that that would be the last intervention before I got on to the amendments, and I then took an intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Norman Baker), despite the fact that I would love to do so. I shall store it up and take it later. In an earlier intervention I expressed my disquiet with amendment No. 2. It seeks to remove many of the obnoxious elements in the Bill and I could not quarrel with that intention. If my hon. Friend intends to press the amendment to a Division—because of the procedural shenanigans earlier, we were not allowed to hear his speech in favour of other amendments, but he may have an opportunity to return when he sums up the debate. My problem is with amendment No. 2, and the reason that I prefer some of the other amendments, is that if it were accepted, the result would be that clause 1(3) would be removed. It would not exist. We would have subsection (1), subsection (2), subsection (4), which would become subsection (3), and subsection (5), which would become subsection (4). Subsection (2) has already been discussed, so we cannot revisit it. It removes the House of Commons and the House of Lords from schedule 1 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Schedule 1, which is the list of public authorities to which the Bill would apply, would be minus the House of Commons and the House of Lords which, as I said earlier, are an absurdity if they are not public authorities.