UK Parliament / Open data

Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill

We all know that Third Reading debates are narrowly curtailed, and I cannot return to amendments that were dealt with hours ago. I point out to the hon. Lady that I spoke at length in Committee—probably for longer than 15 minutes—and dealt with the various issues. The Bill was on the Order Paper for weeks. I suspect that there are some colleagues in the House today with a guilty conscience who are trying to pad out the Bill because they were negligent in not opposing it on Second Reading. It could easily have been stopped on Second Reading if any Member had wanted to do so, but it got an unopposed Second Reading and unanimous support in Committee upstairs. I explained and justified it then. I heard hon. Members—not of my party—make some very telling points. They said that they were dealing with a complex immigration case, and that there were demands from some third parties, whom they thought were representatives of the British National party, to access the files. We cannot have a situation where such information could get into the public domain.
Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
460 c914 
Session
2006-07
Chamber / Committee
House of Commons chamber
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