Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill

I agree. This House in its wisdom decided to go around the sort of problems that the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border has identified in a different way—to lock together the data protection legislation and the freedom of information legislation and so deal with sensitive and difficult areas of confidentiality and related issues. We could have chosen to make a blanket exemption for Parliament, as some other countries have done for their parliamentary bodies, or to adopt the route that we took—both are perfectly comprehensible and in many ways effective. We chose one way, but now, with this Bill—29 lines of legislation—the right hon. Gentleman is throwing away all our consideration over some 20 years.