Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill

I shall speak against the Bill and argue that the House should reject it on Third Reading. I have no complaint against the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (David Maclean), or the fact that he introduced the Bill. I have been in the House marginally longer than he has, although we may both feel that we have been here almost exactly the same time. I understand why he introduced the Bill, but both major parts of it are fundamentally misguided and unjustified. I shall seek to deal with the points that he made in his two brief contributions, and the points that were made in the one hour in Committee. I believe that the Bill was prompted by two things. First, there was a concern among the authorities of the House and some colleagues that questions about matters such as expenses and allowances were too frequent and intrusive. Some colleagues were nervous about that. There were cases that challenged the decisions of the House authorities to be restrictive. The Speaker, the House of Commons Commission and others eventually decided that there would be internal rules requiring us to disclose our travel expenses and so on. That was all to the good, but it was a response to public pressure. Even today—my hon. Friends from Scotland will correct me if I am wrong—we are not subject to nearly as rigorous a discipline as are colleagues in the Scottish Parliament, for example, who legislated two years after we did. We legislated in 2000 and they in 2002.