Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill

I share that view. It was realised that there were proper limits to what people should be entitled to know. An example, now much quoted, given by my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Nick Harvey) in Committee, was that people should not be entitled to know, just because we are MPs, how many bedrooms we have in our houses, who sleeps in which bedroom, or how much we spent on the kitchen extension in our private residence. There are proper limits, but it is not proper to bar people from knowing how much public money we claim to travel between the House and our constituencies, and similar information. The right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border agrees with that. The difficulty with his case, which he understands, is that by proposing that the Commons and the Lords be taken out of the scope of the legislation¸ the Bill would make the disclosure of such information entirely voluntary in both Houses. We alone would decide what we disclosed, and be subject to no external monitoring. There are places in the world where that position is taken. There is a debate going on in New Zealand about that very issue. It is strongly argued that the New Zealand Parliament should do as we are doing by keeping the present position and not changing it to exempt Parliament from that arrangement. There is no doubt about the fact that there would be a regime in place, but the difficulty with the argument put by the right hon. Gentleman and those who support the Bill is that it is impossible to say that we should be trusted to look after ourselves, but that councils, the Welsh Assembly, the armed services and all other public agencies cannot be trusted. Like other hon. Members, I look regularly at the Ipsos MORI surveys. I am proud that the company is based in my constituency. This House and Parliament do not come at the top of the league table of trusted institutions, and by and large are far less well trusted than many other bodies. That is the right hon. Gentleman’s difficulty. He says that because we are Parliament, we should be subject to a different regime. The good words of Parliament will not persuade the public, and reversing, on the basis of no serious consideration, a step that we took only two and a half years ago will in no way enhance our credibility. I want to pick up a point made by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Mark Fisher). It is right to say, as the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border argued, that when the Bill first came to Parliament it was not intended that the Commons and the Lords should be included, but one of our Select Committees came strongly to the view that we should be included. It recommended that to the Labour Government of the day, and the then Home Secretary, who is now Leader of the House, accepted it. The reason why the proposal was not significantly debated was that it commanded support across the Committee, after due scrutiny, and from the Government, after due consideration. The Government now say that they are neutral. There are reports in the press that there are strong divergences of view in the Government. It is suggested that the Lord Chancellor, the head of the Ministry of Justice, has one view, and that other people have another; I know not. There has been no scrutiny and no chance for either House to consider these issues in a Committee. There is a case for doing so. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon and others, who have said that there is a debate to be had. Had those of us who were here spotted the Bill on the day that it was first listed on the Order Paper, and had we thought that it would not be opposed by the Government Whips, who usually oppose Back-Bench Bills almost without exception, particularly those that are not introduced by members of their party, we would of course have objected to it at that stage. However, the fact that we did not have that opportunity for debate does not make up for the fact that no Committee has been looking at it—