Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill

I am concerned about that. The substance of the Bill, although simple in its two propositions, touches on some complex legislation. Everybody accepts that the interrelationship of the Data Protection Act 1998 and the 2000 Act is not entirely straightforward. We therefore need careful responses rather than draconian and simplistic ones. The Bill says that from now on we should have a voluntary regime, while everybody else should have a compulsory regime. That is not justified, given that there has been no serious consideration. There has been no opportunity for colleagues to give evidence. There has been no attempt by the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border or others to collect people’s views. Different views were expressed in the Committee. My hon. Friend the Member for North Devon made it clear that he recognised the concerns about the Bill, but he did not endorse or oppose it, and expressly stated that he was not speaking for the Front Bench. We should deliberate about those concerns in an intelligent and considered way. People can still find it difficult to get information about non-controversial matters, even under the current legislation. I had an e-mail from somebody at a university in the United Kingdom saying that they were finding it difficult to get information about the public and ceremonial role and activities of Speakers for their academic research. If that difficulty exists, we need to examine the problem and ascertain the reason for such difficulty in obtaining information that should not be controversial. That includes not only information about expenses and travel, but anything to do with this place. If we exempt the Commons and the Lords, that means everything to do with our work here. It means the business of all the House Committees, all the functions of the staff and all the things that might be more controversial, such as how we spend public money on the buildings, various improvements and IT systems. All that would suddenly become subject only to voluntary disclosure. That is a serious problem. My next point is important for the outside listeners, viewers and followers of our debates. Members of Parliament are not subject to freedom of information legislation. Our correspondence is secret. If people come to see us as Members of Parliament, we are not public bodies but individual representatives. There is no risk of our releasing that information. We all have on our correspondence something that states that we are acting for people confidentially, and that we hope they will agree that the information occasionally has to be shared with staff and perhaps others in order to help them. People are asked to let us know if there is any difficulty with that. I always offer people the chance to understand. We are not at risk of having information forced out of our offices. The problem is whether information is at risk of falling out of a public authority’s offices, because the current law does not cover that. I therefore want to deal with the proper concerns that the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border expressed—I also heard the hon. Member for Keighley (Mrs. Cryer) on the radio this morning—but according to everything that I have heard and seen, they are not based on evidence of a genuine problem. There is theoretically a problem, but no evidence that problems have arisen.