Localism Bill

I am extremely grateful to everyone who has spoken in what has been a not particularly lengthy but very revealing debate. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord True, for his contribution. It reminded everybody of the battles that still need to be fought for the public to get the mechanisms that they need to hold those who serve them properly to account. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, for although I think he disagreed with the wording of my amendments—I have always made it clear that I am very happy for them to be revised—I detected a sympathy towards the general thrust of them. I hope I am not wrong in that. I join him in paying tribute to the Minister as he has a very honourable, long and splendid record in campaigning for transparency and freedom of information. Any criticism I might be about to make does not reflect on him personally. He has a very long and honourable record in this field. I agree with him. This bit of legislation will benefit, I am absolutely confident, from post-legislative scrutiny. Post-legislative scrutiny was a very welcome constitutional innovation brought in by the previous Government. I am wholly in favour of it and I think this legislation, as all legislation, will benefit from it. I agree with him on that but there I am afraid our agreement ends. I ask him to look at Hansard tomorrow to see what I actually said about the record of this Government. I did not say they had done nothing. I said they had done nothing that they had not inherited from initiatives taken by the previous Government. Everything he has mentioned was set in train by the previous Government. In the coalition agreement they said they would increase transparency. I take that as going beyond what the previous Government did. That is where, I am afraid, I was very disappointed in the Minister’s response. In all sorts of other areas of constitutional legislation which we have debated at great length in this House they have rushed it through with great vigour and energy brushing aside, getting all their ducks in a row and all those other metaphors the Minister brought out just now. There has been none of that. It was so urgent and so important it had to be ramrodded through Parliament at great speed with consequences we are going to suffer from for a very long time. Why is transparency for this Government so much less important than all those other constitutional measures? In my view it should be even more important and the Government are showing absolutely no urgency in this field. If this Bill simply left the situation as it was I could perhaps sit down now and say, ““Oh well, give the Minister a bit more time to see what happens””, but it does not. When this Bill goes through, as it will, if it works as intended, and I am sure it will more or less, it will not leave things as they are. It will decrease, perhaps significantly, the scope of the Freedom of Information Act. The people we serve, the voters and taxpayers, will suddenly find they cannot get information they think they have a right to know because suddenly great swathes of services will be removed from their right to know. That cannot be right. The Minister said they will do it when they get they get their ducks in a row and all the rest of it—some time, never. He cannot even commit to coming back at Third Reading—