I want to talk about the issue of FoI. We all knew that this was coming in our discussions; it came up at Second Reading, and it has come up in much of the commentary about this Bill. As the Minister will know, there is serious concern about the Government’s decision not to include ARIA in the freedom of information legislation.
To put it bluntly, we think that ARIA should be subject to freedom of information, and we do not think that the Government have given any good reason or argument to justify the exemption. We think it is unlikely that ARIA would be overwhelmed with requests, as the Government seemed to indicate at Second Reading. As the Minister knows, that is not the situation with the equivalent agency in the United States. There is no reason that we can see why ARIA would be incapable of dealing with FoI requests that came its way.
At this stage, I know that we are all very familiar with the arguments about FoI, and I expect that we have all been in many debates not dissimilar to this, but it is helpful to remind ourselves why freedom of information was introduced 21 years ago. It gives us the right to know about the activities of public authorities, unless there is a good reason for them not to disclose them. This is called a presumption in favour of disclosure, and it is something that we very much support. It means that everybody has the right to access official information, and that disclosure of information should be the default—so information should be kept private only when there is a very good reason. As I say, the Government have not given a good reason to exempt ARIA.
At Second Reading, the Minister said that he was concerned about ARIA being overwhelmed. I do not know why that would be the case. Even if there were sufficient interest to make the burden of FoI substantial, I do not imagine that that will happen. The Minister has not given a reason why that would be a particular problem for ARIA and not for other agencies. It is just not a good enough reason to exempt ARIA from the scheme—the fact that you might get asked a lot of things is no reason to allow yourself not to answer them. If FoI was a burden for ARIA, I am sure that every local authority up and down the country would like to make the same argument for exempting itself. Why should ARIA be treated differently? That is something that the Minister so far has not explained.
I cannot remember who said this at Second Reading; it may have been the Minister who prayed in aid Tony Blair, which is usually not a bad thing to do. But I part company with Tony on this particular issue. As we all know, Tony Blair decided after leaving office that he regretted introducing FoI because, I think he said, it was a nuisance and it disrupts ease of
communication between officials. I do not think there is a Prime Minister now or in the past who would not agree with him. I am sure it is a complete nuisance, but it is important; it is about the balance of power between Governments and their citizens. Tony Blair might feel that way, but that does not mean that the Government are right to keep agencies away from scrutiny. If the Government want to get rid of FoI or change the way in which it works, they should make the case, they should win the argument, and then they should change the law. They should not be attempting to undermine FoI slowly over time by excluding new agencies, which is what I think is happening here. They do not want to have the argument, so they are just leaving out new entities as they emerge.
I should have thought, after everything the Government have experienced in recent weeks, that they would be falling over themselves to show the country that they welcome scrutiny and want to be transparent. Last week, the Minister accused me of being opportunistic in making that argument. I stand by my assurance to him that that is not the case. This is done out of a will to see ARIA succeed. I could stand here and make a very long speech about all the problems the Government have had through lack of transparency, but I will not do that. I want ARIA to succeed, but I think that without some measure—whether it is FoI or some of the other measures that the Minister dismissed last week—there needs to be some measure by which that transparency, scrutiny, oversight or whatever you want to call it can take place, either via Parliament or via FoI.
I am sure that we will come back to this at Report. The Government have declined every suggestion that we have made on this issue so far. That is a shame, and I just hope that they reconsider their stance on this.