My Lords, my noble friend Lord Fox, in his amendment, and other noble Lords in theirs have pointed to the anomaly of ARIA not being subject to the Freedom of Information Act, and it has been a great pleasure listening to the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, quoting Tony Blair with approval—a rare delight.
The Government have put forward a number of weak reasons to justify ARIA not being subject to the FoIA, and the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, raised the first of them, the burden of responding to FoI requests—an extraordinary argument for a body that is going to have a budget of £500 million over the first three years. Many bodies subject to the FoIA have tiny budgets and staff numbers compared with those that ARIA will enjoy.
The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, called it costly, but will it be for ARIA? Interestingly, the noble Lord, Lord Browne, raised a number of questions prompted by the comparison or assertion that the Minister made at Second Reading that, because we do not have to pay for access to freedom of information requests, they will be pouring into ARIA, unlike in the United States. As the noble Lord, Lord Browne, pointed out, actually
the requests to each of the research councils is pretty much on a par with those that are put to DARPA. I do not think that that argument is there either.
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We have heard other assertions. The Minister, Amanda Solloway, said:
“The intention is for ARIA to have a streamlined operating structure, with a small and agile footprint of decision makers”.
If you are spending £500 million of government money, you should have the resources to have proper governance processes. Of course, we have heard the statements of principle. The noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, said that information should be kept private only for good reason. It is well worth going back to general principles. The balance of power between government and citizen is extremely important, but there are good reasons to retain public trust. The noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, made the point about it being counterproductive; it is a risk to the reputation of ARIA if there is no proper FoI accountability.
What is really the difference between this body and UKRI? Not a great deal. I wanted to address some of the points that the noble Lord, Lord Broers, made. There is no question, under FoIA, that ARIA’s research programme could be prejudiced. There are clear exemptions under the Act for research interests—commercial interests, which cover trade secrets, confidential information, information intended for publication, personal information and vexatious requests. It is worth quoting the Justice Select Committee on the Act. In 2012, it said:
“The Freedom of Information Act is a significant enhancement of our democracy … Governments and public authorities can promote greater transparency but, without FOI requests, decisions on what to publish will always lie with those in positions of power. FOI has costs, but it also creates savings which accrue from the disclosure of inappropriate use of public funds or, more importantly, fear of such disclosure”.
We are unashamed supporters of the Freedom of Information Act. As my noble friend Lord Fox said, the Government are equating ARIA with the security services, the National Crime Agency and the Royal Family. It is nowhere near justified that it is in the public interests to do that. If ever I saw a Report stage amendment coming along the track, this is it, and it will be an extremely important debate on Report. I urge the Government to rethink this issue.
The noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, interestingly enough, did not speak to her Amendment 42, but it is all of a piece. I do not think that I need to say much, except to ask why we should not treat ARIA in line with other public bodies. The Government have had to perform contortions of statutory drafting to exclude ARIA. We have all sorts of weird and wonderful amendments coming later, which seems extraordinary. Why on earth should not ARIA be subject to exactly the same procurement regime as other public bodies? The principle that we have talked about on the FoIA is exactly the same as it is in regard to procurement.