House of Commons Hansard Debates for 19 Feb 1993

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industry, our geography and the requirements of our citizens. That would be done within the context of Britain's being a member of the European Community.

The way in which the matter is tackled in the private sector is crucial because many companies operate in Europe anyway. I shall give three or four examples later in my speech. The Government and everyone else face a great dilemma in examining information issues. The Government face a dilemma in seeking to opt out of the social chapter. Some British companies seek to defend that Government aim, but they are happy to operate the social chapter provisions in their subsidiaries in France and Germany and other parts of Europe. The issue will not go away and, inevitably, those of us who seek reform will win. We would rather win while we are around than when we have shuffled off from this place, which some of my hon. Friends will not do for a long time. We accept that the Bill is a blockbuster. That is because it is being presented on our annual opportunity in the ballot. The Bill has been amended and nurtured and has been subject to consultations for almost a decade, ever since Clement Freud's Bill entered Committee as a result of the Lib-Lab pact in 1978.

The Bill has not appeared from nowhere. There has been an enormous amount of consultation. The Minister cannot simply dismiss that in a few throwaway lines by saying that the Bill is complicated. No matter which Government legislate in this area, the framework of the legislation will be as set out in the Bill and those that have preceded it.

I shall give about half a dozen examples of companies that have been prosecuted and have not made reference to it in their annual reports. [Interruption.] I said earlier that I would give three or four examples. I am sorry that it has risen to half a dozen. British Coal makes no reference in its annual report in early 1990 to nine pollution convictions and fines of over £7,000, although the company makes nice noises in the annual report about its environmental concerns. Guinness makes no reference to health, safety or the environment in its 1990 annual report, or to the fact that one of its subsidiaries was fined £12,000 for safety offences. Water companies are the worst offenders in the litany of companies that are prosecuted for environmental damage but then do not mention that in their annual reports.

One test shows that there has been some impact. ICI's annual report for 1990 devotes four pages to the environment, setting out objectives with lots of nice words about placing

"the highest priority on the safety and health of its employers, its customers and the general public."

There is no mention of the £100,000 fine imposed for inadequate supervision after two workers were killed by an explosion, or of another case that led to a £250,000 fine when an explosives van burst into flames, killing a fireman and injuring 100 people. The vehicle was carrying 8,000 fuse heads, 16 times the number that it should have held, in a rusty tin. In its subsequent annual report, ICI has started detailing some of its misdeeds, and that is much to its credit. I am informed that it has done so as a direct result of the publicity over a year ago, and the campaign centred on getting companies to disclose such information. That is a plus for ICI. I could cite examples from both British Aerospace and British Airways, but I shall give just one from the latter. It was fined £3, 000 in June 1990 after a mechanic was

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paralysed from the waist down after falling 20 ft to the floor of a hangar at Gatwick. No reference to that incident or to health, safety or the environment is made in its annual report.

Subsidiary companies of Hanson plc were convicted of water pollution offences six times during the financial year, the main offender being ARC Ltd. The 1991 annual report makes no reference to this and states that caring for the environment is

"fundamental to our philosophy and good management practice." I could have listed three or four dozen blue chip companies that produce glossy annual reports and glossy reports for their shareholders but skate over the company's real environmental record. Such practices do a disservice to a company. They show that at the top level it is not elevating safety, environment, the advances of technology and the way in which they can impinge on the people who live around the plant. We have to bring home to companies the seriousness of the situation. One way to do that is to have legislation that requires them to do no more than list what has happened in their annual report. That means no new safety audit and no extra cost, just a collating of information in a single source. I have concentrated on that aspect of the Bill because I am a great believer in not repeating what has already been said, and I agree 100 per cent. with all that my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central said. I sincerely hope that there will be no attempt to refuse the Bill a Second Reading because, if ever a Bill justified scrutiny one Wednesday morning a week until the summer, it is this one.

11.22 am

Sir John Wheeler (Westminster, North) : I am always glad to follow the hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker). I enjoyed his contribution, while not agreeing altogether with every part of it. When he spoke of abandoning the House's ultimate sovereignty over the issue, I felt that he was going too far, but then I am something of a high Tory, albeit with liberal tendencies. I also enjoyed the introductory speech of the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Mr. Fisher) and the speech of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy. As predicted, my right hon. Friend was sweetness and reason, fluent and persuasive.

Although, like my right hon. Friend and other hon. Friends, I support the broad aims of the Bill, I am afraid that I cannot support the means by which it proposes to achieve them. No one doubts the key role that access to information plays in informing the lives of our citizens. Without information, no one can make constructive decisions or competent judgments, and no one can be confident in the choices that he makes. I, too, chide Labour Members, because it is curious that a Right to Know Bill should come from a party from which we hear constant criticism of the great leaps forward that the Government have made in dramatically increasing the amount of information available.

For example, there was an outcry from the Labour party when the Government announced, as part of the broader citizens charter measure, that parents were to have the right to know how well the schools their children attend were performing. What can be more important than our children's education? All parents should be free to

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choose the best schools for their children, but to do so, they need that vital information. How else can they judge one school against another? However, when the Government acted to make widely available information that has a direct practical effect on the future of everyone in every generation, all that we heard from those on the Labour Benches were indignant cries that the information should be kept secret. Perhaps they would have us believe that parents are not capable of interpreting and using that information. That is patronising. Do they have such little trust in the individual? I can and will give further examples of practical and effective measures that have been taken in recent years to improve access to information of all sorts. These will demonstrate the extent to which the Government have already gone to create a more open and more informed society. First, I want to explain why I do not believe that the Bill is the correct way to go about providing greater access to information.

Every state, institution and organisation has information that must be kept confidential. No one can deny that. The question is, where do we draw the line between what is genuinely confidential and what is not? Currently, although much information is freely available, a sizeable block is classified as confidential. I think that we all share the wish that that block should be as small as possible while protecting the security of the state or any particular organisation--I welcome what my right hon. Friend said about that.

The point at which I part company with the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central is how we reach the right balance. I believe that we should reform what already exists, examine the areas of information already kept confidential and redefine more of them for the public domain.

The Bill takes totally the opposite stance. It would abolish what has developed over many years and start from scratch ; have everything in the open and then select what is to be classified as secret. That is a radical, bold and dangerous proposal. The risks are very high. The Bill, in a stroke, wipes out all the accumulated experience and convention on public and private information that has developed over many many years. As the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central has made clear, the Bill would stand on its head the present system of access to information. All information will be available unless it is specifically exempt. That represents a giant leap into untried and untested waters, which are fraught with dangers and from which, once this course has been taken, there is no going back. I firmly believe that, with such an important move, we should put our trust in the tried and tested, as opposed to the theoretical and unproved. Rolling change is a more certain recipe for a sustained progression than the tumult of speculative and revolutionary change. Conservatives--at least, Conservatives like me--have always believed in a society that is evolutionary--evolutionary, not static. Indeed, it was Edmund Burke who said

"a state without the means of some change is without the means of its own conservation".

Changed circumstances and changing priorities produce specific problems and certain pressures. That is one benefit of not having a written constitution --a privilege which the United Kingdom shares with the dominion of New Zealand and the state of Israel. The answer is not wholesale change but targeted reform.

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Reforms are required that conserve and develop, not muddle and potentially destroy. The way forward is for specific items of legislation to allow a recognised problem in any one area to be dealt with quickly and effectively. A generalised and cumbersome measure such as the Bill offers no such prospect or guarantee.

I cite recent Government actions to illustrate my point. The hon. Gentleman said that Britain is criticised for having a closed government which is secret and impenetrable, but the result of Government measures in recent years is more open government now than ever before. There may be a case for going further, but it cannot be denied that we have gone further than ever before in increasing the amount of information to which access is provided for by law.

Mr. Richard Shepherd : The familiarity of my right hon. Friend's speech commends it. If one considers our historic arrangements, one sees that secrecy is a 20th-century tendency. Until the introduction of the first Official Secrets Act--the first was attempted in the latter part of the 19th century--the concept was essentially one of open government. Members of Parliament and Ministers expected all information available to the state to be available to themselves. Secrecy is a 20th-century phenomenon to the extent that my right hon. Friend is identifying it. It is not the custom of our history to exercise the secrecy that my right hon. Friend contends is the practice.

Sir John Wheeler : There is a danger of two historians battling together on this issue. I invite my hon. Friend to consider the extent to which, at the time of the peninsular war, the Government of the day kept secret much of their international dealing, and perhaps to revise his broad opinion.

Mr. Waldegrave : I was going to mention the treaty of Dover. Recently, a piece of paper arrived on my desk that has been secret since 1792, so these issues are not quite so modern as my right hon. Friend thinks.

Sir John Wheeler : My right hon. Friend makes a point that serves to illustrate my case. I look forward to the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd).

I return to the theme of progressive openness. The Data Protection Act 1984 gives individuals rights of access to information on them that is held on computers. We debated some aspects of that--such as whether the manila envelopes and other means of recording information should be included. The Local Government (Access to Information) Act 1985--a welcome development-- gives rights of access to local authority meetings, documents and records. Regulations made under the Personal Files Act 1987, which came into effect on 1 April 1989, give individuals the right of access to manual records of information about themselves held by local authorities for the purpose of housing and society services.

The volume of material published regularly by Government Departments and the agencies and industries they sponsor vastly exceeds that published in the 1970s. It varies from the release of inspection reports by Her

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Majesty's inspector of schools to the annual publication of full and accurate records on the production of plutonium from all United Kingdom civil reactors.

Much of the information that people need and desire, and which the Bill is aimed at, is already publicly available. There is no doubt that the Government were more open and accessible at the beginning of the 1990s than they were at the beginning of the 1980s. Those moves in specific and targeted areas are far more effective than the Bill's blanket provisions.

The Bill would result in the repeal of the Official Secrets Act 1989.

Mr. Richard Shepherd : Hooray.

Sir John Wheeler : Indeed, but that Act demonstrates the strength of the Conservative approach. Section 2 of the earlier Act was much maligned-- with some justification, I agree. No one said that the Act was perfect, but it had some proven strengths that benefited the country as a whole. The Bill would sweep away the whole Act and replace it with a completely new, untested concept.

The Government have built on the 1989 Act, retaining its good points and refining its bad. Despite the critical noises made at the time, the 1989 Act has not given rise to any prosecutions or to any accusations of muzzling. Obviously, a good balance has been struck. It is not just new legislation that brings about change. Much depends on political culture. What is the point of such a Bill if the public do not want or are not encouraged to seek and use information? That culture cannot be imposed from above, but must be allowed to develop at its own speed, over time. A culture forced on people is a culture that has no firm foundations. The Government's action is far more important and effective than the Bill's proposals.

Over the past 13 years, the Government have encouraged the development of a society that seeks choice and whose members demand independence to make decisions about their own lives. As a result, more and more people are actively seeking information on issues that directly affect them. It is that pressure and demand for meaningful information as a tool for the individual to develop which is so important.

The positive change in our political culture cannot be achieved simply by legislation of this nature. The process is much deeper. It is necessary, as the Government have done, to encourage people to think hard about the information they really want and need, which will be of practical use. Much of that information may not be readily available in a helpful form, and we must make sure that it is. My right hon. Friend's citizens charters are a move in that direction. I reiterate my earlier comment about school examination results and the way in which that information has been compiled specifically to guide parental choice.

No one can argue against today's greater availability of information that this Government, more than any other, have brought about. For the first time, we have a Government who have set in motion a new political culture that demands the release of more and more information. Given the record of this Government, I am sure that that will happen.

We must remember, however, that, in every state and organisation, much information is highly confidential. No one denies that information is hidden that should not be hidden, but the way to deal with it is not to discard a

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basically sound system developed over time-- the risks are too great. The correct way is to develop the culture we have, build on its strengths and reform its weaknesses. That is the way to meet the demands of the people while being responsible with the confidences of the state.

The Bill approaches the problem from the wrong end. It throws away years of practical experience and puts at risk necessary confidences. The Bill is extremely long, with no fewer than 83 clauses, and is far too complex. It poses a number of practical difficulties and would involve excessive legalism and bureaucracy, at great cost. We have heard some figures-- £20 million, for example ; my right hon. Friend mentioned £50 million--and we have heard comparisons with other countries. The mistake is that the Commonwealth of Australia, the dominion of Canada and the United States of America are confederations. They have many legislatures at work and many administrations. The real costs are huge. I would want to know the full impact of those costs before going down that road.

It is far better that we support and foster the culture of more open government and build on the strengths established by experience. That is the way forward, and that is why the Bill should not be supported.

11.40 am

Mr. Don Foster (Bath) : I am delighted to be called to speak in this important debate on a Bill which, I assure the House, has my full support.

Like many other hon. Members, I believe that freedom of information is at the heart of a modern democracy. I congratulate the hon. Member for Stoke- on-Trent, Central (Mr. Fisher) on getting his Bill to this stage. I hope that it will not suffer the same fate as so many other Bills on this subject. Notwithstanding the charm of the Minister and the eloquence of his speech, I fear that there is little chance of the Bill's receiving his support.

I hope that I do not do the right hon. Member for Westminster, North (Sir J. Wheeler) an injustice by suggesting that there is little chance of his supporting the Bill, even at this stage. I understood him to be saying that, if the Government, in their infinite and great wisdom, decide to give the people of this country more and more choice, then, and only then, will people need more and more information to help them make choices and that, therefore, in due course, the Government should make that information available to them. He said that the Bill approached the issue from the wrong end. I believe that he approached the Bill from the wrong end, and that his speech was contrary to the spirit of the Bill.

I am pleased to support the Bill, not only because I believe strongly in the importance of freedom of information as a right, but because I know that many of my constituents support the Bill. Many hon. Members will know that, as part of its nationwide campaign, Charter 88, with the welcome help of the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, has encouraged thousands of people to send postcards and letters in support of the Bill to their Members of Parliament. I am delighted to tell the House that Charter 88 informs me that I received more cards and letters than any other Member of Parliament.

Hundreds of my constituents want the Bill to succeed, and so do I. I congratulate Charter 88 and the many other

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organisations involved in the Campaign for Freedom of Information on their work in helping to boost my postbag. I do not think that my secretary shares that opinion.

The Minister referred to the large number of letters and cards that he has received, and I am sure that he was delighted to receive that correspondence, because he will be aware that the Prime Minister wrote in the introduction to "Britain in Europe" :

"Debate needs information as Fuel".

The Prime Minister put his name to his party's election manifesto, which said :

"Government has traditionally been far too reluctant to provide information".

If the Minister supports the Bill today and in Committee, he will be one of the Ministers who have got it right for the Prime Minister.

There are numerous reasons why the Minister and Conservative Members should support the Bill. The most important for them is that the Bill's proposals go with the grain of Conservative party policy and thinking. The Bill is entirely consistent with the Government's stated desire to create a culture that enables society to become at ease with itself. It is consistent with the citizens charter and the charters that have followed it, and with the Conservative party manifesto at the last election.

All political parties, including mine, must begin to address themselves to adapting our political institutions and arrangements for the future. We need to concern ourselves with the growing dislocation between politicains and the people. Reference has been made to the tarnished image of politicians. In this country and, sadly, in many others, people are beginning to lose faith in their politicians, and even beginning to mistrust them.

In the past few months, the way in which Britain has been run has come under considerable fire. Many people have questioned the public values that underpin governance in this country and serious questions have been asked about the institutions of government--about the judiciary and legal system, about the monarchy and its role and about the motives of Parliament and the accountability of the Executive to the House and the people. That dislocation is a real problem and a solution is urgently required.

The Bill could form part of a series of measures that would help to reunite Parliament and the people. Following its successful passage, I hope that we shall consider a Bill of Rights, a fair voting system, greater devolution of power and, above all, a written constitution. The Bill would provide a valuable starting point for the constitutional reforms that my colleagues and I would like. Like the hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker), I congratulate the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central on the title of the Bill. The hon. Member for Perry Barr referred to the way in which the title of the Bill places emphasis on the rights of people. People from all walks of life and of all political sympathies believe that there should be a legal right to information, and that openness of government should be the norm and secrecy the exception. Sadly, that was not the point that the right hon. Member for Westminster, North was making.

People should have the right to give the Government permission to keep things secret when appropriate, rather than the Government allowing the people to know only what Government want them to know. That is not a novel view. The Minister said that he had looked back over

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speeches in the House. The hon. Member for Perry Barr has looked back not only at speeches in the House but to the file of speeches that he has made on the subject.

Earlier debates sometimes reveal interesting nuggets of information. One that attracted my attention was the view expressed in 1945 by Herbert Morrison when he was Lord President of the Council :

"It is the right and indeed the duty of the Government to inform the public of the facts necessary for the full understanding of its actions and its decisions It is in the national interest that the citizen and taxpayer should be adequately informed by the Government on its administration and policy."

He concluded :

"The people have a right to know'."

That quotation was used in an earlier debate by the former Member for Isle of Ely when he introduced his Official Information Bill on 19 January 1979. He pointed out that there was an irony in Mr. Morrison's remarks, because the quotation was to be found in a memorandum marked "Secret" with the warning : "This is the property of His Majesty's Government". Fifty years later, things have not changed very much.

In a debate such as this, it is very tempting to follow what, looking back through the speeches, has become the tradition of telling one's favourite stories.

Mr. Bowis : I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. He referred to Clement Freud's Bill, which, as has been said, was the result of the Lib-Lab pact. We know that, despite that pact, the then Home Secretary declined to support the Bill. As a gesture of openness and in support of freedom of information, is the hon. Gentleman able to release the papers on the discussions between his party and the Labour party?

Mr. Foster : I am not at all grateful for that intervention, but if the hon. Gentleman would like to have a private chat with me afterwards, perhaps we can discuss the matter further.

I was referring to the legislation proposed by Clement Freud. In his speech, as in many subsequent speeches, it has been the tradition to lace one's remarks with favourite stories and ridiculous examples of secrecy and failure to provide information. The hon. Member for Perry Barr related some illuminating stories. I shall avoid the temptation to list my favourites, but I wish to make two points. The Minister mentioned many pieces of information that were currently secret but were gradually being made available. I pay tribute to the Government for their moves in that direction. I hope that one piece of information that may shortly be made available relates to the background of the nuclear tests that were carried out in the 1950s on Christmas Island. The Minister will be aware that, although some of that information was expected to become available at the end of the 30-year rule, some has not been made public, which makes it very difficult for victims of the tests to pursue compensation claims.

Mr. David Alton (Liverpool, Mossley Hill) : Is my hon. Friend aware that, as long ago as 1954, the Grigg committee report recommended that there should be more openness with regard to files affecting test victims and veterans, and that the Public Records Act 1958 has regularly been used to stop the publication of such

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information? The nuclear test victims have therefore been denied the opportunity to go to court, which is a good example of why the Bill would be so helpful to such people.

Mr. Foster : I am grateful for my hon. Friend's intervention. It is an important point and highlights another matter of interest, which is that Greece has freedom of information legislation under which such information becomes available.

It is tempting to reflect that many of the Government's difficulties in relation to Matrix Churchill, the miners' debacle or, more recently, the problems with the social chapter, might not have occurred had the Bill been in place. Sherlock Holmes might perhaps have called the latter example "The Curious Case of the Conflicting Legal Advice." I and my party believe that it is absolutely disgraceful that, following the U-turn at the beginning of the week on the social chapter and the Maastricht treaty, the Government will not publish the Law Officers' advice or that of the Foreign and Commonwealth legal advisers.

The House may be aware that, only today, my right hon. Friend the leader of the Liberal Democrats has published a further legal opinion on that issue from Anthony Lester QC. That opinion reaches a wholly different conclusion from that given by the Law Officers. The important point is that that opinion has been made public. I urge the Government to do likewise and to remove the present state of uncertainty about the implications of amendment No. 27 under Community and United Kingdom constitutional law.

Surely the time has come to remove what the chairman of the Bar Council, Lord Williams of Mostyn, has called

"the curse of obsessive secrecy that riddles our country". If one checks through the records of the House, one finds that, notwithstanding some notable successes in relation to, for example, local government information, medical reports and data protection, the major breakthrough has not yet been realised.

I have already referred to some of the efforts of the former Liberal Member of Parliament, Sir Clement Freud, which failed. My right hon. Friend the Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale (Sir D. Steel) had a go in 1984, and he also failed.

My hon. Friend the Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Mr. Kirkwood) had some success, but his Freedom of Information Bill failed to get a Second Reading last year. At least he has the satisfaction of knowing that a major part of this Bill is based on his earlier work, but I am sure that he would be the first to acknowledge that the scope of the Bill is wider than that of his proposals, and rightly so. My right hon. and hon. Friends were not alone in proposing such legislation. Many other hon. Members had a go but failed.

The Bill must not and should not fail. It must be allowed to pass today's hurdle, but should not then be allowed to wither on the vine in Committee, as some of its predecessors have done, or to fail for minor technical drafting errors. The Bill's failure on any of those counts would merely serve to show once more the way in which our arcane and creaking institutions fail to meet not only the wishes of members of all parties but, more importantly, those of the people. Two years ago, a MORI poll showed that 77 per cent. of people favoured freedom of information legislation. The postcards and letters to which I have referred show that the wish is as strong today as it was then. The nation

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wants the proposals enacted, and the reason is clear. The director of the Campaign for Freedom of Information, to whom I also pay tribute, recently wrote to the Minister :

"The Government has said that it is committed to greater openness and we welcome this. Creating, through legislation, a general right of access to information would therefore be a logical step for the government. Without information, we cannot make judgments. If we cannot judge, we cannot make real choices. And if we cannot make informed choices, we cannot be effective citizens."

It is not good enough for the Government to suggest that, in due course, as the Minister said, they will introduce their own proposals to increase the information that they decide to make available to the House, to my constituents in Bath and to the country.

Mr. Fisher : Perhaps I could help Conservative Members to make an informed choice. The hon. Gentleman referred to the MORI poll. He will have noted that 74 per cent. of Conservative voters were in favour of legislating for freedom of information. Indeed, it is the Conservative Administrations in Canada, Australia and New Zealand who have introduced such legislation, so Conservative Members should not be shy or nervous about plunging rather than paddling in the water. Perhaps that information will help them to make an informed choice.

Mr. Foster : I also hope that Conservative Members will not paddle but will jump in to support the Bill.

The people of this country have a right to know, which is why I and many other hon. Members, at least among the Opposition parties, urge the House to give the Bill a Second Reading.

11.59 am

Mr. Richard Shepherd (Aldridge-Brownhills) : I also congratulate the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Mr. Fisher) on introducing the Bill. It has a familiar ring and there is a feeling that we are cantering round old courses. It is appropriate that we should do so. I accept the view that big principles should sometimes be tested. We have certainly had a lot of testing of this issue. The impetus behind most of the passion on the issue is the 20th century habit of legislating to deny us rights of access to information. I return, therefore, to the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Westminster, North (Sir J. Wheeler). He sees the 18th and 19th centuries differently from the way in which I see them. I think of Pope who wrote :

"How can we reason but from what we know?"

I think of our political philosophers, of the American revolution and of the struggles of Madison and Jefferson about the concept of popular democracy, and about how one involves and informs people. I then think of the miserable argument adduced by what I am now told is the high Tory school. "High" in the sense of high Tory is not "high" in the sense of high Church or of high days and holidays. It is "high" in the sense of a bad smell. I shall come in a moment to what I call the low Tory view, which is representative of the party and of the country, if not of Whitehall or of those presently in the Government, I regret to say.

Mrs. Roche : I am glad that the hon. Gentleman mentioned James Madison, who wrote :

"A popular government, without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy or perhaps both."

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I invite the hon. Gentleman to ally himself to those sentiments, which I am sure that he will happily do.

Mr. Shepherd : Like every British schoolboy, I have a library of quotations. The joy of our language and the romance of our history has been to knock down arguments such as those put by my right hon. Friend the Member for Westminster, North, and those we heard, expressed far more eloquently and elegantly, from my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. I am sorry that he could not be here for this exchange.

My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster gave an elegant explanation to which we have not been treated in the 14 years in which I have been a Member of Parliament. I want to test my right hon. Friend's view because there is an automatic quality to these debates. What is the central issue? I hope that I misquote my right hon. Friend. He seemed to say that there were some things that should not be left to the House. That is the most remarkable assertion and must be predicated--I hope that I do not

misunderstand--on prerogative power.

Even I believe that prerogative power can be brought to heel by legislation in the House. We shall come in the next few weeks to the matters touched on by the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster). Much of our freedom and liberty is no longer dispensed by the House ; it is secured for us by the courts. Public immunity certificates were absolute fiats from Government until 22 years ago. It was the judges who said, "Enough of this nonsense." In the debate on legal advice on Maastricht, we may end up with a judicial review.

Sir John Wheeler : Prerogative power is real and actual in this country. Only the elected Government of the day, through the medium of the sovereign, can agree on and make treaties with other countries. It is for the House to challenge, to examine and to test Ministers' concepts.

Mr. Shepherd : I enjoy the batting back and forth about the reality of the position. I, too, am going to make an assertion. I assert that legislative power gainsays prerogative power. That is our history, our convention and the law. If the House decided to take away from Government the discretion to negotiate and to ratify treaties, it could do so. That is the constitutional position. I further make the assertion that Parliament, the representative of the people, determines the laws under which we live. That is a sacred trust and is essential to the argument.

The high Tory position, elegantly read, I concede, by my right hon. Friend the Member for Westminster, North, is essentially that information is the gift of the high Tories. If they decide in certain circumstances that it is right to empower citizens to know, for example, about their medical records, they may make that concession. However, the high Tories say, "The discretion must be with us--with central Government." I thought that that was the most powerful bid made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Westminster, North for the chairmanship of the Committee that is to review the Security Service when it is set up some time next year. I saw the positioning and I understood it.

The substance of the issue is who should hold the right to the release of information. I accept the Madisonian and Jeffersonian position. I believe that we have constructed a civil society--a political society--in which power resides

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with the people. I invoke not Burke, but Churchill on the sovereignty of the people. Churchill said that the people were sovereign. If that is the case, why do we deny them access to equality of information?

I have come to see over the years that, by and large, the Government and Ministers do not fear opinion. I can rant on as long as I like ; after all, I am only expressing an opinion. The real fear is about equality of argument. If we are given common access to common facts, my goodness, the argument might not go the way in which the high Tories believe that it should. As the high Tories believe that their view is right, the low Tory view must be cast aside. I believe that we must have that equality.

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