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Freedom of Information
12.58 pm
Mr. Norman Baker (Lewes): I am delighted to have the opportunity to raise the topic of freedom of information in the first debate on the subject in the new Parliament. It is an extremely important matter--the foundation on which the rest of our democracy is built.
Governments have so much power over ordinary people's lives. They have the wealth of the civil service, the expertise of legislators, access to whatever information they want, a public budget to sell their ideas and guaranteed exposure in the media--all to ensure that Britain is painted as they wish it to be.
What is the counter-balance to all that power? There is one fundamental prerequisite: access to information--the opportunity for individuals to check what Governments are telling them, to tap into alternative sources of information and to weigh up the arguments. How can ordinary people challenge the Government if they cannot find out what the Government are doing? The press cannot function properly without information, not even Matthew Parris, whom I thank for his surprising level of interest in my activities and to whom I apologise for the fact that I am again in the House representing my constituents rather than being wherever he thinks a Member of Parliament should be.
Over the years, successive Governments in this country have found attraction in shadows and solace in darkness. In many ways we have a less open society than anywhere else in the west. In the United Kingdom the presumption has been that everything should be secret unless a reason is produced for making it public, whereas the presumption should be that everything is open unless someone decides that it needs to be secret.
I am not advocating the publication of every Government document. Of course some matters must remain secret--sensitive diplomatic correspondence, matters affecting national security, much advice to Ministers--but surely we can open things up without bringing the house crashing down?
Some of the matters held as closed files are beyond belief. I refer hon. Members to an article in the Observer a while back, entitled "Secrets the state dare not tell", which lists some of the files of which we are allowed to know the title but not the contents. They include the following matters of national security: taxi drivers carrying fares without depressing flag 1935-1952; police fees for surgeons 1926-1953; dangerous driving conditions at humpback bridge in Beckenham road, London 1935-1951.
That article is now a few years old, but I have seen no evidence that the previous Government did anything to speed up the release of files, so I would not be surprised if those were still closed. Perhaps the Minister could find out. I find it difficult to believe that there was ever anything in those files that merited them being closed, but the presumption for secrecy meant that they were marked as closed, and remain so to this day for all I know.
Then there are the parliamentary questions to which I have received answers in respect of records held but not released for public inspection. The Public Record Office tells me that the oldest document it holds dates from 1873 on the grounds of commercial sensitivity. It is difficult to
imagine how that can be justified. As those records are land records, I would argue that who owns what should be public anyway, as I believe it is in Scotland, although I stand to be corrected. Surely any values attached to the transactions are now irrelevant.
The Home Office holds files going back to 1876, as another parliamentary answer this week revealed. To his credit, the Home Secretary promised in his answer to review matters since I had drawn them to his attention.
Other examples of information being concealed are more serious. Why has so much manufacturers' data on pesticides been kept secret in the UK on grounds of commercial sensitivity, when such information is freely available in the United States? When tests were carried out on cows with the artificial hormone BST, the milk from those cows was collected and sold, and we, the public, were not allowed to know from which farms the milk had come. Why were we not told until recently? I acknowledge a step forward by the new Government, who revealed that radioactive material had regularly been dumped in the sea between Scotland and Ireland.
Mr. Paul Keetch (Hereford):
Does my hon. Friend agree that the Labour party was rightly critical of the previous Administration for hiding behind the old lies that information was not centrally held and could be found only at disproportionate cost? Is he aware that the new Government are trotting out the same excuses? In answer to me yesterday at column 408 of Hansard on specified bovine material, the same excuses were used. If we are to have true freedom of information, the Government must be prepared to find out the information and make it available.
Mr. Baker:
My hon. Friend is right. Some of the answers that we have received so far have been in the same furrow as answers from the previous Government. I hope that that is a reflection of the fact that Ministers have yet to get hold of their brief. I shall cite further instances.
More controversially, we must try to be more open about matters that have been shrouded in secrecy. Until recently, Governments would not even admit that MI5 and MI6 existed, but Stella Rimington, the first publicly named head of MI5, showed that light can be shed even on that sensitive area without compromising national security. I hope that the Government will build on the example she set in that and similar areas.
I shall be interested to see, for example, the responses that I get next week from the Secretary of State for Defence to the questions that I have tabled about RAF Menwith Hill. We are entitled to know the basis of the arrangement between the Americans and ourselves for that base, and to an assurance that all is within the law and in the British national interest. Beyond that, there must be secrecy for operational matters, although I hope that even those will be the subject of public consideration in future.
I raise the matter in general because I believe that it is important, but there is another reason why today's debate is opportune. We must try to establish clearly what the Government's position is. At present it is not clear, and I shall explain why.
The Labour party has long been committed to a freedom of information Act, and produced a Green Paper on the subject as long ago as 1979. We have been told
that such an Act is crucial, yet no such Bill appeared in the list of legislation for this Parliament. Why not? When I asked the Prime Minister, he told me in a written answer that he wanted to consult. Elsewhere I have heard it said that no Bill is ready. What nonsense that is.
A great deal of work has been done on potential legislation in recent years. There are Bills waiting to be plucked off the shelf, such as the Right to Know Bill introduced by a Labour Member in the previous Parliament. In January 1991, the then shadow Home Secretary, Roy Hattersley, said that freedom of information
As there are no drafting problems, do the Government really need to consult further? Opinion polls clearly show a significant majority for a freedom of information measure, and the Government have a mandate for it. It is not necessary to delay any further for technical or democratic reasons, so why was such a Bill missing from the first Queen's Speech?
I believe that the Government are split between those who are clearly committed to such a measure and would happily introduce it tomorrow--I include the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, the right hon. Member for South Shields (Dr. Clark), in that list--and those who are more reluctant and who perhaps see benefits in, and less discomfort from, keeping things much as they have been. I suspect that that group includes some people who might be classed as the inner circle.
If I am wrong in my analysis, I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary, Office of Public Service, the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Kilfoyle), will put me right. In that case, he must come up with a much more convincing explanation for the absence of a freedom of information Bill from the Government's first legislative programme. There has been no convincing explanation to date.
The Government must examine the practices that they have introduced and decide whether they are compatible with a culture of openness. How, for example, does the role of the Minister without Portfolio, the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Mandelson), sit with the professions of openness? He is clearly a powerful figure in the Labour party and in the Government. His fingerprints are everywhere, but in what way is he accountable? Through written questions, I was told in a written parliamentary answer from the Prime Minister.
Since then I have asked the Minister without Portfolio a number of written questions, from which I have learnt virtually nothing about what he does. He refuses to list meetings that he has attended. So far as I am aware, he has not spoken in the House since the election, despite his central position. I dropped him a note last week informing him that I intended to refer to him in this debate and that I should be happy to give way to him, should he turn up. He has not done so.
Is the Minister without Portfolio responsible for the millennium dome, or is the Secretary of State for National Heritage responsible? On 18 June I asked the Prime Minister for clarification of their respective roles, with a named date for response of 23 June. So far, I have received only a holding reply.
To give credit where it is due, the Minister without Portfolio provided me with a written answer earlier this week, stating that he would answer oral questions on the millennium exhibition--or experience, as I suppose we must now call it. I welcome that, but it deals only with the most visible issue.
What is the role of the Minister without Portfolio in determining the future of the royal yacht? He tells me in parliamentary answers that he has no responsibility, but an article in The Guardian dated 26 June states that the British Exporters Association has had "favourable noises" from him. What exactly is his role in that? My suspicion is that he is sorting out policies behind closed doors with the Prime Minister, and that Ministers have been put up in public to defend those decisions. I hope that the Minister can tell me that I am wrong. If I am not, the present arrangements are not in the spirit of a culture of open government and are not consistent with accountability to the House.
Then there are the responses that I have received to written parliamentary questions about public records. I asked each Department for information about documents that were passed to the Public Record Office. Some answers, such as that from the Foreign Secretary, were helpful. Others told me that the Public Records Act 1958 does not require information to be kept in the form requested and that to do so would "incur disproportionate cost". That famous phrase has been used over the years to avoid answering questions, and although it is sometimes justified, it is often abused.
That was a curious response to receive from the Department of Trade and Industry as my question was an exact replica--apart from the change of year--of that asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Southport (Mr. Fearn) on 2 July 1990. On that occasion, the question elicited a full response, and every category that my hon. Friend specified was given a percentage correct to one decimal place. I subsequently took up the matter with the Consumer Affairs Minister, who has been most helpful and who provided the information that I requested in a very full letter. However, that means that the official answer I was given--namely, that the information that I sought was not available and could be provided only at disproportionate cost--was clearly incorrect. In this case, the information provided originally by the present Government was of a lesser quality than that provided by the Conservative Government, which is no cause for self-congratulation on the Government Benches.
The Minister will undoubtedly tell me about the proposals that he intends to publish shortly. They will be welcome if the proposals to allow access to information are not couched in terms which enable the public sector--I hope that the Bill will apply to the whole of the public sector, including quangos--to cite exemptions. I hope, too, that the Government will not impose prohibitively expensive charges for gaining access to information. I ask the Minister to respond to those points.
I acknowledge the positive way in which the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster has answered my questions, both on the Floor of the House and in written
answers. I acknowledge, too, his positive response in the past few days to my question about his intentions to open up the existing code of practice on access to Government information. I remain hopeful.
The problem is that, although we have had many expressions of support from Ministers, we have seen no concrete action to date. I appreciate that these are early days, but a freedom of information Bill could have been introduced this Session. I ask the Minister to provide a convincing explanation as to why that is missing from the first year of Government legislation. The longer we go without a freedom of information Bill, the more attracted to secrecy Ministers will become. They will find it easier not to release information, and we shall be back in the trough created by the previous Government.
The Minister will know that I have introduced the Public Records (Amendment) Bill, which is due for Second Reading on 30 January 1998. It aims to reduce the 30-year rule to 20 years and to reduce the rule for royal documents from 100 to 20 years. That is a modest measure and in line with practice in other countries.
I offer today to work with the Minister and the Government to create sensible, workable legislation--taking account of costs and other potential problems that he and his colleagues may envisage--in an attempt to make progress in this area. I am willing to attend meetings and to co-operate completely with the Government if the Minister wishes to make progress with the legislation in the House.
"is not only suitable for early enactment. It is ready for early enactment. If a Labour Government was elected. . . I would be able to send the headings of a Bill to a parliamentary draughtsman on the following day.'"--[Official Report, 14 May 1997; Vol. 294, c. 106.]
In the interests of open government, I should reveal that my source for that quotation is the excellent speech made by the hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) on the first day of debate on the Queen's Speech. It was a privilege to follow such a contribution when I made my maiden speech to the House that day. I cannot understand why the hon. Lady is not in the Cabinet--or perhaps I can.
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