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Mr. Lock: I am trying to follow the hon. Gentleman's argument. Will he let me know two things? First, where does new clause 8 provide that information shall be disclosed only if it is accurate? Secondly, how is a public authority to judge whether information that it holds is or is not accurate in a dispute about its accuracy? [Interruption.]
Mr. Hawkins: As my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow) said from a sedentary position,
this is not a difficult argument to follow. If the Minister will be patient, I will, I hope, address the points that he has raised. However, it is for the hon. Gentleman to respond to our suggestions. If he is prepared to come back, tonight or at a later stage, or even in another place, and deal with our amendments and new clauses in a different way, addressing the issues, we will be very pleased. We are not suggesting that all our proposals are perfect. However, we have done our best, working with business organisations, to address the issues. If the Minister says that he is prepared to address these vital issues--as my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham helpfully said, they are not difficult--we will consider carefully what the Government propose. So far, however, there has been no attempt by the Government to address our concerns over the Data Protection Act 1998, reciprocity, the notification of third parties and the rights of companies, small or large.
Business organisations are concerned about that matter. For example, the CBI, which the Government are keen to cultivate, said:
The Minister must justify the Government's failure to learn from experience in other jurisdictions. The hon. Member for Milton Keynes, North-East said that that the same error was initially made in the United States, and had to be corrected after many battles. Why are the Government repeating such mistakes? The Government claim to be a friend to business, but the CBI certainly does not think so. Unless the Government change their mind and accept our amendments or something akin to them, they will upset business seriously.
Business must be certain that any Freedom of Information Act will contain safeguards to ensure that damaging or commercially sensitive information is not be released.
Mr. Bercow:
The potency of my hon. Friend's argument should be clear to all hon. Members, with the possible exception of the Minister. Does my hon. Friend agree that protection is especially important for companies because, unlike individuals, they have no recourse to the ordinary laws of libel?
Mr. Hawkins:
I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. Like me, he has worked with many business organisations, particularly the Small Business Bureau and the Federation of Small Businesses. Small businesses with limited financial and legal resources are particularly hard hit by the Bill. I do not doubt that the Minister, who has practised law for many years, will have represented many business organisations, and I wonder whether, if he thinks about it for a moment, he is terribly comfortable with what his ministerial superiors have asked him to put before us tonight. We shall wait to hear from him.
Amendments Nos. 102 and 103 are connected with the proposed new clauses, and insert a period of 10 working days. We are not proposing a massive change, or a lengthy period. The Minister will find it difficult to say that there is anything wrong with that.
All hon. Members will understand from their dealings with any business, small or large, that businesses require stability, and an important part of that is ensuring that the laws that apply to a business's actions will be the same as those that applied when the business originally took those actions.
All the advocacy that my right hon. and hon. Friends and I can command leads us to say firmly that the Bill should not apply retrospectively to commercial information previously provided to the Government, voluntarily or as required by statute, on the basis of assurances of confidentiality, because that information was, by definition, provided under a different regulatory environment. It is wrong in principle for the Government to say that information provided 10 or 20 years before the Bill is introduced will be covered.
Mr. Bercow:
I am sorry to trouble my hon. Friend further, but does he agree that there is an analogy between the argument that he is advancing and the position on the disclosure of information provided to journalists in confidence? Earlier, it suited Ministers to say that it would be wrong to put journalists in a position of having to divulge information with which they were provided on a confidential basis. If that is so, surely the same principle applies, as my hon. Friend has eloquently argued, for businesses, which have divulged information on the basis of assurances of confidentiality.
Mr. Hawkins:
Once again, I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. He is certainly not troubling me at all; I greatly welcome his intervention because he, like me, was carefully listening to an earlier debate. He is absolutely right to draw that parallel and point out that Ministers cannot put forward, on these amendments, an argument that is inconsistent with their earlier arguments. I hope that the Minister will comment on that.
It is important to say that, even if the Government were to accept our amendments and new clauses or something akin to them--now, at a later stage, or in another place--that would not totally veto any such information from the past being released because there would still be a provision or exception allowing the Information Commissioner to recommend that information given in the past should be released in the public interest. Our amendments would not mean that such information could
never be released, so we are being moderate and reasonable in proposing this control and preventing retrospection.
It is important for the Bill to set a precedent so that businesses can carry on giving information to public authorities in the knowledge that the rules will not change again in the future. I recognise that the Government cannot bind their successors, but the point of the Bill is that the Government are encouraging the greater provision of information. If they make it more difficult for businesses to trust them, they will find that businesses are far more reluctant to provide information to public authorities or to the Government themselves. We strongly argue that the amendment is in everybody's interests.
The Campaign for Freedom of Information may not often share objectives with organisations such as the CBI, but it is unlikely that those who are arguing, as many hon. Members on both sides of the House have done for many years, for the provision of more information would want business, as a result of the Bill, to be much more reluctant to provide information to the Government or a public authority.
Amendment No. 98 deals with the availability of historical records, and is connected to the argument for the previous amendment. As I have said, the Opposition believe that more information should be released, but it is also important to recognise that business must be protected from provisions that could result in commercially sensitive information being placed in the public domain. That information could affect the very existence of small or even medium-sized businesses.
The Bill contains an exemption for information that would prejudice the commercial interests of a commercial organisation. We accept that. However, under part VI, any information covered by the exemption would be released after 30 years as an historical record. Amendment No. 98 would ensure that sensitive commercial information would not be released automatically after 30 years. It is a little like the rules in relation to Cabinet discussions and such matters.
We believe that the contents exemption to ensure that damaging information is not released is sufficient. If information is not damaging to a commercial organisation, it should be released. However, if it is judged that the information covered by the exemption and release is not in the public interest, it should not automatically be released after 30 years.
It is perhaps a double safeguard: a double negative. There is a danger that, if companies knew that, whatever information they supplied to public authorities would be released to the public, even after 30 years, it might yet again affect the frank and open relationships that the present, or any future, Government would wish to have with business.
I deal briefly with some of the amendments from what has been referred to as the cross-Bench group of hon. Members: Nos. 37, 31, 38 and 32. We want the Government to explain their amendment No. 101 in dealing with the cross-Bench group's amendments, which raise important issues. I do not want to deal with them in detail because others from the group will do so adequately, but the points are extremely serious.
Individuals are protected by the Data Protection Act. But what protections are there available to business? Under the Bill as it currently stands, business does not even have a statutory right to be notified when sensitive information about that business is to be disclosed. It has no right to object to its disclosure, no right to appeal the decision and no right to apply for compensation.
To return to the helpful point made by the hon. Member for Milton Keynes, North-East, all those guarantees are provided by the United States Freedom of Information Act, as they are in Australia.
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