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Mr. Quentin Davies: I wish to take the Secretary of State back to the response that he gave to the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr. Radice). He has promised to take advice about including in the Bill an obligation to make Executive override a matter of collective Cabinet responsibility. Will he ask those advising him why it has been possible in New Zealand for that obligation to have statutory force, given that New Zealand has the same system of common law and very much the same constitutional traditions as this country?

Mr. Straw: The answer is yes, I will.

I have been on my feet for quite a long time, but I hope that my explanation will prove useful to the House. I urge Labour Members to support the Government amendments in the group but--with respect to my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase--not amendment No. 1.

Mr. Shepherd: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. This is just a point of inquiry really. Much of the Home Secretary's contribution was addressed to new clause 6, which is a very important element in respect of the reform of clause 13. When will the House be allowed to discuss those remarks--now, or when we reach that section of the list of selected amendments that covers discretionary procedure and the role of the Information Commissioner?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: The Home Secretary's remarks were relevant to the matters discussed by the House in the past few minutes. There will, of course, be an opportunity to discuss new clause 6 when we come to it.

Mr. David Heath: We have witnessed an extraordinary spectacle this evening. The Home Secretary has spoken to

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a group of amendments to fillet out one that he or his colleagues intend to put before the House at a later stage. He has given ground at such a rate that one wonders whether he has gone beyond his own try line--or even beyond his own dead-ball line.

The right hon. Gentleman is moving in the right direction, and long may it continue: it is a direction that Liberal Democrat Members have pressed on Ministers throughout the Bill's progress through the House. However, he has not gone far enough, so we must press him further.

When I first thought about speaking to this group of amendments, I anticipated that I would echo the comments made by the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright) in proposing amendment No. 1. I entirely support the hon. Gentleman's comments, but that is not surprising, as the amendment is also in my name. However, I also support the Government amendments in this group, as they recognise some of the arguments made in Committee and in subsequent weeks. The Government have moved to remove some of the extraordinary discretionary powers originally contained in clause 13.

Clause 13 is the crux of the Bill. It aroused the greatest controversy in Committee, for the very good reason that it could have undermined the entire thrust of the Bill and all the good elements in it. As I said, I was intending to support the Home Secretary's conversion to that view.

What worried me was new clause 6. It was an Executive veto and, as such, entirely unacceptable in the context of the Bill. I suspect that it will still be unacceptable even when we see it in its final form, as outlined by the Home Secretary. It will still substitute an Executive opinion for that of an independent observer--the commissioner--and for one from a court or tribunal. A court or tribunal could consider the matter in the way that the right hon. Gentleman described. I was surprised that he used the case of General Pinochet as an analogy, because he described a process by which the courts overturned the right hon. Gentleman's instinct and decision not to release information. The new clause substitutes that approach for the application to the courts, which would be far more satisfactory.

I question the right hon. Gentleman when he ascribes to Ministers in this situation a quasi-judicial function. I do not believe that Ministers have a quasi-judicial function. This is an administrative function. If it were quasi-judicial, Ministers should immediately disqualify themselves from consideration because they are party to the decision. It is they who will be put at an advantage or a disadvantage.

Mr. Straw indicated dissent.

Mr. Heath: The right hon. Gentleman shakes his head, but what worries the public is that a public body or a Minister will be tempted to avoid disclosure in order to disguise embarrassment. That was the point made by the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough (Helen Jackson). The public are worried that the motivation for not releasing information that is described as being in the public interest is because of an underlying factor which the public body or the Minister in question considers outweighs public responsibility. We must address that point if we are to reach a satisfactory conclusion.

There should be no question of the mayor of London having the authority to sign such a certificate. There should be no question--[Interruption.] The right

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hon. Gentleman is making strange grimaces. I heard him say that he was considering the matter. I am putting to him something that he should consider--that it should not be for a local authority to issue that certificate. It should not be for a committee of the local authority or--in terms of the amendment that is to be debated either later tonight or tomorrow--an individual within that authority to make that decision. That cannot be right. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will listen to his colleagues who have indicated their support for that approach, because it is an important issue. I hope that he will also listen to the intimations that this should be a collective responsibility. That is the only safeguard within an Executive veto that may arrive at the right result. Otherwise, his proposal will be wholly objectionable.

The right hon. Gentleman said that no freedom of information legislation guarantees good government--it is not a panacea. He is absolutely right, but it sure as hell helps. That is the thrust of all the arguments that right hon. and hon. Members have been making during the Bill's progress. Of course we are delighted that there is to be freedom of information legislation, but we want it to work. We want it genuinely to provide freedom of information. Many of us still have strong doubts that clause 13 in particular, even as amended in the way that the right hon. Gentleman suggests, will achieve that result.

To a certain extent, the debate has been hijacked by the Home Secretary's mini-statement. I am delighted that it has, because it moved the debate forward. However, I have one small and specific point for Ministers: why is amendment No. 46 in this group? It is the odd one out.

The other amendments move in the right direction, but amendment No. 46 goes to the contrary, and I should be grateful for some explanation of the rationale behind what seems a retrograde step. I welcome many of the amendments, but we must have a substantive debate on new clause 6 when we reach it. Serious questions remain to be answered about whether the Bill will do the job that we want of it.

11.30 pm

Dr. David Clark: You quite rightly pulled me up, Mr. Deputy Speaker, when I trespassed on your generosity in my intervention. I shall detain the House for only a few sentences to conclude what I was saying in a more appropriate form.

Many of us welcome the way in which the Home Secretary has moved away from having an individual Minister with Executive override powers to having a Cabinet Minister and a collective ministerial decision. Perhaps we could formalise matters in statute rather than a code. When my right hon. Friend considers how to change the Bill in another place, perhaps he will consider what happens in New Zealand, where decisions on Executive override are made formally by an Order in Council. The Cabinet takes a collective decision, and the result is published in the official gazette.

Because of the existing legislative model in New Zealand, we know that that process works. It provides a longstop in cases in which a Cabinet feels that it should intervene, and it formalises decision making in a way that would meet the objections of many hon. Members.

Mr. Hawkins: I, too, shall be brief. It struck me as extraordinary that the Home Secretary, taking his first part

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in these proceedings, should spend so long on convoluted rituals before addressing the points raised by his hon. Friends. A long way into his speech, he referred to Lord Healey's remark about people who are in a hole stopping digging, but I felt that he was speaking autobiographically. As he came under more pressure from his hon. Friends, there was undoubtedly, in his own words, a natural and profound tension.

I noted how long it took the Home Secretary to reach his main point. The further change of policy was not mentioned until he was 19 minutes into his speech, most of which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) said--

Fiona Mactaggart: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Hawkins: No, I said I would be brief, and I shall certainly not give way to an hon. Lady who was conspicuously absent from our proceedings until a very late stage.

Fiona Mactaggart: I have not. Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Hawkins: No. I said that I would be brief. I certainly shall not give way to the hon. Lady.

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