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Mr. Mike O'Brien: Will my hon. Friend confirm that Jenny Bacon made those comments before a public interest test had been inserted in the measure and thus that the situation to which she was responding was different from that which faces us at present?

Tony Wright: The public interest test is the second stage test. Perhaps we will discuss later the exact nature of the operation of that test--who has the final say and so on. The point is that, at the first stage test--the exemption stage--when a freedom of information measure determines what is in or out, the question should be whether health and safety information should be excluded as a class or should be included, subject to a sensible test of prejudice that would protect those aspects that the Minister rightly says need protection. Our amendment would give the Minister the assurances he wants, while affording the protection to health and safety that we need.

Mr. Simon Hughes: I speak to amendment (a) tabled in the names of my right hon. Friend the Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Mr. Maclennan), the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr. Davis), other colleagues on both sides of the House and myself. I apologise to the House for the absence of my right hon. Friend, who is in bed trying to recover from bronchitis. He would have attended the debate had he been able to, and I am sure that everyone who has followed the Bill's proceedings in both Houses realises that he has been assiduous, during a long career in this place, in pursuing the issues with which the measure deals.

Our amendment applies only to one of the Lords amendments in the group. We regard all the others also as improvements to the Bill--I think the House agrees. As we have only three hours' debate in total, this might seem to be a distraction, but on the argument about the Bill's improvement since first published, I pray in aid the summary that the Library produced after Report in the Lords the other day. It was not written by anyone with a party interest. It did not over-state or over-hype; it simply said:

The Freedom of Information Bill has undergone significant amendments in its passage through both Houses.

I have heard no one say that the amendments have made the Bill less good; they have all improved it.

There have been four batches of amendments. These were tabled after Second Reading and on Report in the House and after Second Reading and on Report in the other place. I have only heard people say that all those amendments have gone in the right direction. Whatever any internal disputes about whether people have gone far enough, we are going in the right direction.

The second part of the Library's elaboration sets out the five main changes to the Bill:

A new wording of the public interest test which the Information Commissioner can review and enforce . . .


A new Executive override . . . to be used when a Cabinet minister cannot accept the decision of the Commissioner.

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Some relaxation of the restrictions on the release of factual and statistical information--

we shall come to that matter later--

The power to add new exemptions has been removed,

which has been widely welcomed, and

a new duty to assist as well as advise applicants,

which has been generally welcomed.

I hope to start in a constructive and straightforward way. In my view and in that of objective advisers, as well as the Campaign for the Freedom of Information and others, the Bill has been improved. We could discuss how much more improved it could have been and how much more improved we should like it to be. There is no secret that some hon. Members on both sides of the House would like the Bill to be improved and to go further. That is why we have tabled amendments today and why the debate became controversial in the other place; there was a view that things could have been pushed further. I completely understand that.

I am conscious of the fact that we have only three hours left to deal with nine groups of amendments, so I shall focus on amendment (a) to Lords amendment No. 4--the important amendment to which the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Tony Wright) has just spoken, which we tabled jointly. The Minister knows that I have a particular interest in the matter and that the public understand its importance. To put it bluntly, it is not so much about BSE--that relates more to the amendment on factual information, which is part of a later group--as about evidence given to an inquiry into a railway collision, for example, where a statutory authority inquires into what happened during a train crash in which people were killed or injured and how we can learn the lessons.

Such matters are certainly relevant to investigations by the Health and Safety Executive, the headquarters of which happen to be based in my constituency. I have met and, when she was in post, held discussions with the previous director general, to whom the hon. Member for Cannock Chase referred. We all know from constituency work that the HSE investigates the cause of construction accidents. Tragically, there are still too many such accidents. The HSE will assemble information and may then decide to prosecute the company or individual involved. Such issues matter hugely to the public, especially the first category--transport collisions and their investigations.

This is not a Scottish Bill, although the Scots are proceeding not quite in parallel--some might say that they are ahead of us--but they are taking action about the same time. If the Lockerbie crash had occurred in England, a public authority investigation would have governed that crash and similar ones. Such matters relate to the current inquiry into the Marchioness--I am closely involved in the subject of that inquiry, which is taking place over the road--and they certainly relate to the Southall rail crash, where a public authority has been charged with a duty to investigate and collect evidence, which might result in a criminal prosecution.

9.15 pm

I know that the Minister has heard the argument before, but the amendment proposes that we should be able to keep information exempt or secret only if it relates to particular proceedings or a particular individual. There

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must be a particular reason for the exemption. We take that view because it would otherwise be possible for the Director of Public Prosecutions--the example given by the Minister--the Serious Fraud Office or others to say, with the best intentions, that information should be kept secret because, if it were not, it might lead to actions in the courts. Therefore, they could argue that it was in the public interest to keep the information secret.

The hon. Member for Cannock Chase made the point very well. Like the former director general of the Health and Safety Executive, we argue that there should be a particular prejudice test. Our amendment is not accidental. We chose words that are in the Bill; we did not pluck them out of the air. Clause 29 of the Bill as it left this House--we are engaged in the bizarre process of considering amendments to the Bill as it left this House and not as it was when it came back--is on law enforcement. Clause 29(1) states:

Information which is not exempt information by virtue of section 28 is exempt information if its disclosure under this Act would, or would be likely, to prejudice . . .

There then follows a list of justifications, the first of which is

the prevention or detection of crime.

Subsection (2) then lists the purposes of relevant public authority investigations, and we have chosen some for our amendment. They include

(e) the purpose of ascertaining the cause of an accident . . .


(i) the purpose of securing the health, safety and welfare of persons at work, and


(j) the purpose of protecting persons other than persons at work against risk to health and safety arising out of or in connection with the actions of persons at work.

As the hon. Member for Cannock Chase said, we have been selective and chosen issues of public concern. They include health, safety and environmental matters and accident investigations. I always think that "accident" is an inadequate word, because incidents are not usually accidents. Once an investigation has taken place, it is normally found that they are the result of a mistake or fault.

In the cases that we have chosen--and in those cases alone--there should have to be a specific prejudice test. Only if that test brings down the exemption would the information not go automatically into the public domain.

Our amendment would cover issues that matter hugely to the public. For example, it would cover inquiries by the railway inspectorate, the nuclear installations inspectorate--the Sellafield debate is important and has gone for more than 20 years--and inquiries by fire authorities and the Environment Agency.

In local government terms, our amendment would cover inquires by trading standard officers who could be investigating the inappropriate use of garages and it would cover cafes and shops that are prejudicial to public health. A whole range of issues would be covered. Perhaps the most obvious example is when the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food conducts its own inquiries and is then able to prosecute. In all those cases, the information that is collected should be made freely available to the public unless there is a particular prejudice.

For a final time, I shall try to persuade the Minister. We have been trying, we are trying and, if we do not succeed tonight, we shall go on trying to ensure that we

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win our argument. If he accepts our amendment, the public interest test will remain, so the balance of interests will be considered, but that balance of interests would weigh the particular risks of someone not giving evidence, of witnesses being intimidated or of prosecutions not being pursued rather than the generality of the issue.

I want to give one final example of why this clause is worrying. There is a debate on whether we should get rid of the rule against double jeopardy. The Law Commission is considering the proposal and it has been debated in Westminster Hall. The double jeopardy rule precludes someone from bringing a prosecution when there has been an earlier prosecution. If that were changed, there might always be a chance of a case coming back to court and an open-ended prospect of further prosecution.

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