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Mr. Robin Corbett (Birmingham, Erdington) indicated dissent.
Mr. Hughes: The hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Mr. Corbett) who chairs the Home Affairs Committee may think that that is not the case. I have read the Committee's report and accept that a second prosecution would have to cross certain thresholds, but some cases might never be closed. I am referring to the generality of the problem, and that consideration would add to the risk that the clause would prevent information from being revealed because someone might say, "This might come back one day. We can't risk this being opened up."
From personal experience before I came to this place and having talked to people such as the relatives of those who died in the Marchioness disaster and who fought for a public inquiry into it, I do not think that it is in the public interest to hold back information because of an extremely remote possibility. There should be one hurdle, not two, and it ought to be based on specific prejudice, not general harm.
If the amendment helps to remove that prejudice, we must ensure that in addition to allowing the criminal law to work, the guilty to be prosecuted and witnesses to give evidence, we must be able to provide that we have access to information. We think that this carefully drawn amendment will do that. I have not heard the argument that it is technically flawed, nor have the Conservatives argued against it. I hope that the House will agree to support it.
On the Conservatives' desire to reject amendments Nos. 12 and 13, to which the hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Mr. Hawkins) referred, I understand the argument about whether there should be an absolute or a less than absolute test of the time scale within which information should be made available, but I want to give one example that I hope supports the argument for an exception to be made when further consultation is needed.
Let us consider the families of children who may have died as a result of NHS failures in Bristol hospitals, which has concerned us all. Let us imagine that information is released from the inquiry that makes it easy to identify one particular family who are out of the country and cannot be contacted. Just as the police always try to alert families of a bereavement or if a crime has been committed, there might be a reason for the authorities to
say that it would be inappropriate to follow an absolute rule that the information must go to the public domain by a certain date because it would not be able to respect the family's confidentiality and their right to receive that information first. That would not be an absolute bar on disclosure.I do not pretend that there is no debate to be had on the matter but having thought about it, my colleagues in the other place and in this House believe that a little flexibility might sometimes be necessary in what otherwise would be a rule. That is why we should not accept the Conservatives' proposal to reject amendments Nos. 12 and 13. I understand that they are well intentioned, but they might not achieve the objective that the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues want to achieve.
Mr. Peter Lilley (Hitchin and Harpenden): I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate on these amendments, although I did not contribute to the Bill's earlier stages. As a comparative newcomer, I am struck by how typical the Bill is of all that the Government do. Its title is the exact opposite of its content. It is called the Freedom of Information Bill, but it is largely a restriction of disclosure Bill.
In my various ministerial roles, I have always been a believer in, and a practitioner of, open government. I insisted on making available to the courts the "smoking gun" document that revealed the minutes of the meeting between Alan Clark and Matrix Churchill. I insisted on the publication of every single licence for the export of equipment from this country to Iraq in the five years leading up to the invasion of Kuwait.
I even had a useful experience that is highly relevant to the amendments. When we were preparing the Social Security (Incapacity for Work) Bill and I had a 40-page document that had to go to the Prime Minister for clearance before it went to Cabinet, my private secretary came and told me that although the intention had been to send the document to another part of the Department, it had accidentally been sent to the Press Association, whose telephone number was one digit different.
I found that experience extremely helpful. It taught me, and I have frequently used it to teach others, that we have far too much secrecy and that disclosure is generally beneficial to Governments, rather than otherwise.
I am not an opponent of disclosure, but nor am I an anorak. I have never believed that we should go to ludicrous lengths to force Governments to publish information that would inhibit sensible internal discussions. I accept that there must be some limits on disclosure. I always thought that a code of practice would suffice, and it would suffice if the Government accepted the convention that they had to adhere to codes of practice.
Unfortunately, we have an extremely dangerous Government. They no longer abide by conventions. Above all, at the heart of this Government is the manipulation and control of information. That is what the Government are about, above all. They are a Government based on spin and the control of information. That is why they have sacked most Government information officers and replaced those independent public servants with party hacks. That is why it has been revealed that the Deputy Prime Minister called for a weekly inquest in Cabinet into
any lack of control over information. That is why the Chancellor, who did not even mention in his Budget speech substantial elements of--
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Sylvia Heal): Order. The right hon. Gentleman must confine his remarks to the amendments.
Mr. Lilley: I shall certainly do that, Madam Deputy Speaker. I want to apply a specific test to the amendments before us. We were told this morning by the Home Secretary on the "Today" programme that the Government are already behaving as though the Bill were an Act. They are complying with it as though that were already a legal obligation, so we have a simple test at hand to tell how the amendments will work in practice. We simply have to look at how the Government respond to requests for information, and compare and contrast that with what would happen under each of the amendments.
Ideally, we would submit requests from ordinary members of the public under each of the items covered by the amendments, and see how the Government responded to them. There has not been time to do that, so all I can do is present to the House evidence based on requests that I have made for the sort of information covered by the amendments. We know that if the Government are not forthcoming to Members of Parliament, they are likely to give short shrift to any request for information from the public.
In general, when I table questions to the Government, who are purportedly already applying the obligations in the amendments, including those in amendment No. 21 relating to the public interest test, I find that they are slow to respond, evasive and often tricky. By "tricky" I mean that they answer a different question from the one that was asked. They give information about a different issue from the one about which information was requested. They do not seem to be applying with any rigour the public interest test set out in amendment No. 21.
9.30 pm
Mr. Bercow: My right hon. Friend has referred to the Government's pervasive characteristic of answering questions that we do not ask and not answering questions that we do ask. When he was developing that point, did my right hon. Friend hear the rather cynical utterance from a sedentary position of the Government Whip, the hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Mr. Jamieson)? He chuckled and said, "Ha, ha, we have learned some tricks."
Mr. Lilley: I did not hear that remark. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for pointing it out to me and to the House, and putting it on the record. It is significant that the Government are proud of the fact that they behave in a tricky way and do not apply the public interest test as set out in the Bill and in amendment No. 21.
The simplest test that I could apply was to observe how the Government are behaving in response to the latest batch of questions that I tabled for information. The House may remember a document that was sent to every Member from the Post Office, a public body. It told us how it would fill the massive gap in its finances that has been left by the Government's decision to make pensioners and others have their pensions paid into bank accounts rather than through the Post Office.
That is an important public issue. The viability of the Post Office network depends on it, as does the convenience of millions of people and huge sums of public money. Surely we have a right to know about the issue. A good test of the Government is whether they tell us about it or try to restrict us to information that is convenient to them, that sounds good and looks good in glossy brochures.
The Post Office quantifies the amount of money that its programme will allegedly raise. It says that without the programme it would be losing £550 million, but with it, it will break even. So £550 million is at stake. The Post Office states in the document that its plans will fill the gap. It is clear that a significant part of the money will come from the taxpayer, so I thought it reasonable to ask how much will come from the taxpayer. I thought that in any public interest test, as suggested in amendment No. 21 or in the clauses, the question would have to be answered. Instead, the Government refused. They said that under section 2 of the code of practice, it was not their practice to answer such a question, and they referred particularly to commercial confidentiality.
What is commercially confidential about a sum that may be given by the taxpayer to the Post Office? It may mean that it is better able to compete with other commercial organisations, and that may be worrying to the others. However, on any public interest test, it is not the sort of information that should be restricted. We should know how much of the money is to come from the taxpayer. If the Minister cares to intervene to defend the Government's position and say that this is how he intends amendment No. 21 to work, I shall be grateful. Is he saying that the House should be precluded from knowing about potential and planned subsidies to sub-post offices because it might be embarrassing to shelter under the excuse of commercial confidentiality?
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