| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Gummer: Well, the alternative is that the Government know something about the Presiding Officer of the Northern Ireland Assembly that makes him a suitable consultee. There is something to be discovered. It would be the ultimate irony--
Mr. Bercow: Will my right hon. Friend give way?
Mr. Gummer: First, I want to talk about the ultimate irony. It would be ironic if, in discussing Lords amendments to the Freedom of Information Bill, we discovered something about the National Assembly for Wales and its parity with the Northern Ireland Assembly that we would not otherwise have known. The Under- Secretary must explain why one Presiding Officer is suitable for consultation when the other is not. We need to know; without an explanation, the amendments should not be accepted.
Mr. Bercow: My right hon. Friend casts the National Assembly for Wales in the role of hapless victim on the basis that its Presiding Officer will not be consulted, whereas the equivalent public servant in the Northern Ireland Assembly will be consulted under amendment No. 10. Does my right hon. Friend accept that the alternative view of the matter is that the Northern Ireland Assembly has reason to be aggrieved because only its Presiding Officer will be consulted, whereas the terms of the amendment give the impression that a bigger entity--the National Assembly for Wales--will be consulted if the Government get their way? Either way, someone has good reason to be aggrieved.
Mr. Gummer: My hon. Friend is right to say that the amendment can be interpreted in both ways. Why is that the case? That is the fundamental question. Why has division been introduced into an otherwise innocuous matter? On one hand, the Government have failed to consider Northern Ireland or Wales and have had to make up for that hastily. On the other hand, they have included
changes to some aspects but, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst said, failed to incorporate others.Now we discover that the Government's changes have created a difference that is difficult to understand and leads many of us to be suspicious of their purposes and reasons. They may be due to incompetence--perish the thought. Perhaps the Government have simply got it wrong. Perhaps, accidentally, nobody read the provision straight or thought about the parallel, but I cannot believe that the Government, who put great emphasis on joined-up government, could possibly have made so elementary a mistake. Therefore, there must be something behind the provision, but what we do not know. We must ask, very clearly, what it is.
I do not like to criticise my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst in any way, but he passed over the matter with too much alacrity. Amendment No. 10 says that
- if the order relates to a Northern Ireland department or a Northern Ireland public authority, consult the First Minister and deputy First Minister in Northern Ireland.
We all know that the word "consult" is used most widely, but when the Secretary of State is dealing with a Northern Ireland Department it appears that he will consult not the Northern Ireland Assembly, but the First Minister and Deputy First Minister. That would be perfectly reasonable, but I understand that, after a great deal of difficulty and arm twisting, which was unsuccessful, there is a First Secretary in Wales--a person of that kind, though not the person that the Labour party wanted. Why will he not be consulted? Must he sit among all the other Assembly Members and wait for the Secretary of State to consult the lot of them? Why will he be excluded from the consultation? Why will he not be offered the pride of place given to the First Minister and Deputy First Minister in Northern Ireland?
If the provision has been included by choice, not by accident, the First Secretary in Wales has a reason to complain. Why is he not considered to be the representative of the Welsh nation, whereas the First Minister and Deputy First Minister are considered to be the representatives of Ulster? That is an extremely difficult issue to follow and I should be happy to leave the case there but for the difficult situation and issues raised by other amendments. Therefore, I ask hon. Members to turn to amendment No. 74, not because there is little to say about the other measures, but because they can easily be included in these remarks.
Amendment No. 74 explains what a Welsh public authority is. I remember a phrase of GK Chesterton that complained about the sentence, "Alone withouten any company," as translated by an American to, "Alone without any company." Chesterton said, "If there can be any person who does not understand that withouten means without--he must be alone withouten any company at all." Can there be anybody who does not understand what a Welsh public authority is, save those who have read the Bill's explanation?
Of all the things that have worried me in my life, the definition of a Welsh public authority is not high on the list. I come of a Welsh-speaking father. I am very fond of the Principality and yield to no one in my love of its history, but that definition has not kept me awake on any night in the past 61 years. That is the reality, because one understands the definition: a Welsh public authority is a public authority in Wales.
Mr. Lilley: Or as regards Wales.
Mr. Gummer: That is the point. A Welsh public authority must be in Wales or may be part of Wales. Now we have this definition, which is important because the definition of Welsh public authority is as understood under clause 80.
11.15 pm
I hope that the House has read that clause carefully, because it is very important. It states:
- In this Act "Welsh public authority" means--
(a) any public authority which is listed in Part II, III, IV or VI of Schedule I
- and whose functions are exercisable only or mainly in or
- as regards Wales, other than an excluded authority.
I thought, "If the provision includes everything, I had better find out what it excludes." Now, this is a freedom of information Bill: it is a Bill stating how the Government will open their doors so that we can all understand what is happening--so that nothing will be hidden from public view. And what is stated in subsection (2) of the new clause provided by Lords amendment No. 74?
- In paragraph (a) of subsection (1) "excluded authority" means a public authority which is designated by the Secretary of State by order as an excluded authority for the purposes of that paragraph.
- exercisable only or mainly or as regards Wales.
Of course this Government--and particularly this Minister--are not like that at all. I know that the Minister would not want to do any of this. So why has he given himself the powers to do it? He is opening the door to future Ministers without his probity, his legal training, his charm, and his ability to explain.
I have tried to get inside the Minister's prejudices. Has he not thought what a Conservative Government might do with this framework? Has he thought what--perish the thought--a Liberal Government might do with it?
The Liberals would find it very hard, of course, because they include and exclude at the same time; but that is how they would respond.Has the Minister not thought about what he is doing? First he produces a definition so wide as to be meaningless; then he produces powers enabling him to exclude everyone whom he happens not to want to be included. This is a freedom of information Bill. How does the Minister justify leaving out the provision in the first place, returning it partially, and now producing it in a form that is utterly intolerable?
People may wonder why we are still discussing this at 11.18 pm. We are still discussing it because it is not a meaningless issue, but a fundamental issue. It concerns freedom of information for the public, and the definition of those from whom the information may properly be demanded. It seems to me that the Government have failed to produce an answer that is credible, acceptable, or indeed decent.
I have not finished, because there is more to the amendment. As I have said, proposed subsection (2) states:
- In paragraph (a) of subsection (1) "excluded authority" means
- Before making an order under subsection (2)
- the Secretary of State shall consult the National Assembly for Wales.
- "whose functions are exercisable . . . as regards Wales".
The House deserves at least a parsable sentence and "as regards" is not parsable--it is not even quocumque. There is no Latin or Greek equivalent. Why? Because it does not mean anything. One of the great things about the classical language is that one has to mean something to be able to say something. There could not have been a Labour party in either Greece or Rome because there was a connection between statement and meaning, which is, of course, extremely embarrassing.
I do not think that one can finish there. We need to turn to amendment No. 77, which so far has not been discussed. It says--it is very interesting:
- 'executive committee', in relation to the National Assembly for Wales, has the same meaning as in the Government of Wales Act 1998.
I am sure that executive committee, with a small E and small C, cannot be something that one consults. Either it is an Executive Committee, with a capital E and capital C, or it is an equivalent, which I understand is called Cabinet, but are Ministers afraid of consulting the Cabinet of the National Assembly For Wales? Are they frightened of that child that they have borne? Do they not want it to grow up and become the proper representative of the Welsh people? Do they want to keep it down, with a small E executive and a small C committee? Is not that what this is about--the humiliation of the people of Wales, not in a big sense, but in the small sense of using the language to make people small? That is what it is about. Amendment No. 77 is one of those amendments. No. 78 is just as bad.
Amendment No. 78 is a genuine miracle. It says:
- 'Northern Ireland public authority' means any public authority, other than the Northern Ireland Assembly or a Northern Ireland department, whose functions are exercisable only or mainly in or as regards Northern Ireland and relate only or mainly to transferred matters.
- or mainly to transferred matters?
I must ask the Minister to attend on this. Why does the second half of the provision not say, "relate only or mainly or as regards transferred matters"? What have transferred matters done to have "as regards" excluded from them in the second part of the phrase? It is nonsense, and it is unacceptable nonsense.
Lords amendment No. 82 is another very revealing amendment. It states:
- at end insert--
(""Welsh public authority" has the meaning given by section (Meaning of "Welsh public authority").")
I think that we should oppose these appalling amendments very simply because, first, if they are necessary, they should have been in the Bill initially, and the fact that they were not showed that the Minister cared nothing at all about either Wales or Northern Ireland. Secondly, if they are important, why are they incomprehensible? Thirdly, they contain within them such internal inconsistencies that no sane person would have allowed them to reach the House in such terms. Fourthly, it is inconceivable that they will not provide meat--and very good meat, too; of the sirloin-steak type--for large numbers of lawyers.
Fifthly, they are--if not otiose--not only incomprehensible, but probably bad. I cannot say that they are certainly bad because they are incomprehensible--which, of course, is the problem with the Government. They have presented us with a list of amendments that we are supposed to pass because we cannot understand any of them. However, those that we have begun to understand are clearly dangerous. The exclusion clause is utterly unacceptable.
I do wish that the Minister had explained all this to us at the beginning. However, I now know why he did not--because he could not explain it. He has not a clue, and rightly not. What a boring collection of things for him to spend time thinking about. He left it to his civil servants and they have let him down. We look to him for an explanation because, whether he likes it or not, the buck stops there.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |