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In June the Government published a new AIDS strategy, which underlines the UK’s commitment to continued global leadership on AIDS, and to the goal of universal access to comprehensive HIV prevention, treatment, care and support by 2010.Achieving universal access is a global commitment. Responsibility for making progress towards it lies with national Governments, supported by effective partnerships of bilateral and multilateral agencies, as well as civil society and the private sector.International agencies have played a key role in recent successes on AIDS, as already mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord McColl, but it bears repetition. For example, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has played a key role in a 20-fold increase in funding, from $485 million in 1997 to $10 billion in 2007, and has helped AIDS treatment increase from 100,000 people in 2001 to 3 million in 2008. There have been challenges too, but the AIDS response has helped to sharpen focus on approaches that can help. The noble Baroness, Lady Eccles, and the noble Lord, Lord McColl, quite rightly also drew our attention to the need for changes in people’s behaviour and the impact of HIV and AIDS on women and children.
The UK Government played a key role in the launch of the multi-stakeholder global malaria action plan in September. I do not apologise for using all these terms and acronyms because this report, as everybody has mentioned, is absolutely full of such terms. The UK contribution, which was announced by the Prime Minister, includes 20 million bed nets by 2010; increased funding for research and development of up to £5 million by 2010; and £40 million over two years for the affordable medicines facility to increase access to the latest and best malarial drugs. This
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The committee rightly recommended that we continue to promote integrated strategies for combating TB and HIV. This Government are committed to tackling HIV and TB co-infection and recognise the need to upscale efforts to deliver universal access to TB and HIV prevention, treatment, care and support services by 2015, as well as to increase investment and facilitate research to promote the development of better tools for prevention, diagnosis and treatment of TB. DfID’s AIDS strategy supports the integration of HIV and AIDS and DfID has made a significant commitment to spend £6 billion over seven years to 2015 to strengthen health systems and services. This includes the integration of HIV and TB services.
All this must be set in the context of progress against the health-related millennium development goals. In July 2007 the United Nations Secretary-General and the Prime Minister launched the MDG “Call to Action”, encouraging the international community to accelerate progress to reach the millennium development goals. The subsequent United Nationshigh-level event in September 2008 saw countries, charities, foundations and businesses pledge $16 billion to help reach the goals. I am very happy to hear from the noble Lord, Lord McColl, of his party’s support for all this activity. I add one small partisan point: I welcome the turnabout of the Conservative Party in its policy on international aid, but it is slightly rich to suggest that this Government, with their record, will be reducing their commitment in any way.
We are keen to track the implementation of the actions announced at the high-level event and to maintain the momentum and focus that the event produced to get the MDGs on track. We also want to support the resolution already proposed by the UN Secretary-General and the President of the General Assembly on the MDG review summit in 2010. The high-level event also saw the launch of the Taskforce on Innovative International Financing for Health Systems, co-chaired by the Prime Minister and the president of the World Bank. The task force will explore new sources of finance to help developing countries achieve the health MDGs.
International organisations are at the heart of the response to the challenges of protecting UK health and of meeting the MDGs. But, as the report made clear, the very complexity and fragmentation of the international health architecture makes it hard for Governments, especially those in the developing world, to use these resources as effectively as possible; this is the labyrinth referred to by my noble friend. The Government are committed to help to deliver a more rational, effective and efficient health architecture, better at protecting the health of England and helping developing countries to achieve the MDGs.
In the global health strategy we commit to working with the WHO and other UN agencies to consolidate existing funding flows to the UN so that we have fewer and more effective agreements, to supporting consolidated UN country programmes in developing countries,
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I will give three examples of how we are putting this commitment into practice. First, the International Health Partnership was launched by the Prime Minister in September 2007. It seeks to build stronger health systems by applying the Paris principles on aid effectiveness to the health sector. The International Health Partnership will play a vital role in bringing agencies together. From the developing country perspective, it is the organising framework to ensure the most effective and sustainable allocation of resources, both domestic and external.
Secondly, there is the UK WHO institutional strategy. We have now finalised our institutional strategy on the WHO; it sets out how we will work with the organisation between now and 2013. The document is on the Department of Health website. This joint strategy, which was agreed between the WHO and three government departments—the Department of Health, DfID and the FCO—takes on board many of the recommendations in the report.
For example, the strategy commits us to streamlining some of the funding that we allocate for the WHO in line with performance against agreed priorities. It sets specific indicators and targets for delivery to improve the monitoring of the agency’s performance. As part of this process, DfID is making additional funds available on a performance-related basis to the WHO at 10.3 per cent of baseline funding this year and 18.7 per cent next year. The UK gave $358 million to the WHO in 2006-07, which makes us the organisation’s second largest donor. The institutional strategy is key to holding the organisation to account for that funding and improving its performance.
The third example is our support for the WHO’s work on partnerships. A number of global health partnerships are hosted by the WHO, and it is involved in many others. This year’s World Health Assembly will consider a report on the WHO’s approach to these, including the criteria to help the organisation to decide whether to get involved in new partnerships and, if so, what the organisation’s involvement should be. We are pleased that the WHO is looking at this complex area, and we will work closely with it to get this right.
I shall now address some of the specific questions raised by noble Lords. My noble friend Lord Soley talked about vertical versus horizontal health system strengthening programmes. I thought that he explained it with great eloquence. It was new to me when I read the report, and I found it very interesting indeed. We agree with my noble friend that both vertical and horizontal support are essential; it is not a question of either/or. The World Bank has an important role to play in both, and we agree with the committee that the bank needs to invest in health infrastructure in collaboration with other players in the health field. That is our approach to the World Bank on this issue.
My noble friends Lord Soley and Lady Whitaker and the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, raised the issue of surveillance for human disease and what the OIE does in it regard. I have already said that we think the
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My noble friends Lady Whitaker and Lord Desai both mentioned the work of the Commission on Social Determinants of Health led by Sir Michael Marmot. The UK is very active in this area. Late last year it hosted a global conference opened by the Prime Minister in order to take this work forward. I am pleased to say that we sponsored a resolution at the recent executive board meeting of WHO member states and we are determined to see progress in this area.
The noble Lord, Lord Crisp, raised two main issues which I am pleased to be able to respond to. I thank him for his comments on using UK expertise to support health systems in developing countries. His own report in this area has been very influential. The implementation of this report’s recommendations, now being taken forward by DfID and the Department of Health, is a great example of cross-government work. The noble Lord will have direct experience of the need for this. On our global health strategy, which he mentioned, we have a commitment for the Health Protection Agency to also develop its international role along the lines he suggested. We agree with his point on innovative staffing. The key is to get the most appropriate workforce where it is needed.
My noble friend Lord Desai called for more co-ordination. His remarks echo those of most noble Lords: this is a great challenge. He also mentioned the issue of the sovereignty of resources getting in the way of preparedness. The WHO is currently taking forward an intergovernmental process to improve the system for sharing influenza viruses with more equitable access to benefits such as vaccines. The UK strongly calls for all countries to share their influenza viruses, so to speak, to enable risk assessment and to transfer this to the manufacturers of vaccines for viruses.
I agree with the analysis made by the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, of the links between climate change and health issues. She is absolutely right. She asked what we were doing to support developing countries integrating the animal and human surveillance systems. So far we have pledged £35 million to help developing countries do this, £20 million from DfID over three years channelled through multilateral agencies, such as the WHO. I have a list here of about seven other acronyms, but you get the gist. We will reprioritise DfID’s country aid programme if we are requested to do so. We aim to determine how best to contribute to improving an animal and human surveillance system for the HPAI in vulnerable areas of the world. We want to continue working with partners on virus-sharing and better distribution of benefits, and to consider further funding once the strategic framework has been agreed in Canada at the conference I referred to.
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord McColl, for his specific question about the quantities of antiviral available to eliminate an outbreak of flu pandemic. The UK will have enough antiviral available to treat 50 per cent of its population by the end of next month. A 50 per cent attack rate is, noble Lords will appreciate, the worst-case scenario for the next pandemic based on previous pandemics this century. The World Health Organisation has an antiviral stockpile donated
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As we might have anticipated, a debate led by my noble friend, with contributions from distinguished colleagues around the House, is one of the highest quality. It has taken forward the thinking on this vital issue, and I hope that my noble friend recognises from this response how seriously the Government take the issue and how grateful we are for the committee’s work. I thank all noble Lords for their excellent contributions today.
4.44 pm
Lord Soley: My Lords, I thank everyone who has taken part for their constructive and very supportive comments. I thank the Minister for clarifying the Government’s position on the World Bank and investment in health infrastructure and for indicating the importance which the Government attach to moving forward on the animal health/human health issue, which is so important. I thank the noble Lord, Lord McColl, for building on the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Eccles, about prevention. He gave some figures concerning Africa of which I was not aware. I found them very useful. Like my noble friend on the Front Bench, I was struck by his comments on the treatment of chickens when they are slaughtered. For a while I thought he would do for chickens what Edwina Currie, when MP and a Minister, did for eggs with her comment on salmonella. Fortunately, he navigated those narrows quite well and he has given people like me a culinary lesson, which I shall bear in mind: I should be more careful when using a chopping board for chicken and vegetables.
The noble Baroness, Lady Barker, mentioned other diseases. The issue is how we look at intergovernmental organisations. She is absolutely right about the need to look at other diseases, but we had to take an example to fit into the key question for a committee of this type about how we use intergovernmental organisations. I am beginning to think that if we continue with such a committee in the future we may need to find a title which suggests the UK's expenditure on intergovernmental organisations. That is the key. If you end up looking too much at the disease as opposed to the intergovernmental organisation itself, you will do what many other committees could do either in the House of Commons or here, and I am anxious to avoid that. The noble Baroness’s comments are well made. I beg to move.
Freedom of Information Act 2000
Statement
4.47 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Bach): My Lords, with the leave of the House, I will now repeat a Statement made in another
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“With permission, Mr Speaker, I should like to make a Statement on the use of the ministerial veto under Section 53 of the Freedom of Information Act in respect of minutes of two Cabinet meetings in March 2003 relating to Iraq.
I need first to set out some background. The FoI Act has profoundly changed the relationship between citizens, and their elected representatives and the media on the one hand, and the Government and public authorities on the other. It has, as intended, made the Executive far more open and accountable. The Act provides a regime for freedom of information which is one of the most open and rigorous in the world. It was the subject of almost three years’ intensive debate, by which the original scheme was much improved and strengthened. As initially proposed, decisions of the Information Commissioner would in law have been heavily persuasive, but not binding on Ministers. This reflected the regimes in other countries, such as in Canada. In the event, that scheme was replaced by a much tougher one.
There was, however, a key balancing measure written into the Act, and accepted by Parliament. This was to provide in Section 53, that in specific circumstances Ministers—and certain others—could override a decision of the commissioner or tribunal requiring the release of information if they believed on reasonable grounds that the decision to withhold the information was in accordance with the requirements of the Act. At the time of the passage of the Bill, Ministers in both Houses provided reassurance about the use of this veto. It would not be commonplace. Undertakings were also given that, although Section 53 required a certificate by a single Cabinet Minister or law officer, any use of the veto would be subject to prior Cabinet consideration.
The Act came into force on 1 January 2005. From then until September 2008, in approximately 78,000 cases where the requested information was held by government departments, it has been released in full. Before the Act, some of it would not have been released for 30 years. Since 2006, the Information Commissioner has dealt with more than 1,500 cases involving government departments, and the Information Tribunal has dealt with more than 50 such cases, but no Section 53 veto has been used to date.
In December 2006, the Cabinet Office received a freedom of information request for Cabinet minutes and records relating to meetings it held between 7 and 17 March 2003 where the Attorney General’s legal advice concerning military action against Iraq was considered and discussed. There were two meetings of Cabinet within that period; on 13 and 17 March. The Cabinet Office refused the request, citing the Act’s exemptions for information relating to policy development and ministerial communications. In keeping with its statutory obligations, the Cabinet Office had considered the public interest in releasing the information, but found twice, on balance, that there was greater public interest in withholding it.
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The applicant duly exercised his right to ask the Information Commissioner to investigate the handling of his request. In February 2008, the commissioner reasoned, for the first time, that Cabinet minutes—these ones—should be released. The Cabinet Office appealed the commissioner’s decision to the Information Tribunal. On 27 January 2009, the tribunal published its decision. The tribunal was unanimous in deciding that the informal notes of the Cabinet meetings should be withheld, but by a majority of two to one, it decided that the public interest balance fell in favour of release of the minutes. It therefore upheld the decision of the commissioner ordering information to be disclosed, subject to some minor redactions.
Following that decision, and having taken the view of Cabinet, I have today issued a certificate under Section 53 of the Act in an appropriate form and consistent with the Act, the effect of which is that these Cabinet minutes will not now be disclosed. The conclusion I have reached rests on the assessment of the public interest in disclosure and non-disclosure. I have laid a copy of that certificate and a detailed statement of the reasons for my decision in the Libraries of both Houses. My decision was made in accordance with the Government’s policy criteria, which are annexed to my statement of reasons. Copies of all these documents have been sent to the requester and are available in the Vote Office.
To permit the commissioner’s and tribunal’s view of the public interest to prevail would, in my judgment, risk serious damage to Cabinet government, an essential principle of British parliamentary democracy. That eventuality is not in the public interest. Cabinet is the pinnacle of the decision-making machinery of government. It is the forum in which debates on the issues of greatest significance and complexity are conducted. Whether the nation was to take military action was indisputably of the utmost seriousness. However, I disagree with the reasoning of the majority of the tribunal. In its decision, it refers to the momentous nature of the decision taken, the public interest in understanding the approach taken to that decision and in the accountability of those who took the decision. It then says:
‘In the view of the majority the questions and concerns that remain about the quite exceptional circumstances of the two relevant meetings create a very strong case in favour of the formal records being disclosed’.
But in my judgment, that analysis is not correct. The convention of Cabinet confidentiality and the public interest in its maintenance are especially crucial when the issues at hand are of the greatest importance and sensitivity. Indeed, the minority view of the tribunal that the minutes should be withheld was formulated on this basis. It stated:
‘The minority view seeks to reach the decision most likely to support continued confidence that Cabinets can explore difficult issues in full and in private’.
- ‘publication would, in the minority view, be more likely than not to drive substantive collective discussion or airing of disagreement into informal channels and away from the record. This would over time damage the ability of historians and any inquiries, if constituted, to reconstruct and understand the process Cabinet followed in any particular instance. And it would not be conducive to good government’.
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Responsibility for Cabinet decisions is with the Government as a whole, not with individual Ministers: that remains the first principle of the ministerial code. The conventions of Cabinet confidentiality and collective responsibility do not exist as a convenience to Ministers. They are crucial to the accountability of the Executive to Parliament and the people. The concomitant of collective responsibility is that debate is conducted confidentially. Confidentiality serves to promote thorough decision-making. Disclosure of the Cabinet minutes in this case jeopardises that space for thought and debate at precisely the point where it has its greatest utility. In short, the damage that disclosure of minutes in this instance would do far outweighs any corresponding public interest in their disclosure.
What the minutes principally record are the deliberations of Cabinet in reaching its decisions. The actual decision, which was made at the later Cabinet on 17 March, was made public straightaway. I, as Foreign Secretary, conveyed it to the House in an oral Statement, accurately and immediately, within three hours of it being made. In that statement, Mr Speaker, I recounted the recent history leading up to that decision, and I brought to the House’s attention the information which had that day been made available to the House in order to inform the following day of debate.
Despite the powers under the royal prerogative, we put the use of force to a substantive vote. In opening that debate, our then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, spelt out in considerable detail the reasons for the Cabinet’s decision. The debate ranged across the history of non-compliance of Saddam’s regime, the negotiating history of the two UN resolutions in the run-up to military action, our discussions with allies, and much else besides. I ended that debate by fully setting out the factors the Government and Parliament had considered and should bear in mind in voting on the substantive Motion before them.
The Government subsequently released the Attorney-General’s legal advice. Furthermore, on 25 May 2006 a full disclosure statement was published by the then Attorney-General, which set out in considerable detail the considerations taken into account as the Attorney reached his opinion on the legality of military action. A number of inquiries have been conducted. There was the Hutton inquiry into the death of David Kelly, and the Butler Review of Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction. Both those inquiries published detailed reports on aspects of the decision to take military action, and we have acted on their recommendations. There has yet been more scrutiny of the decision by Parliament itself. The Intelligence and Security Committee published its report, Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction, and Select Committees have investigated the matter on a number of occasions.
In summary, the decision to take military action has been examined with a fine-tooth comb; we have been held to account for it in this House and elsewhere. We have done much to meet the public interest in openness and accountability, but the duty to advance that interest further cannot supplant the public interest in maintaining the integrity of our system of Government. This decision to exercise the veto has been subject to much thought, and it will doubtless—and rightly so—be
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