Business of the House

Since I last raised the question of the judges' dangerous decision that MPs' home addresses should all be published, the number of signatories to early-day motion 1620 has risen from 77 to 159. [That this House believes that the home address of any hon. or Rt. hon. Member should not be published if he or she objects to publication on grounds of privacy or personal security.] Every party in the House, including independent and minority parties, is well represented among those signatories. May we therefore have a debate on this topic, preferably with a vote at the end? That would enable me to lay before the House interesting facts such as that the Information Commissioner has gone out of his way to tell me that he never wanted the addresses to be published in the first place, that this was added by the appeal tribunal and the judges, and that I have just received a letter from the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, the hon. Member for North Swindon (Mr. Wills)—the Minister with responsibility for freedom of information—in response to my freedom of information request for the publication of judges' home addresses. In it, he says that he is refusing the request because"““High Court Judges, whilst certainly public figures, are entitled to a private life and levels of privacy that accord with this…It is my view that routinely to disclose the personal addresses of judges would breach their privacy and would be unfair.””" Unfortunately, he does not say anything about security, which ought to be the overriding consideration in both cases.