Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill

My hon. Friend has dealt with the general point, but let me give another specific example. Obviously, no one wants a Member who represents a constituency outside London and who legitimately claims an allowance to cover the cost of living in London to have to state whether he or she has spent the money on installing a yellow bathroom suite or a white bathroom suite, or on improving a flat that he or she is renting from Mr. X or Mrs. Y. There is clearly a limit, and we all understand that. What is of proper concern to the public is information that allows people to know that we are using our money properly. It is perfectly proper for individual Members of Parliament, acting on behalf of their constituents, to visit, for example, a Government agency to inquire about work that is being done. I am having a number of problems with the tax credit service, and am writing a great many letters to a man who is in charge of it, whose office is somewhere in the north of England. I have asked to meet him. I hope that he will come to London to discuss the cases of concern with me, but if he says ““I cannot go to London but you are welcome to come and see me,? of course it will be justifiable for me to travel to Blackburn, or wherever it is, on behalf of my constituents, and the disclosure of the cost of my train journey will be covered. What emerged in the Scottish example was that there had been a misuse of funds. A Member of the Scottish Parliament had wrongly claimed expenses for a trip to the party conference. I think he paid the price, and gave up his position as leader of his party in the Parliament. Clearly the public need to know that we are not mixing party spending, which is accountable and is governed by specific rules—we raise money for it locally and receive Short money; discussions are taking place about whether there should be other sources—with our parliamentary expenditure. All this, obviously, is about our expenditure in our capacity as Members of Parliament. It does not affect anything done by the Under-Secretary of State in her capacity as Minister; that is dealt with separately, quite properly. I am sure that, like the rest of us, the hon. Lady understands the distinction. She knows exactly what are her constituency obligations, which she will continue to fulfil, and she is perfectly entitled to claim recompense for money that she properly expends for that purpose. A culture has begun to develop in which public authorities are open to scrutiny. There was a great deal of resistance to it originally, but we all recognise that if the taxpayer, the council tax payer or the business rate payer is paying for members of police authorities, chief executives, councillors or other public figures, he or she is entitled to know how that money is being spent. There used to be large abuses and considerable suspicion. Polls conducted by organisations such as Ipsos MORI have revealed the level of discontent, but—the point made by the hon. Member for Walsall, North is very germane in this context—the discontent is not normally with the local Member of Parliament. People have a relationship with their MPs. They see them in their communities. They know what they do, and can judge whether they are active and competent. But they have a general concern: they feel that Parliament does not do its job properly, and that MPs are abusing the system. That is the central point in the debate. We must ensure that the House of Commons collectively is seen to be following the rules that we think everyone else should follow. There might be an argument for the Bill if there had been any discussion of the issue before—if any Select Committee had conducted an inquiry, or if any evidence had been provided that it was a matter of public concern. The Bill is unusual, in that, however well motivated it may be, it has not justified its further progress because it has not received what was described by the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills as the pre-legislative scrutiny that Bills should be given. Private Members’ Bills come from a different place, as it were, but we are entitled to say ““Hang on a minute: is the case made?? One of our complex tasks if we were thinking of adopting these proposals—the tribunal case dealt with this very well—would be to explain to the public the interrelationship of freedom of information legislation and data protection legislation, both of which are not uncomplicated. Freedom of information governing United Kingdom public bodies applies throughout the United Kingdom, but there is separate legislation for exclusively Scottish bodies in Scotland. Northern Ireland has a separate regime, but it is governed by the legislation that applies here. The Northern Ireland and Welsh Assemblies are governed by the general proposition; there is no proposition in the Bill that either should be exempted, although that would be possible because their public authorities are on the same list as those specified in the United Kingdom legislation. The Bill does not propose an exemption for the London Assembly. The proposed exemption is solely for us—for the House of Commons and the House of Lords. It strikes me as ill-considered to concentrate on one part of the United Kingdom’s constitutional arrangements, and to suggest exempting two Houses of the United Kingdom Parliament but no other Parliament or Assembly. There is no argument in favour of such a piecemeal approach. I hope Members will conclude that, although there may be an issue of concern, there is no evidence to support the proposals in respect of communications between Members of Parliament and public authorities; and that exempting other parliamentary arrangements, such as expenses and administration, from the legislation and leaving them to our discretion would therefore be a move in entirely the wrong direction.