Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill

This is a bad day for Parliament—a sad day. Members should understand what we would be doing by giving the Bill a Third Reading and sending it to the other place. We are saying to the public that although we only recently passed an important piece of legislation, which should be a terrific jewel in the crown of the Government, to introduce freedom of information in this country at last—a measure that has been in force only two and a half years—we are now moving to exempt Parliament and Members of Parliament from the provisions of that Act. If we give the Bill a Third Reading, and if it ever becomes an Act of Parliament, we shall be saying to the public, ““We believe in freedom of information. We have enacted a major statute on freedom of information that applies to all public bodies—police authorities, health trusts and so on—but we alone are exempt. We are above the law.”” We shall be saying that it is right and proper that everybody should abide by freedom of information legislation except Members of Parliament—that we do not wish to be subject to the law. That would be an extraordinary thing for the House to say. It would inevitably bring this place into complete contempt—subject to the ridicule of the public. How would the public judge us? After all our fine words in this place about openness, transparency and wanting everyone to see what is being done in the name of democracy, we are saying that when it comes to freedom of information we are giving ourselves an exemption. Such a proposal is ridiculous and it is extraordinary that the Bill has not been laughed out of court. It is absolute nonsense. There were years of thinking behind the Freedom of Information Act. We were one of the last democracies to introduce such legislation and for years, through the late 1980s and the 1990s, we looked at legislation in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States and learned from it. In 1993, I introduced the Right to Know Bill, which was based on best practice in other countries at the time. If a Labour Government had been elected in 1992, the then shadow Home Secretary—now Lord Hattersley—would have introduced legislation but, like the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (David Maclean), I was lucky enough to be able to promote a private Member’s Bill and picked up the measure that the then shadow Home Secretary had drafted. We had the help of the Campaign for Freedom of Information and Mr. Maurice Frankel, and other experts on the subject, who had studied freedom of information measures all over the world, in producing a state of the art Bill. It had commitment and support from the then leader of the Labour party, Neil, now Lord, Kinnock and, subsequently, the passionate support of the next leader of the Labour party, John Smith. Labour was committed to introducing freedom of information legislation in the event of its forming a Government. I was thrilled when we became a Government and the Prime Minister said that we would go ahead. He set up a Cabinet Sub-Committee, of which I was honoured to be member, to examine how we would change the good thinking in the Right to Know Bill and all the work that had been done around the world into a White Paper, in preparation for an Act of Parliament.