Freedom of Information (Additional Public Authorities) Order 2008

My Lords, many years ago when the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, was in another place and I was where the Minister sits now, answering questions on agriculture, I was aware of the noble Lord as a thorough-going and extremely effective nuisance. He asked difficult questions on subjects such as TSE and organophosphates. It is a pleasure to find him now on the same side as me, at least on this subject. I remember the Freedom of Information Bill coming through this House. I am delighted that this Government took it through in their first year in office; had they left it until six months later they would never have done it. Certainly they have been slow to pursue its implications and reinforce its coverage ever since. I hope that when we see the results of their review it will tend in the direction that the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, suggests. Certainly it is illogical that schools should be covered and academies should not. Their independence is merely a matter of words rather than function. From personal experience I would also include in this such bodies as UCAS and the Higher Education Statistics Agency. They are clearly within the public sector. I have had personal experience of this and my appeals to the Information Commissioner against some universities’ refusals to provide me with information took two years to resolve—a long time—because the commissioner is underresourced. The information I was asking for, and which I have now obtained from all English universities at a cost to the public purse which must be around £10,000, has all the time been available from either UCAS or the Higher Education Statistics Agency. I have expressed myself willing to pay for it and they have refused. This is a great waste of public money on the amour propre of some minor government agencies, just because they happen to have been left out of the Freedom of Information Act. The idea that one should have to go round schools to obtain information which the Department for Children, Schools and Families has is ridiculous. It does not happen; the DCSF is extremely helpful and responsive to freedom of information requests. Yet these outlying bits cause great cost to the public sector and great delay to me for no good reason. I hope that when we come to tidy up the Freedom of Information Act and its scope we will find that these agencies and obvious parts of the public sector are included in it. I do not go as far as the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, in saying that the scope should go out to the fringes of privatised activity, but we should certainly think about it. I am going to listen carefully to what my noble friend on the Front Bench says, if he chooses to cover this subject. The Act should include everything that the clearly public sector does. It has been a great innovation of this Government. I am delighted that they have done it. I am grateful to them for the use I have made for it and the use I have seen made of it, and most of all in the difference it has made to the relationship between the Government and the governed. I hope they will polish it a bit.