Freedom of Information

I beg to move,"That the draft Freedom of Information (Parliament and National Assembly for Wales) Order 2008, which was laid before this House on 15th July, be approved." The House is familiar with the issues that have led to the Government bringing forward this statutory instrument. The question of the House authorities being obliged by law under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to reveal our addresses and other security information has been raised in a number of debates that we have had in this House over the last couple of months; in comments made during the business statement; most importantly, in early-day motion 1620, tabled by the hon. Member for New Forest, East (Dr. Lewis) and signed by no fewer than 256 hon. Members; and, most recently, in the debate that we had on 3 July, in which I told the House of my intention to bring forward this order. We have all agreed that, to do our job properly, we have to be able to speak freely in this House, without fear or favour. We must be able to say what we believe to be true about controversial issues without feeling that to do so would put us or our families at risk. If the House authorities were to be obliged by law to publish our addresses and our travel plans, we would know that a controversial speech in this House might lead to harassment at home. This is not just about current threats but about the future. Threats could be made in respect of an individual Member at some time in the future, whether from a fixated individual or following the Member's involvement with a particular controversial issue, or threats could be made to all Members in circumstances posing new dangers that are as yet unforeseen, such as a terrorist threat focusing on Parliament. Once a Member's address is in the public domain, it cannot retrospectively be made private again without their moving home. This is also a question of the security of the public. The publication of our addresses would put at greater risk those who happened to live in the same block of flats as a number of hon. Members. I have had the opportunity of discussions with the Chair of the Joint Committee on Security, my right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, East and Wallsend (Mr. Brown), and with the parliamentary security co-ordinator. I thank them both for their important work and their advice to me as Leader of the House on this issue. The security co-ordinator's advice is that it would be a risk to put in the public domain our addresses or anything that would lead to identification of our addresses or our travel plans. That is his expert advice, but it is also clearly common sense and, I would say, the belief of all hon. Members. The statutory instrument restricts the scope of section 7(3) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. It amends the schedule 1 entry relating to both Houses, and to the National Assembly for Wales, to exclude four categories of information disclosure under the Act. First, it excludes from disclosure under the Act the residential addresses of any Member, by which I mean any address registered to an hon. Member, not just addresses in respect of which there has been an additional costs allowance claim. Secondly, it excludes from disclosure under the Act information about the regular or forthcoming travel arrangements of any Member in order to prevent the profiling of travel undertaken by any hon. Member.