Freedom of Information

I welcome this order. As someone who received a credible death threat, which was sorted out by the forcible deportation of the person in question by the South Yorkshire police, I was truly astonished when I read of the Information Commissioner's ruling that all of our private addresses should be published. I can think of no better definition of a burglar's charter because many of us do not live at our addresses at weekends or during the holidays. It was even more astonishing when two Law Lords, or two lord justices, upheld his suggestion. What happened calls into question the Freedom of Information Act. Those who want to know where we live can find out. Journalists from The Mail on Sunday forcibly came into my late mother's home when she was suffering from a severe stroke to try to extract some tittle-tattle about me when I was a Minister. We cannot protect ourselves against that. If people really want to know our addresses, they can be found, and they are published at the time of an election. We need to consider the matter more widely, however, and I welcome the fact that this statutory instrument shows that the Freedom of Information Act is amendable. I regret that it has to be amended. If the Information Commissioner were competent—I cannot believe that he is about to be awarded an extra £40,000 next Monday, at a time of huge public pay restraint—we would not have had to take up the House's time with this legislation. Let us look at the Freedom of Information Act to see how it might be amended so that it can apply to other public bodies, particularly the BBC—it extracts a large amount of obligatory tax from my constituents, even though few of them watch it—to find out about the salaries and expenses of its employees. Let it also be amended to apply to other organs of high public importance. Frankly, the press is much more important than many Departments, in terms of its actual impact on people's lives. Let the Act be amended soon to include the organs of the media, so that all of their expenses, salaries, payments and other financial arrangements can be put into the public domain. I am a former president of the National Union of Journalists; freedom of information legislation is in my DNA. The Information Commissioner, however, is not up to the job and we need to extend the Freedom of Information Act to cover many other public bodies including the BBC and the wider media. I stop at that point, leaving other hon. Members to make their points.