European Union Bill

The remedy that my hon. Friend seeks can be obtained by Committees and the House being energetic in holding Ministers to account for the positions that they take and for the way in which they agree to whatever compromise is eventually negotiated. Importantly, the proposed new clause does not specify in any way to what ““relevant documentation”” refers. That came up earlier in the debate. It is not clear, for example, whether ““relevant documentation”” covers so-called non-papers submitted by member states, which are intended to be ““without prejudice”” contributions to discussions. Does it include Council working group documents that give the position in summary of each and every member state on a particular issue? There could easily be widely diverging views on what comprises ““relevant documentation””. That lack of clarity could also cause confusion in relation to UK documents. Reference was made during the debate to whether legal advice given to the Government would be required to be made available under the terms of the proposed new clause. If so, that would clearly undermine the principle of legal professional privilege, the significance of which the Information Commissioner has generally recognised in the context of the Freedom of Information Act. Governments need to receive free and frank legal advice without fearing that it must be drafted in a form that is suitable for later public consumption. Hon. Members may argue that we should try to use the current renegotiation of the access to documents regulation to implement the provisions of proposed new clause 1, but that measure would take us a long way beyond what would be acceptable in terms of releasing documents that are used at EU level for deliberations and decision making. The positions of other member states in respect of the documents that they make available to their Parliaments and public vary dramatically. Domestic regulations in several states lay out specific criteria on which documents can and cannot be released. Such criteria often allow for a great deal of discretion for Ministers or their officials, or impose strict limitations on the type and origin of documents to be released. In some member states, the approach is to accept the general principle that as much documentation as possible should be released, with the only limitations being the prevention of harm, with harm often being defined in terms of personal, legal or economic impact.