Protection of Freedoms Bill

I am grateful to the Minister for what is a very valiant attempt, if I may say so. I will not detain the House at length, as I am about to withdraw the amendment. However, if she refers to the column in Hansard where I originally raised this point, during the passage of the Localism Bill, she will see that that is not quite the case. There are many instances where services have gone to private contractors that people just cannot find out about. For example, on the issue of parking tickets, many people are very suspicious about the way that private ticket companies operate. People suspect that the ticketing is a revenue-raising operation rather than an attempt to ensure that the traffic can move safely and securely through town. When people want to find out about that, they cannot do so because private sector companies are not covered by the Act. As I say, the Minister does not have to persuade me, but all the Members of Parliament in the other place will be besieged by constituents in the years to come unless this Government make good on their pledge to get this information back into the public domain. There will be a heavy price to pay—that is all that I can say. For the record, I am afraid that I am not persuaded by her arguments, for what it is worth. Of course post-legislative scrutiny is a good thing, and the Minister is quite right to bang the drum about that. I support the Government on that, but they have ignored their own good practice in this case by removing such matters from the Act in having already taken a piecemeal decision about this. However, I remain willing to be persuaded about the Government’s good intentions. I believe that the Government want to extend transparency, but I make the point—I tried to make this point to the noble Lord, Lord McNally, as well—that open data is an admirable project, on which the Government are doing great work. That work was begun by the previous Government, and I support this Government in the way that they are taking it forward so vigorously. That is a great thing, but it is different from freedom of information. There is one crucial difference. As regards open data, it is for the Government to decide what data they release. They have been open and are pushing the transparency agenda vigorously—all credit to them for that—but the Government decide on that matter. As regards freedom of information, the citizen decides what information he wants. It is bottom up as opposed to top down. They complement one another and they should be working together, but they are different. That is not an adequate excuse in my view. However, I have detained the Committee long enough and, for the time being, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment 151C withdrawn. Amendment 151D not moved. Amendment 151E Moved by