UK Parliament / Open data

Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill

My Lords, I am slightly worried about the speed which is being talked about by the noble Lords, Lord Kerr and Lord Tyler. I have no objection to getting up-to-date information but, if I understand correctly, we are talking about the information going out the following day. There have to be security implications. When I held of the office of Speaker, I was warned that there are fixated individuals who watch, stalk, make a pest of themselves and can be even more dangerous than that. The information would not only show up who the Minister was meeting but could well show up the venue, the place where the Minister was meeting. If it showed on a regular basis over a number of weeks that a meeting was taking place at a certain venue—let us say that the Minister by preference wanted to meet in his or her native city and said, “Make it a Friday at my constituency central office”—it could throw up a pattern of where the Minister was every Friday or every Monday for that matter, before they moved down to Westminster. I put that in as a word of caution. If the information says that the Minister met a representative from BT or Centrica, I would not be too unhappy, but if it showed a Minister meeting at a certain venue, I would worry about that.

About this proceeding contribution

Reference

749 c167 

Session

2013-14

Chamber / Committee

House of Lords chamber
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