Freedom of Information (Hansard, 6 March 1984)

§ Mr. David Steel (Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale)
I beg to move.
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to establish a general right of access to official information for members of the public subject to certain exemptions; to establish the machinery for enabling the right of access to be exercised by members of the public; and for connected purposes. The Bill that I seek leave to introduce is one that is being promoted by the 1984 Campaign for Freedom of Information, a body that is supported by Members of all parties and of none. Although I accept that it is unusual for a party leader to use the ten-minute rule procedure, I have accepted the request to introduce the Bill in order to draw maximum attention to the measure itself. The Bill is supported by Members of all parties, but I must apologise to some hon. Members as more volunteered to be sponsors of the Bill than those I am allowed to name this afternoon. The text of the Bill follows closely the attempt by my hon. Friend the then Member for Isle of Ely (Mr. Freud) in the 1978–79 Session to introduce legislation, an attempt which fell with the general election in 1979.
The Bill would provide for people to have the right of access to such governmental papers as affect their lives, excluding obviously such documents as would endanger the security of the nation or be detrimental to the administration of the country Such information currently falls under the Official Secrets Act, which stipulates quite simply that everything should be secret.
My Bill proposes a total change of attitude so that everything shall be open unless specific exemption RS made. Those exemptions would include defence and security matters, relations with foreign Governments, law enforcement and legal proceedings, commercial confidences and individual privacy. One important addition to the Bill introduced by my hon. Friend is that my Bill seeks to exclude opinions or advice tendered to Ministers for policy-making purposes.
It has been suggested that if there were a dispute about which matters should be exempt the person to whom judgment would fall would be the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration. I accept that there would have to be some enlargement of his office. Nevertheless, if open government costs money, that must be measured against the wastefulness of closed government. Events have proved that the costs of secrecy can be substantial.
We should establish a public right of access to categories of documents. Only last week we received the report of the Royal Commission on environmental pollution, which referred back to the reports of its predecessor in 1972. It pointed out that the Royal Commissioners repeatedly pressed for unnecessary secrecy to be reduced. It referred to what the 1972 commission said about the widespread insistence by industry, river authorities and local authorities on maintaining confidentiality about the types and amounts of industrial waste discharged to land, air, sea and rivers.
The commission commented: We doubt some of the reasons for this confidentiality … It is a practice which on occasion hinders the flow of information needed by responsible people concerned with the abatement of pollutions and it leads to risks of misunderstanding on the part of the public which may be harmful to industry and Government 739 alike … Although some progress has been made, we are not satisfied that the tasks set by the Second Report … have been tackled systematically enough or with sufficient urgency. One clear purpose of the Bill would be to establish the categories of information that were clearly open to the public.
We should allow individuals access to information on their files held by all public authorities. For example, someone on the waiting list for a local authority house should be entitled to check that the information on his personal file is correct. People should be entitled to see information on the school reports of their children or on their personal National Health Service records. Yet none of those is currently open to the public.
I referred earlier to section 2 of the Official Secrets Act, which forbids disclosure of all but authorised information. My Bill seeks widely to extend the category of authorised information. As long ago as 1972 the Franks committee reported to the Government and the House that section 2 of the Act was in need of reform. The report concluded: The main offence which section 2 creates is the unauthorised communication of official information (including documents) by a Crown servant". The report concluded: The leading characteristic of this offence is its catch-all quality. It catches all official documents and information. It makes no distinctions of kind, and no distinctions of degree. I am told that even today such documents as those relating to the meetings of the NEDC are classified as restricted and that members of that body are required to sign the Official Secrets Act.
The Franks report 12 years ago concluded: Any law which impinges on the freedom of information in a democracy should be much more tightly drawn. That is what the Bill seeks to do.
I hope that the Bill will receive widespread support today. I hope that testing opinion in the new Parliament will lead a Member who draws a high place in the ballot next Session to pursue the matter. Possibly Members of another place will do so. I accept that the Government of the day, whoever they happen to be, are unlikely to act in this matter.
If there were ever a subject in which the collective will of Parliament should prevail over that of the Government of the day, this surely is it. I am reinforced in that view by some words of the Home Secretary, when in opposition, in a debate on the Official Secrets Act in 1978. He said that that section of the Act"— section 2— is simply indefensible, yet it is still there. Why is that? It is still there, in spite of the Government's assurances, because they have not had the courage to fight and overcome the strenuous rearguard action mounted in the more obscurantist corners of Whitehall. That is the real explanation."—[Official Report, 15 June 1978; Vol. 951 c. 1271.] I do not expect the Home Secretary to join us today because it is not in the nature of Governments for their members to do so, but I believe that the Government have to be convinced that, whatever the immediate advantages to Governments of secrecy, their policies will be more fully considered, better understood, more acceptable and more readily implemented if they allow Parliament and the public greater participation in policy making.
We are fortunate in having plenty of other legislation to guide us. The United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, the Netherlands and France have all 740 introduced positive laws on public information because, I believe, they have recognised that, regardless of which party is in office, the processes of government and the power of the Government over the individual are increasing all the time.
Therefore, we must look to democratic Parliaments to keep the balance in proper order. That is the main reason why we should follow, rather belatedly, those other democracies. Great Britain is at the moment quite firmly among that class of democracies in which the Government's privilege to conceal is apparently valued more highly than is the people's right to know. It is that state of affairs that my Bill seeks to bring to an end.

§ Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover)
rose——

§ Mr. Speaker
Does the hon. Member wish to oppose the Bill?

§ Mr. Skinner
I have listened very carefully to what the leader of the Liberal Party, the right hon. Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale (Mr. Steel), has had to say about the fairly woolly proposal he has put forward, but I am somewhat displeased by the very narrow definition he has given of what is needed. It is mainly for that reason that I feel it necessary to oppose to some extent what he has said. Many people will want to know, after listening for 10 minutes to the right Gentleman, just what people will be able to get to know if his Bill is passed. The only specific matters that I recall the right hon. Gentleman mentioning were the waiting lists for council houses, which is admirable, and National Health Service files, which is also admirable. However, there were some other matters which he did not touch on.
Once this Pandora's box is opened, it will take some closing. I am thinking in particular about political parties and the right of the public to know what makes a political party tick and where its money comes from. The Labour party, which is struggling with its finances, is at least able to publish every year every penny that comes to it. The Tory party gets a lot of money from various companies throughout the country. Most of it is logged by the Labour party research department, because some of our friends see to that.
If the right hon. Gentleman wants to introduce a Bill about freedom of information, he must be prepared to lay it on the line that the finances of the Liberal party are all clear and above board and that every Liberal Member knows about them.

§ Mr. Steel
Of course they are.

§ Mr. Skinner
The leader of the Liberal party says "Of course they are." I remind the House that there is a slush fund in the Liberal party which only a few people know about. [Interruption.] Now we know who is doing the heckling, Mr. Speaker. Liberal and Social Democratic Members are behaving like hooligans because they do not like to hear the truth. The truth is that there is a slush fund and that only a few people in the Liberal party, including the Leader, know about it. When the previous leader had his hands on that slush fund, we know precisely what happened to some of it.
When this box is opened by a Freedom of Information Bill, I want to have a right to examine Liberal party accounts, just as people have a right to examine Labour and Tory party accounts. I also want to be able to find out 741 precisely what the Social Democratic party accounts are. Where does that party's money come from? Information has been passed to me that in the past 12 months — [Interruption.] The public has a right to know. During 1983 receipts from membership fell by £175,000 and other unspecified donations to the Social Democrats rose by £310,000. The public has a right to know what makes political parties tick. Where did those unspecified donations to the Social Democratic party come from?
Those are some of the things that the leader of the Liberal party forgot to mention and would never wish to mention. But there is another reason why I oppose the Bill. Half-way through the Session, we find ourselves dealing with a matter of great importance. Many of us would wish to support a much broader Bill, but the narrowly defined one that the leader of the Liberal party is trying to sneak through is a hit of propaganda and gimmickry. The right hon. Gentleman knows full well that it does not stand a cat in hell's chance of making any progress.
The Campaign for Freedom of Information is run by Des Wilson, who was anxious to find an hon. Member to sponsor the Bill. He carted it around Labour Members because he knew that most Labour Members—if not all—wished to support such a measure. We told him that such a Bill would not stand a chance of being passed during the present Parliament and that he would do better to use the private Member's Bill procedure. The leader of the Liberal party has ended up as Des Wilson's poodle. I have to tell him, too, that I do not believe that the leader of the Social Democratic party would have done what he has done. [Interruption.] The alliance Members are heckling again, Mr. Speaker. They cannot stand it. It is a delight to hear them jabber away, but they do not worry me——

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. It is not such a delight for me.

§ Mr. Skinner
It is too late, and the right hon. Gentleman has not defined precisely what he wants the Bill to do.
There have been some serious attempts to get such a Bill passed. The leader of the Liberal party mentioned one of them. However, on 6 February 1981, Frank Hooley, who then represented Sheffield, Heeley, introduced a Bill under the proper procedure which stood more than half a chance of succeeding, although the Tory party did its best to stop it. On that Friday, more than 100 Labour Members turned up to support my hon. Friend, but, although the leader of the Liberal party was not on a sabbatical on that day, he did not turn up to support the Bill.