§ Mr. WaddingtonI beg to move amendment No. 2, in page 3, page 14, leave out paragraph (a).
§ Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Ernest Armstrong)With this it will be convenient to take amendments Nos. 3 and 4.
§ Mr. WaddingtonThese three amendments are small technical amendments to the long title and financial provisions clause and are necessitated by the narrow scope of the Bill which now applies only to local authorities, imposes no burdens on industry and does not involve the incurring of expense by a Minister of the Crown or a Government Department.
§ Amendment agreed to.
§ Amendments made: No. 3, in title, line 3, leave out 'institutions and persons' and insert 'and'.
§ No. 4, in title, line 5, leave out from 'information' to end of line 6.—[Mr. Kirkwood.]
§ Order for Third Reading read.
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§ Mr. KirkwoodI beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
I shall confine my remarks to expressing my gratitude, particularly to my fellow sponsor the hon. Member for Oxford, East (Mr. Norris), who is unavoidably delayed on parliamentary business overseas. He has been a tower of strength to me and his enthusiasm and skill have been a considerable asset to all the Bill's sponsors in their work. I also thank the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith), although he is not able to be present. His sage, philosophical advice has been of great 955 assistance to me throughout the passage of the Bill. However, I must repeat that we all wished for a somewhat different outcome, but we are thankful for what we have.
It is remarkable that there is now such a wide measure of cross-party support for further progress to be made in this area and I hope that the Government will note that. More than 140 voluntary organisations have helped us to scrutinise the detail of the original legislation which received a Second Reading. I hope that the Government will make use of some of that work in future scrutiny of the regulations that will be spawned by the Bill.
I particularly want to mention the Freedom of Information Campaign and to thank its director, Mr. Maurice Frankle, for his dedication, knowledge and help during the Bill's passage. Certainly, I would be pounds lighter from worry if he had not been ever present at my side. As this is the first time I have had the privilege to introduce legislation, it would be churlish not to thank the House authorities and the staff of the Public Bill Office, especially Mr. Douglas Millar, for their courtesy and their inexhaustible patience with requests made by me as father of this private Member's Bill.
Last but not least, the Minister has had a difficult role, acting as an agent for other Departments and carrying the can. He strikes a hard bargain, but I have always found him to be fair. We were worried earlier that we might sink into mutual recrimination, but I am pleased to report that we have not ever even approached that.
The issue of public access to personal information will rightly continue to generate public interest and debate. The Bill is a worthwhile legislative step. It establishes the principle of access to manual files, which is of importance in itself. It is a small step in what remains a long journey towards a freer, more open society in all aspects of life in Britain today.
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§ Mrs. Virginia Bottomley (Surrey, South-West)I support the Bill with greater confidence than I did on Second Reading. Bills such as this tend to be supported only by those who see the matter in black and white. I have always had deep reservations about steaming ahead with wholesale open access to all personal files and I must ask the Minister to oversee the introduction of regulations carefully, particularly those involving exceptions.
The disparaging remarks of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Mr. Corbett) about the difficulties facing UCCA suggested that he had little understanding of how difficult it is to make a full and frank personal assessment of an individual. Anybody who is trying to make an assessment or keep a record must strike a balance between acting on his own judgment based on evidence and merely producing a document that is full of bromides and inanities. The danger is that open access to personal files can result in the use of the telephone euphemisms or a failure to record sensitive information.
The sector about which I am most concerned is that of the social services with regard to child abuse, potential suicide attempts or any other manner of human behaviour where there seems to be a perfectly straightforward explanation, but the professional involved, on the basis of his or her experience, training and judgment, has reason to have grave reservations about the explanation that he or she has been given by the individual involved. Inevitably, in such cases confronting the individual with the professional's reservations is fraught with problems.
956 None of us would dispute that good practice means openness, but in some cases anybody involved in these decisions will experience difficulties and the thought that inevitably files will be opened and available could too easily lead to euphemisms and a failure to make proper records.
The modifications that have occurred are an improvement. However, I recognise that there is another side to the argument. In Committee examples were given of inaccurate information being incorporated in reports. My hon. Friend the Member for Oxford, East (Mr. Norris) spoke of 18 per cent. of medical records in Oxford being found to have some sort of omission or inaccuracy. In Leicester 1.5 per cent. of the medical records were found to have the sex of the individual wrongly recorded. We all know how easy it is for assertions to be made, for example, by school teachers in the preparation of court reports on the basis of hearsay and reputation. I am not arguing that this is a black and white matter, but it is right and proper to proceed with caution and carefully to monitor the progress.
Much has been made of the possible financial costs of the legislation : there are arguments which I find plausible that there has been an overstatement of the extent to which people will make use of these rights. I take the financial implications with a pinch of salt.
Another important point which has emerged, with regard to the subversion of freedom of information is the way in which some authorities have charged exorbitant prices for making information available. That seems a thoroughly unsatisfactory outcome, but it is what happens to over-idealistic legislation which has not been thought through as to the difficulties and detailed problems of implementing it. In all of my dealings with local authorities the constant refrain is, "Why does Parliament have so many good ideas that we must implement and carry out which require more training and manpower and changing practices?" Recently the police force has had to change its way of working with regard to the information that is at its disposal. I am concerned that if we had proceeded with this Bill on the original basis, the unintended consequences of the well-intentioned aims and aspirations of the sponsors of the Bill would have had effects about which I would have had great reservations.
In supporting the Bill on Third Reading arid congratulating all those who have worked so hard to negotiate it as far as this stage, I should like to reiterate once more that the changes and modifications that have occurred along the way are, in my view, improvements.
§ Mr. CorbettI join in the congratulations to the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Mr. Kirkwood). He knows well enough — he will probably share this view—that this is not the Bill that he, I or many other hon. Members wanted to see being debated and hopefully given a Third Reading and sent on to another place. However, that is the way of the world.
At one point during the Committee deliberations the Minister described himself as an errand boy. I think he put himself down too much because, although we are far apart on detail, his attitude has been to be as helpful as possible. I acknowledge that it was a difficult job collecting views from colleagues in a range of other Government Departments; none the less, we have a record of the assurances he has given the Committee and the House on 957 the regulations for the sectors which are the subject of this Bill. We have his word, which I am perfectly happy to accept, that best endeavours will be made to see that those assurances are carried out.
I pick no quarrel with the hon. Member for Surrey, South-West (Mrs. Bottomley) about the need to have sensible exceptions, particularly with respect to sensitive records, whether produced on pupils at school or in any other part of the education system. Nobody is suggesting for a moment that these records should not be frank and well based. This is what the argument is about. One of the aims of this Bill will be to persuade those who readily write these reports and who have to make judgments as part of that process to stop to think whether they can justify what they write. We do not want teachers who are tittle-tattles, because these records follow children the whole way through the educational process. I have seen some, not in the city of Birmingham but elsewhere, with no more than an initial. The teacher who put that piece of paper in the file may be untraceable because he has long since changed schools, or could have gone to a different part of the country. It is that to which we object.
We hope that the discretion that will be exercised within this Bill will lead to better record-keeping and to records that will assist. After all, the keeping of these records in these sectors and those in the Bill as first published is all about trying to make the syste more efficient. They are supposed to be there to help. They are not there to punish or to chastise.
Derogatory or critical remarks are bound to be made in some circumstances, whether about the behaviour of former council tenants over a property they had 10 years ago and left without paying the rent or about some suspicion that circumstances at home are affecting the learning capabilities or development of a child at school. I acknowledge absolutely that it is right that such information should be recorded, but we are saying that, when it is written down, the person or official doing so must justify to himself or herself, and if need be to the record holder or the record holder's parents, that this assessment or judgment is made in all honesty.
The very worst that will happen under this Bill is that someone will say that he wants to see his social services record. He will pay his 50p, or whatever it might be if there is to be a charge, and, accepting that those judgments in those difficult sectors have been made in a well-intentioned manner, the person concerned could say that the record is wrong and that a mistake has been made. One hopes that he would have a right to attach a comment on a judgment made about him.
I say again to the hon. Lady that, when these regulations are drawn up, proper care has to be taken—perhaps no more so than with social services. The Minister needs no lectures about this. I think that we have all had letters from an organisation called Parent to Parent Information on Adoption Services. I will not read the whole of the letter from the general secretary but the organisation makes the strong point that it thinks that it is wrong to prevent prospective or existing adoptive and foster parents, or anyone who has been adopted or fostered, from having access to the files relating to them to ensure that those files do not contain any inaccuracies. It is critical in this whole adoption process that there is 958 absolute openness because mistakes can be made. However, every sensible step should be taken to ensure that mistakes are kept to a minimum.
The letter continues:
Many of the subsequent decisions about applicants are made by people other than those compiling the records on the strength of those records.That is what happens with record keeping. There is a chain reaction, as records do not necessarily stay with the one person familiar with that file, but are passed from person to person within an organisation. In such matters as adoption and fostering, it is absolutely critical that the records are the best that can be maintained.I hope that the House will give the Bill a Third Reading. I hope that coming events may be delayed long enough to ensure that the Bill reaches the statute book.
§ Mr. WaddingtonI believe that we are indebted to my hon. Friend the Member for Surrey, South-West (Mrs. Bottomley) for her contribution to this debate. My hon. Friend has done a useful job in restoring the proper balance. Access to personal files is one of those matters that The Guardian, in its usual simplistic way, bills as one that the good support and the bad oppose. It is worth pointing out that it is not as simple as that.
I do not agree with my hon. Friend that the resource implications of access will be minor. Although that may be true with regard to this Bill, one should bear in mind that in Whitehall, as I mentioned in Committee, there are 12 million linear feet of records. The imagination boggles at the idea of people having access to all 12 million linear feet of those records. In the United States, the freedom to information legislation goes far wider than this Bill. That legislation was initially estimated to have cost the Federal Bureau of Investigation about £50,000, but it now costs the FBI £9.5 million a year. It also now employs no fewer than 300 additional staff. To give personal access to records is not as simple or as cheap as some people think.
I give my deep thanks to the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Mr. Kirkwood) for introducing the Bill and for being such a pleasant colleague in Committee. I give my thanks to those who have taken part in our interesting deliberations. I also express my thanks to the civil servants in the various Departments for all the work that they have done. Few people realise how much work goes into the servicing of private Members' Bills—I had no idea until this year. I first came to the House in 1968, but it is only this year that I have been an almost permanent occupier of this place on Fridays. I have not liked it very much, in spite of the good company. However, this year I have learnt how much work goes into each private Member's Bill in the Department concerned.
The Bill before us is a complicated Bill and involved the work of not just one Department but a number. I give my thanks to all those who played a part and, once again, I congratulate the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire.
§ Question put and agreed to.
§ Bill accordingly read the Third time, and passed.