§ 5. Mr. Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield)If the information held on the knowledge network computer system will be available to the public on the internet. [124266]
§ The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr. Graham Stringer)My right hon. Friend the Minister for the Cabinet Office has made it clear in written answers to the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire 930 (Mr. Lansley) that as much information as possible that is held on the knowledge network will be made available to the public.
§ Mr. GrieveI understood the right hon. Lady to tell the House on 8 March that all the information on the knowledge network would be put on the net. Indeed, she provided a precise reassurance to hon. Members to that effect. What or who has made her change her mind?
§ Mr. StringerAll the information that it is possible to put on the net will be put on the net. Clearly, some of the information that will be held on the knowledge network will be commercially confidential, and it would be wrong of this Government or any other Government to make that information available on the net.
§ Mr. Andrew Lansley (South Cambridgeshire)The hon. Gentleman has not answered my hon. Friend's question. The right hon. Lady said:
All the work done in that unit will be put on the net so there will be no question of work being done that even the hon. Gentleman—that is a reference to me—will not see.—[Official Report, 8 March 2000; Vol. 345, c. 993.]Why cannot the hon. Gentleman simply restate what his right hon. Friend said: all the work that is being done will be put on the net? Otherwise, the House and the wider public will know that, as in so many other respects, the work being done inside government is being used for party political purposes, for the Labour party's gain.
§ Mr. StringerThe hon. Gentleman cannot possibly wish us to put commercially sensitive information on the net. The Government whom he supported did not do that. In his evidence to the Select Committee on Public Administration, Sir Richard Wilson, the Cabinet Secretary, made it clear that the knowledge network would not be used for party political purposes. [Interruption.] I am not surprised that the hon. Gentleman gets it wrong and carries on chuntering. He supports a party that left the Government's IT in the neolithic age. When the Conservative Government left office, it was not possible for Departments even to communicate with one another by e-mail, so it is not surprising that the hon. Gentleman is ignorant of what is going on.