§ 4. Helen Jackson (Sheffield, Hillsborough)If he will review the way in which Government Departments publicise their services. [1873]
§ The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr. Christopher Leslie)Ministers are responsible for the information output of their Departments. The Government are constantly looking at ways of improving the overall information strategy for the public.
§ Helen JacksonI am sure that the very welcome new boy to the Cabinet Office will agree that Government 781 achievements are so satisfactory that they need no spin. Will he, with the new Information Commissioner, institute a new drive to ensure the growth of a culture of openness in every Department about the information it puts out? That information should be freely and easily accessible to the public, as well as easy to read and simple to understand.
§ Mr. LeslieI thank my hon. Friend for her kind comments. It is nice that so many people have turned up for my first Question Time. I agree with my hon. Friend about the principle of freedom of information, and that is why the Government have introduced for the first time a statutory right of access to information held by all public authorities. However, there is a wider principle involving the need to promote proactively the rights and benefits that Government policies have introduced, including the pensioners minimum income guarantee, the working families tax credit and the national minimum wage.
§ Virginia Bottomley (South-West Surrey)I congratulate the Minister and endorse the question asked by the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough (Helen Jackson), but I ask the Government to be much more modest in their claims. I congratulate the Government on failing to produce their annual report this year. In areas such as mine—the Minister of State will know this because she cut her political teeth there in 1984 fighting in a by-election with me—one in 10 people now wait more than a year for in-patient care, the schools are warned that they will have to move to a four-day week and we have the lowest police funding in the country. The spin and rhetoric lead to great disappointment. Is the Minister aware that in areas such as Surrey we see public squalor amid private affluence?
§ Mr. LeslieI thank the right hon. Lady for her comments. She might not have noticed that we have just had a general election, which probably rendered publication of an annual report this year something of a duplication. She mentioned several other matters, of which some at least were a little subjective. It is important to have good, independent and audited information, and that is what the Government Information and Communication Service is all about.