Freedom of Information Act 2000

Baroness Shephard of Northwold Excerpts

Tuesday 17th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Shephard of Northwold]

My Lords, I have two rather narrow points to make in this valuable debate so brilliantly introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy.

First, it is obviously in the interests not only of historical accuracy but, I would add, of transparency in the democratic process that there should be access to Cabinet and other government papers.

Secondly, if such access is not well structured and organised, and accompanied by well observed conventions, the public will inevitably be more interested in the political disclosures involved than in greater historical understanding of the events concerned. I believe the increasing use of FOI requests illustrates this point.

The conventions are all-important. Without them, the noble Lord’s objectives of a clearer and more accurate understanding of the past could be at risk. The convention that a Government cannot examine the files of their predecessor was breached by Ruth Kelly as Education Secretary in 2006, when she sought to make public her predecessors’ decisions on teachers debarred from working with children—the famous List 99—with no prior consultation. This was regrettable. It was an enormously sensitive issue, which was, inevitably, hyped up by the media. This resulted in inaccurate press coverage, problems for children, for schools and for individuals and, in the end, a negligible increase in public understanding of the issues concerned.

There may not have been time to develop conventions with the Scottish Parliament. Something tells me that the Scottish Government might not be too interested in discussing these things, but their decision unilaterally to reduce the no-disclosure period to 15 years—again with no consultation with their Westminster counterparts, who, by definition, are the ones who will be affected—raises a number of questions, not least about political motivation.

It is obvious that the public interest is served by the orderly and properly structured publication of government decisions, but without observed conventions the more accurate and informed public understanding of past events that we all want could be threatened by short-term sensationalism and even political manipulation. The conventions and their observance are key in achieving the noble aims so eloquently described by the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy.