Protection of Freedoms Bill

Debate between Baroness Stowell of Beeston and Earl of Erroll

Wednesday 15th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I can certainly confirm that the figure I quoted for the extension of requests under the public interest test relates only to central government. As to general requests under FOI, these bodies were monitored by the MoJ. I am afraid that I do not have to hand which bodies they are. The figures do not cover local government.

However, I accept that there is room for improvement, especially where the deadline is extended to allow consideration of the public interest test. The Information Commissioner is watchful of public authorities where timeliness is an issue and has taken effective action in this area. In 2011, the commissioner announced that out of 33 bodies being monitored in relation to timeliness issues, 26 had made sufficient improvement to be removed from his watch list. While further action is required from the remaining bodies, it is clear that the Information Commissioner’s Office has been effective in improving timeliness.

The introduction of new statutory deadlines is a potential way of strengthening the Freedom of Information Act, as the noble Lord has put forward, provided that it does not lead to hasty decisions that are not fully informed. An absolute limit of 40 days raises some concerns about the potential for such an effect and therefore we need to give the impact of changes of this type full consideration before their introduction. For that reason, I cannot accept his amendment today.

As the noble Lord has predicted I might say, but not for the reasons he suggests, this is something that I strongly believe should be properly scrutinised and considered in the course of post-legislative scrutiny, which is now under way by the relevant Select Committee of the other place, chaired by the right honourable Alan Beith. I certainly will ensure that he receives the official record of our debate today.

It is also worth pointing out that I genuinely think that the proposal put forward by the noble Lord, as much as it has merits, requires very careful consideration. I will look forward to his contribution to the process of post-legislative scrutiny that is ongoing.

Amendment 55ZB, again in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Wills, seeks to extend the Freedom of Information Act to information held by contractors working on behalf of public authorities about the performance of those contracts where those contracts are worth more than £1 million. The noble Lord has found support today from the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, my noble friend Lord Lucas and the noble Lord, Lord Collins, on this issue. As the noble Lord, Lord Wills, is aware, the Government have extended the FOI Act and are taking steps to extend it further. We have made an order under Section 5 of the Act extending its scope to, among others, the Financial Ombudsman Service. We have commenced consultations with more than 200 further bodies about their possible inclusion through future Section 5 orders and we intend to consult more than 2,000 housing associations later this year in relation to their possible inclusion.

In addition, Clause 103 of this Bill will extend the Act to companies wholly owned by two or more public authorities, thereby removing the anomaly whereby a company is subject to the FOI Act only if wholly owned by one public authority but not by two or more. I hope that the noble Lord recognises that these are significant changes.

I understand the point that the noble Lord and others have made today that as services are subcontracted out, whether by local government or by other public services which have been mentioned today, the public should not be left short of any information that might be needed to assess the effectiveness and efficiency of those services. But as I mentioned to the noble Lord in Committee when we debated this, even when a service is subcontracted out, it is still the responsibility of the public authority in terms of the accountability for that service to the public. It is the relevant organisation which should be held to account. In the way in which the contracts are constructed, it should be possible for the public to receive from the contracting authority the information that is needed in order to ensure that the services being carried out and paid for with their taxes are actually performing as they would want them to.

As my noble friend Lord McNally stressed last year, it is important to ensure that changes to the way public services are delivered do not undermine our pledge to increase openness and accountability, and there is certainly a challenge to be met here. I would like to restate that our continued opposition to this amendment does not stem from any lack of commitment to the cause of increased openness and accountability. We are already considering this issue and it will be further considered in the response to the Cabinet Office consultation on the draft transparency and open data strategy.

I may have covered this point, but I want also to say to the noble Lord that there is a provision in the FOI Act as it stands that extends its scope to public bodies. I believe that it is set out in Section 5. If and when other public authorities, bodies or organisations should be covered by the Act, we do not need new legislation, or we will be subject to the kind of delay that he seems to think post-legislative scrutiny would bring about. We actually have a mechanism to ensure that as and when we feel it is right and proper to extend the Act, we can do so.

[The Earl of Erroll]

My Lords, I have a brief question for the noble Baroness. Is she saying that public authorities should be writing into their contracts a provision that would allow for freedom of information requests, and that is what she is relying on rather than it being put into the law?

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

No, I am not saying that. I am not in a position to go that far because it would take us into an area on which I do not have the authority to speak today. I am making two separate points. One is that a public authority is the body which is accountable to the public for any services that it might subcontract out. In the course of its contractual arrangements with the subcontractor I would expect, in order to ensure it is properly accountable, it should ensure that it is able itself to access the information it needs. I do not think it is proper to prescribe the detail in the way that has been put forward by the noble Lord. For example, it is not clear how the £1 million contract threshold would be calculated. How would additional payments which might take the value over £1 million be taken account of? Different public authorities might take different approaches to valuation. If that happens, the approach will not be applied consistently. I worry that the amendment might be attractive on its face but deceptively difficult to operate on the ground. I am not saying that issues such as this are insurmountable; I merely use this as an illustration of why careful consideration is necessary to ensure clarity for public authorities, the Information Commissioner and users alike.

I have also made the point previously that to comply with FOI requests for contractor information public authorities would need to have access to any information held by the contractor that is potentially relevant in terms of responding to the request. Such a requirement to share all such information with the public authority so that the authority might comply with FOI requests could adversely affect the effective delivery of the contract. Again, I am sure that solutions to this issue exist, but they require careful consideration.

I reassure the noble Lord, Lord Wills, that our opposition to the amendments results from the need to make sure that effective and proportionate solutions are developed. It does not result from a lack of a commitment to transparency or the effective operation of the Freedom of Information Act. I therefore invite the noble Lord—

Protection of Freedoms Bill

Debate between Baroness Stowell of Beeston and Earl of Erroll

Tuesday 29th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

My Lords, as the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, has explained, this proposed new clause seeks to combine a number of distinct statutory commissioners into a single privacy commissioner. As the noble Earl predicted, I am afraid that the Government are not persuaded that any benefits which may arise from such a merger would offset the disadvantages. Each of the five commissioners listed in subsection (3) of the proposed new clause requires a high degree of knowledge of relevant legislation and procedures to operate in specialist and technical areas.

Before I explain why the Government propose to set up the commissioners in this way, I will address the issue of accountability, as it is one that my noble friend Lady Hamwee raised as well. The noble Earl suggested that his privacy commissioner should be directly accountable to Parliament. The existing commissioners are independent officeholders and there is no question that they discharge their functions without fear or favour. If there were a question of a conflict of interest—I do not accept that there is—it would apply equally to a situation where the privacy commissioner would be directly accountable to Parliament. Parliament is subject to the Data Protection Act and the Freedom of Information Act, and thus to the jurisdiction of the Information Commissioner, so a conflict of interest could equally arise if he reported directly to Parliament. The existing accountability arrangements work well and I see no reason to change them.

Going back to the five commissioners, there is no doubt that in some cases the work of the various commissioners can be related but, in each case, there remain specific and crucial differences where their work remains distinct. To roll up all of the functions of the various commissioners would be to risk watering down the skills and expertise that are brought to bear in each of the areas. Moreover, given the wide diversion of roles and responsibilities of the five commissioners listed in the proposed new clause, I am not convinced that it would be possible for a single individual to provide adequate oversight in any given area—a point which I think that my noble friend Lady Hamwee made.

If a privacy commissioner were to be appointed, I envisage that he or she would quickly need several deputy commissioners, or a large body of support staff, to oversee the specific areas currently overseen by separate individuals. This would create an unwieldy body which, in all probability, would have less influence and impact, compared with the existing commissioners operating in niche areas. We can take the Interception of Communications Commissioner as an example of the specialist knowledge required in this area. That commissioner provides oversight of the intelligence agencies and law enforcement authorities by keeping under review their use of interception powers and their powers to acquire communications data. The role is very specific and the commissioner’s powers to require disclosure by the intelligence agencies, and others, of highly classified information means that it is a highly sensitive post that could not be amalgamated with a range of other, unrelated commissioner functions.

That said, we fully accept that there is a need for these various officeholders to work closely together, and I assure your Lordships that this is already happening. The Public Bill Committee that considered this Bill in the other place heard testimony from the Information Commissioner and the interim CCTV regulator. Both commissioners were clear that where their functions touched on similar areas, they remain adept at establishing and maintaining effective working relationships, so that they can complement rather than duplicate the work of the other. I see no reason to doubt why this cannot continue to be the model in the future.

While there is certainly some common ground between the work of the new Surveillance Camera Commissioner and the Information Commissioner, there are also important differences. The Information Commissioner highlighted, in his evidence to the Public Bill Committee, that his consideration of CCTV is limited to the sphere of data protection and, as such, that his office is not concerned with the effective use of cameras. Indeed, the commissioner saw this separation of functions as advantageous, stating,

“if you are specifically identified as Mr Privacy and expected to come down on the privacy side all the time, it is difficult to make judgments about the release of official information”.—[Official Report, Commons, Protection of Freedoms Bill Committee, 24/3/11; col. 97.]

Furthermore, the noble Earl might remember—I know that he has a great deal of experience in this area—that public confidence in CCTV is driven by both the proportionality and the effectiveness of deployment. The public want, rightly, to see that when surveillance cameras are deployed they help to bring criminals to justice.

In that same evidence session, the deputy Information Commissioner stated that,

“if the cameras do not work, we are not concerned, because cameras that do not work cannot intrude on someone’s privacy and that is what our driver is”.—[Official Report, Commons, Protection of Freedoms Bill Committee, 24/3/11; col. 99.]

I would therefore be concerned about having all these functions under the umbrella of a privacy commissioner. It is important to note that the Information Commissioner plays a key role not only in making sure that personal data are properly protected but that information is freely available to the public in accordance with freedom of information legislation. A single privacy commissioner would undoubtedly tilt the overall balance of the role to the detriment of the Government’s objectives to promote openness and transparency.

In short, it is our view that the five commissioners that are the subject of the amendment all undertake sufficiently distinct roles to justify their separate identities. Where their roles interconnect, I am confident that they will, as now, work together effectively to ensure that they complement rather than duplicate each other’s work. We will of course keep the landscape of commissioners under review but, for the reasons that I have set out, I am not persuaded of the case for a single privacy commissioner. I hope that the noble Earl accepts these arguments and will be prepared to withdraw his amendment, but I am grateful to him for putting it forward in order for us to discuss these matters.

[The Earl of Erroll]

I thank the Minister for that reply. In fact, what she described was rather what I ended up thinking. I have to admit that the amendment is defective in that it is not quite what I thought; it came quickly from someone else in order to solve the problem of putting something on paper. A single commissioner certainly could not do that job. I had envisaged someone at the top but then four or five departments underneath, some with much higher security ratings than others. It would just be a matter of co-ordination. From that point of view, I am glad to hear from the Minister that this is already happening with the collaboration between the commissioners on the ground. I hope that that will continue with the other commissioners if the structure stays separate. Bringing them together under a single overarching review may still possibly have advantages, but for the moment I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.