Protection of Freedoms Bill

Lord Oxburgh Excerpts

Wednesday 15th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Oxburgh]

My Lords, I support the intention, if not the precise wording, of Amendments 55A and 56. I feel that, if the legislation goes forward as is proposed at the moment, a series of what I hope are unintended consequences will ensue, which will be seriously damaging to the research community in this country.

One of the points that has not yet been made or emphasised is that the ability to demand information under the Freedom of Information Act is international, so it may be demanded by any person, anywhere in the world, without any specific purpose whatever. We may say that there is copyright, or that the information is released under certain conditions, but probably the places that we would have most concern about making demands of this kind would not respect these conditions, and we would have no means of enforcement.

A serious point, which was made by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas—although I do not support the purpose with which he made it—is that it is not clear from the legislation, as it now stands, what constitutes a data set. My days at the bench are a little behind me, but if I spend a couple of days carrying out a series of experiments and arrive at a series of data points, are they instantly a data set which may be requested by the competition, in North America or elsewhere, and incorporated, published and what have you? The results may or may not have significant commercial significance, but it would certainly undermine the career of an individual who was making them if they were pre-published by someone else.

I wonder whether we should not think of some reasonable amount of time—this concept has been used by research councils from time to time—during which the results of any particular piece of research should be accessible only to those who have carried it out, after which they could be available subject to the Freedom of Information Act: a year, maybe, or two years, or something like that. Certainly the results should be in the public domain; but equally, the person or group that has put in the time, building the apparatus and making painstaking observations, should be the person or group with first access to them.

Another point worth making is that the costs of redaction of some of the information which would be freed under the legislation at the moment are really significant. As I understand it, they would be able to be passed on to the individual or group requesting the information. However, a good example would be data which were acquired from a health study—perhaps clinical trials, or something of that kind—where all the information that would have made it possible to identify the individuals concerned has to be removed: this is a long and expensive business and it is the kind of cost against which someone requiring the data might seek to complain. Provided all of these things are genuinely covered, it seems to me that this is not a serious point, but it has to be recognised.

Overall, what the Government have to recognise is that the net effect of the legislation going ahead as it is now would be to make the UK a relatively unattractive place to do research. It seems to me that this goes counter to the trend of all other government thinking.

[Viscount Hanworth]

I shall speak briefly in support of Amendment 56. It is clear that this amendment is seeking to address a substantial problem with the Freedom of Information Act 2000. We have seen some remarkable evidence of how the provisions of the Act can be used maliciously to frustrate research programmes by those who dislike the conclusions that the research is supporting. Is it not the freedom to conduct research without hindrance that we ought to be protecting? It is clear that the existing regulations within the Act that relate to vexatious requests have proved to be inefficient in warding off the nuisance. The amendment seems to fulfil that purpose perfectly.