Protection of Freedoms Bill

Debate between Lord Phillips of Sudbury and Baroness Blackstone

Wednesday 15th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blackstone]

My Lords, I support both Amendment 55A and Amendment 56. I do not want to repeat all the arguments put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. I cannot support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. I must admit that I found it exceedingly difficult to follow what he was saying at various points in his speech. Perhaps the Minister can reflect on the issues that he raised and explain them to the rest of the House. I also felt that the noble Lord had misunderstood some of the things said by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, who was referring to the release of research data before publication, not after it. I think he was confused about that.

I want to reinforce two points. The first has already been raised today, and I raised it in Committee, which is the cost of all this to universities, and higher education institutions in general, when they have to release enormous amounts of data, prepare them for reuse and sometimes have to redact large amounts of data. Can the Minister reassure the House that he will look again at the regulations that relate to charging for such work? Otherwise, publicly funded institutions will have to spend large amounts of taxpayers’ money on requests to release information which may be justifiable in the public interest, but where the cost may be too high to make it desirable.

I also want to reinforce the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin. Universities are slightly difficult to define as institutions. They are not public bodies under any conventional definition, although they are of course in receipt of substantial amounts of public money. It would be helpful to the House if the Minister could reply to the noble Baroness’s questions about how they are to be defined with respect to commercial interests. The work that they undertake in knowledge transfer may have substantial commercial impacts on them. We need to know whether something which may not be a trade secret but may eventually lead to viable, commercially exploitable data and work should be defined as commercial.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, I speak as Chancellor of the University of Essex and as a lawyer who has spent a good deal of his professional time dealing with issues of publication of research, in particular in relation to the Association of Medical Research Charities. I support the amendment moved by my noble friend Lady Brinton and all the arguments advanced in support of it.

I shall make two points. The first is strongly to support what Universities UK has requested, as mentioned by my noble friend Lady Brinton. If ever there was an area of law and practice in need of thorough practical review and, as far as possible, simplification, it is this, because it is a nightmare at the moment and getting worse. Without my noble friend's amendment, or something like it, it will get a lot worse. The noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, made the point that it would be severely self-damaging if we in this place were to encourage a state of affairs that put us at a competitive disadvantage with other countries.

I emphasise that this is a playground for lawyers and a nightmare for everyone else as it is because the judgments on the different aspects of this extremely difficult balancing act between freedom of public information on the one hand and necessary and proper restraint on the other could not be more complex. I do not envy my noble friend in having to summarise the debate, but I hope that the Government will take the Universities UK request seriously and urgently and that he will be able to support the practical and sensible points in the amendment moved by my noble friend Lady Brinton.