Alan Brown
Main Page: Alan Brown (Scottish National Party - Kilmarnock and Loudoun)Department Debates - View all Alan Brown's debates with the Cabinet Office
(8 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Matthew Hancock
First, may I welcome the hon. Gentleman to his post and congratulate him on his resounding victory in the deputy leadership election? On this question, I also welcome his tone. I am a great supporter of the Act, but 10 years after its introduction it is reasonable to see how it is operating and to make sure, as the Justice Committee said in the last Parliament, that there is a “safe space” for policymaking, so that people can be confident about giving frank advice to powerful people safe in the knowledge that that will remain private. It is about how this operates; it is not about the principle of having freedom of information in the first place.
Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)
How can we have transparency in government when I, as an MP, cannot get a straight answer to a simple question? Let me give an example of that. I submitted a question to the Secretary of State for Scotland asking how many meetings he had had with the Treasury on a specific subject. The answer I got was that there had been many meetings; I did not get a number. I therefore asked a supplementary question requesting the dates of the meetings, because I thought that would flesh it out, but the answer I got back was, “I have had many meetings”. That seems to be the opposite of transparency, and we need to start here with ministerial answers to MPs.
Matthew Hancock
I am afraid I am going to disappoint the hon. Gentleman, because I do not know when those meetings were or how many there were—but I do know that by the sounds of it there were many meetings.