Freedom of Information

Debate between Richard Shepherd and Lord Beith

Thursday 24th January 2013 Westminster Hall

[Sir Alan Beith]

I want to respond briefly and thank right hon. and hon. Members who have taken part in the debate. The effort that we put into the report underlines the fact that Parliament and the Government need to carry out post-legislative scrutiny—and, as I have said, the Government did indeed carry it out for the Act. That is necessary to establish whether the laws that we pass do the job for which we pass them. For years, Parliament hardly ever carried out such scrutiny, but now we do it systematically. It is a good thing, as today’s debate shows, even if the proceedings were distinguished more for their quality than their quantity, as the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) felicitously put it.

Some important points were raised in the debate. The right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd), my colleague on the Select Committee, made some important points about archiving and archive practice. We shall pursue that matter because the National Archives come under the Ministry of Justice, and therefore the Committee. We shall have further discussions about some of the relevant issues when next we meet representatives of the National Archives.

The hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Sir Richard Shepherd) has been a doughty fighter for freedom in general and freedom of information in particular, and he raised some interesting points about how the provisions for private contractors can be made to work. All the examples he gave should be covered by freedom of information. The only question is whether the contracting method will work as a way of dealing with them. I am sure that he, as an experienced business man, will recognise certain difficulties: it would seem inappropriate for example, for freedom of information to apply to a company’s deliberations about whether to bid for a contract. That is the company deciding in which direction to take its private sector work. However, once it is engaged on the contract, its quality of service, the disciplinary measures that it uses to maintain that quality, and all such things are freedom of information matters. We should ensure that the contracting arrangement can cover them. If it cannot, we shall have to think again about our approach.

[Sir Richard Shepherd]

The whole point, though, is of course that it is about the money. For instance, when private contractors bid they would also like to know what their rivals are bidding, and the secrecy behind that process conceals true costs and is not an impetus to competition. That point was made by Tarmac in the original discussions that Rhodri Morgan had long ago in the Justice Committee’s predecessor Committee. Tarmac’s directors were advocating that they wanted their contract details and their costs—in other words, their bidding prices—to be available, because they believed that their competitors were putting in false under-bids that they could not sustain and that would fall on the public purse. That, of course, was their argument, but there are good reasons why that information should be made public.

[Sir Alan Beith]

We have also seen the implications of all that in areas such as contracting for rail franchises. However, it is a difficult balance to strike: having a healthy private sector, which can also usefully take up Government contracts, and also having a Government mechanism that properly supervises those contracts and ensures that freedom of information requirements are met. We have suggested one approach to strike that balance. We hope that it can be made to work. However, if it does not, then—as the Minister herself conceded—we will have to think again about how we satisfy that fundamental requirement in relation to public services.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) also contributed by way of an intervention, although he is sitting on a Public Bill Committee at the same time. That seems to happen to members of my Committee all the time—the Whips think that members of my Committee are especially valuable members of Public Bill Committees.

The hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter), the Labour Front-Bench spokesman, covered some very important points. In particular, he focused on some of the things that the Government have not yet decided. Clearly, as the Minister said, there is a lot of work still to be done. There still seems to be some uncertainty about how committed the Government are to measures that we have indicated may be difficult, but which the Government are interested in in an attempt to deal with what they see as the costs of freedom of information. We will be watching rather carefully this process of discussion that is going on from here, and I hope that the Minister will take very carefully into account all the points that have been made in this debate. On things that have a certain amount of urgency about them—I mention in particular the separate provision to protect university research—I hope that we will not find it necessary to wait for some general further measure in relation to freedom of information if other ways can be found of bringing things forward sooner.

I am most grateful to right hon. and hon. Members for taking part in this debate.

Question put and agreed to.