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The Campaign for Freedom of Information |
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| The Commons debate: What MPs said |
| The Right to Know Bill was debated for five hours in the Commons on 19 February 1993. |
Mark Fisher MP (Lab, Stoke on Trent Central), who introduced the Bill, said that in a democracy free access to information should be a fundamental right. The issue went beyond party politics: "It should appeal to libertarian conservatives who wish to empower the individual against the corporate state as much as it does to liberals who want to attain greater freedom and to socialists who want to give people stronger rights and to provoke them, through information, to question those in authority, and thus perhaps to change society." The bill would lead to better decisions. Ministers merely had to come up with answers to political problems. It would be a great improvement if they also had to reveal the analysis which led to their conclusions. The lack of information about the basis for the pit closures had led to a debate based on "assertion from the Government and counter-assertion from the Opposition, not on an informed, detailed understanding and knowledge of the pits".
Greater accountability would improve politicians' standing and credibility which, Mr Fisher said, "is probably at an all-time low." People were bored and alienated by "prejudice battering against prejudice" instead of serious debate. More information would lead to greater choice, improved safety and better use of resources. He said overseas experience did not support the view that the legislation would be costly and bureaucratic. The Canadian freedom of information law cost around £11.5 million in 1990-91, the Australian Act £5.8 million in 1991-92. Scaling those figures up for Britain's larger size the legislation here might cost between £20 and £30 million. Mr Fisher welcomed the government's 'open government' initiative but Ministers would still decide what should be released: "that is no longer enough. The public no longer want to trust politicians. They want an absolute right to know". For the government, William Waldegrave, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, said information sometimes had to be kept secret. Governing involved negotiation - with other governments, pressure groups, the financial markets and parliament. In negotiations "one cannot always have all the cards face up." But he accepted that: "We keep too many secrets. We make secrets of matters that should not be secret...there is a tendency in all organisations - Government Departments are not immune - to use secrecy for convenience if they can get away with it". The government had done more than previous administrations to release information. Details of ministerial committees and the ministerial guidance on procedure had been published. More historical documents had been opened. The government had introduced or supported a number of legislative measures. Comparative information about the performance of the public services was now being published under the Citizens Charter. A White Paper on openness would be published before the summer.
He said the Right to Know Bill went "far further than overseas legislation" and he questioned whether it was right that public authorities should spend time providing access to internal papers which he said was "a fruitless diversion of effort". The government could not support the part of the bill which proposed to replace the 1989 Official Secrets Act. Progress should continue to be made "by a steady increase in the pragmatic steps that we have taken and will continue to take" rather than by "a blockbuster Bill of this kind" which, he estimated, would cost about £50 million. "There is more to do, but the Bill is not the best way of doing it" he concluded. Jeff Rooker (Lab, Birmingham Perry Barr) said he had supported a backbench freedom of information bill introduced in 1978 under the Labour government. He had said then that without freedom of information the liberty and safety of the individual citizen would be increasingly threatened by advances in technology. The Right to Know Bill included the provisions of a bill he had unsuccessfully introduced in 1991 to require companies to publish more information about their environmental and safety performance. He gave examples of companies prosecuted for major offences which had made no reference to these failings in their annual reports. Sir John Wheeler (Con, Westminster North) said there should be a gradual move towards more openness not what he called the "speculative and revolutionary change" of the bill which "throws away years of practical experience". To have "everything in the open and then select what is to be classified as secret...is a radical, bold and dangerous proposal. The risks are very high...That represents a giant leap into untried and untested waters, which are fraught with dangers". Alan Howarth (Con, Stratford-on-Avon) said "the great prize" to be had from freedom of information was the increased opportunity it would give the press for serious discussion of important issues. Decision making would be improved if the advice of experts was "tested by being exposed to the scrutiny of common sense and of alternative experts". Don Foster (Lib-Dem, Bath) said many people were losing faith in politicians and questioning the values on which our system of government was based. The Bill was one of a series of measures which would help reunite Parliament and the people. If it was blocked it would "show once more the way in which our arcane and creaking institutions fail to meet the wishes...of the people". Richard Shepherd (Con, Aldridge-Brownhills) criticised the "high Tory view" - advocated by some previous speakers - that those in power should decide what the public should know. He believed in the "low Tory view" that the public had a right to information. He said: "We are...free citizens in a free society...Who we are entitles us to freedom of information". By and large government did not fear opinions, he said. "The real fear is about equality of argument. If we are given common access to common facts, my goodness, the argument might not go the way in which the high Tories believe it should". Mrs Barbara Roche (Lab, Hornsey and Wood Green) said that the government would have nothing to fear from the Bill if it was confident that "their Departments have no stupidity, ineptitude, inefficiency, bad decision-making, bureaucratic bungling, dishonesty or corruption to hide". Mr John Bowis (Con, Battersea) said the bill was an attempt "to move from a society run on a need-to-know basis to one run on a right-to-know basis". He supported the bill's principles, but thought the Bill did not go far enough. If public safety was at risk bodies should be under a duty to issue public warnings, not just give access on request. Ms Kate Hoey (Lab, Vauxhall) said that given the government's "almost fanatical desire" to expand the power of the market it should accept "that a fundamental, textbook component of the free market is the universal availability of knowledge about that market". David Lidington (Con, Aylesbury) said Conservative MPs would find it difficult to support the Bill if it sought to overthrow the 1989 Official Secrets Act. He had felt that the new Act would open the way for a freedom of information bill, creating a right of access to information no longer covered by official secrets legislation. "There is certainly widespread support among Conservatives and Conservative Members of Parliament for many of the principles and objectives embodied in the Bill" he concluded. Dr Tony Wright (Lab, Cannock and Burntwood) said the arguments advanced against the Bill - that, for example, it would threaten ministerial responsibility - were identical to those used when the ombudsman system was established in the 1960s. The Bill presented the House with a moment of truth. If MPs made the wrong choice, he said, "respect for this place, which, as we have heard, is not high and the way that we conduct politics will decline still further". Michael Trend (Con, Windsor and Maidenhead) said he detected no groundswell of public opinion in favour of freedom of information. (But at the Bill's Report stage on July 2 he urged the Government to introduce such legislation itself, arguing that it "conforms to basic Conservative principles of empowering the individual".) Glenda Jackson (Lab, Hampstead and Highgate) said Sweden had had a freedom of information law for 200 years as did the United States "which has been more paranoid than most about internal and external threats to its security". The last speaker, Bernard Jenkin (Con, Colchester North) said the bill represented "a blunderbuss approach" to the process of increasing openness. He, and James Paice (Con, Cambridgeshire SE) were the only MPs to vote against the debate being brought to an end. |
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