Member News
A bill has been introduced which would remove ministers' rights to veto decisions of the Information Commissioner and Information Tribunal requiring the government to release information on public interest grounds.
Tom Brake (Lib Dem, Carshalton and Wallington) made the case for tougher Freedom of Information (FoI) laws.
The bill would also limit the amount of time public authorities are allowed to take to respond to FoI requests in the public interest.
Introducing the Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill to the Commons, Brake proposed a number of changes including removing the ministerial veto on publication and extending the scope of the legislation to cover more firms with an element of public ownership.
He said MPs were whipped into voting for the Bill and had failed to "anticipate the skullduggery and subterfuge" the front benchers were willing to contrive.
The Bill would also stop bodies using "delaying tactics" to block the release of information and make it easier to prosecute people trying to destroy information.
The ministerial veto had been used twice by former justice secretary Jack Straw in recent years.
"The exercise of the ministerial veto introduces a veil of secrecy and affords an argument in favour of the public interest to be dismissed out of hand," Brake said.
"Its deployment sets a dangerous precedent and paints a worrying picture of a disdainful relationship between government and the electorate."
He referred to the "climategate" email row that showed the need to extend the six-month period under which people who delete information to avoid it being disclosed can be prosecuted.
Under his plan the six-month period would begin when sufficient evidence of an offence had come to the prosecutor's knowledge, rather than when the destruction of data occurred.
But a prosecution could not be brought more than three years after the offence had been committed.
The Bill would also require public authorities to decide on the public interest of a request within 40 days.
This would prevent Whitehall departments using "delaying tactics to postpone the release of embarrassing information".
It also extends the Bill to cover publicly owned companies, publicly-funded not-for-dividend companies like Network Rail and private contractors with high-value public sector contracts.
Blake said it was timely to return to the topic as it was referred to in former prime minister Tony Blair's memoirs as a "blunder".
Former Labour minister Denis MacShane said the Act needed to be reviewed and claimed many FOI requests were designed to seek out "sensationalist tittle-tattle".
The Rotherham MP said he would like to see the press covered by the Act, covering "all those organisations and companies which have any formal status within the public realm".
He said: "We refer to the Fourth Estate, it is time for the FOI laws to extend fully to all of our media organisations who have far more power than many of the public agencies, the local councils and the rest who are covered by FOI legislation.
"What our media organisations, the oligarchs who own them, often from overseas, decide to do has a huge impact on our public life."
He said that any company in receipt of taxpayers' money should be covered by FOI.
MacShane told MPs: "A great number of the FOI requests from journalists, not all, there are many diligent journalists who use FOI very effectively, but a great number of requests are there purely for seeking out sensationalist tittle-tattle."
He referred to the former prime minister, who wrote in his memoirs, that he felt a "naive, foolish, nincompoop" over his government's FOI Act.
MacShane said Ipsa had released details of "secret notes kept on MPs" and "did not stand up for a modicum of privacy".
Progress:
House of Commons
1st reading: 7 September 2010
2nd reading: 21 January 2011
Dods Parliamentary Communications Ltd