Andy Slaughter
MP for Hammersmith and Chiswick · Labour · United Kingdom
“I welcome the Bill, and thank the Government for introducing it and bringing it back to the House before the summer recess. It is the result of years of committed campaigning, led by the families of the victims and survivors of Hillsborough.”
“I know that case means a huge amount to the hon. Lady as a constituency MP, and I thank her for all the work she does on the Justice Committee. I think we have only begun to scratch the surface. This Bill will be a transforming piece of legislation. I will make one final comment.”
“This would be a new, independent public body that collated, analysed and followed up on the conclusions and recommendations made after official investigations into deaths and state failings, in order to improve oversight and implementation of them.”
“I think I have taken enough time, but I thank the Member for that intervention. This afternoon, the Justice Committee signed off a new major report on legal aid, which will be published on Friday. Those who are interested can read more there.”
“In the time that I have, I will focus my remarks on clauses 1 to 16, which create a new appeals body for immigration and asylum cases known as the independent immigration appeals authority.”
“From that visit, our diagnosis was that these are operational problems. There are two key questions for the House: will the IIAA fix the problems with the current system, and will it be truly independent from the Home Office?”
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“Those problems are getting worse and worse: they are now affecting not just individuals, but whole communities. This is a national emergency, and we need to act.”
“I am almost dreading the summit next week, because I fear it will be a talking shop, a couple of press releases and not much more to get the Government through another week or two. I hope the Minister will tell us that that is not the case. I also hope that we will hear from him before 7 o’clock—I apologise, Mr Davies, that I will not be here after that. If I miss the end of his speech, I will read it diligently, as I always do. I know that it will be worth reading because he shares that view. I respect what the people who drafted, motivated and signed this petition are trying to achieve, because they are expressing the same frustration as the mother who came to see me today: that Members are standing around, looking powerless—they might think we are uninterested, but we are not—and are not solving problems that are solvable.”
“My hon. Friend shows a lot of compassion and understanding. I do not advocate a soft approach; on the contrary, we need rigour in the system, but not the knee-jerk reaction that we will suddenly cure this by sentencing. How often have we heard that in relation to every possible offence? Is that not what has driven the prison population to double, and the conditions in prisons and the assistance for those leaving to be so dire in this country that this is an international embarrassment? I do not want to say much more. I believe not just that we are well-intentioned but that we are resolved to tackle the issue. The expertise is there, and part of that is listening to our communities.”
“I am tempted to ask the Minister what he had for breakfast this morning, as that might be a question he can answer. His performance is emblematic of the shambolic lack of preparedness over this whole issue. I will try a few very simple questions. Is the meaningful vote coming forward next week? If so, on which day? And if, as seems almost inevitable, it is voted down again, what happens then?”
“Does the Minister not realise that this gives a green light to Israel to continue murdering civilians and maiming people in this way, and that his Government will bear some responsibility for that?”
“The UK mission to the UN in seeking to explain the extension this morning says: “It is a source of great concern that, since 30th March 2018, over 23,000 Palestinians have been injured and 187 Palestinians have been killed during these protests. Hamas of course bear principal responsibility as their operatives have cynically exploited the protests.” Does the Minister seriously support that? Even if he regards this report as incomplete it is robust in what evidence is in it, which suggests that children, medics and civilians have been gratuitously executed by Israeli snipers over a long period. It appears that the Government are looking for an excuse not to condemn the Netanyahu Government; having had one removed, they now have an even flimsier one.”
“There is the expertise out there to do that, but in return, the Government have to accept that there is a lack of resources—£1 billion has gone from the Met police over a number of years, and neither the Mayor nor anybody else can cope with this on their own. When we have the knife summit, can it not be a talking shop? Can it propose real resources that will give hope to these communities?”
“Two weeks ago, my constituent Ayub Hassan, 17, was knifed to death in West Kensington, and last week Nathaniel Armstrong, 29, was stabbed to death in Fulham. I have known Ayub’s mum, Siraad, for some years. She is a wonderful woman who regarded her son as her best friend, as well as one of her three children. When I visited her last Friday, one of the things I promised her was that we would try to ensure that there was a full inquiry into what happened, and that the same thing would not happen to other young people like Ayub. Contrary to what the Minister is implying about the Opposition, I do not seek to pass blame. I think we are all trying to work to solve this terrible problem.”
“A week ago today, Ayub Hassan, who was 17 years old, lost his life after being brutally stabbed in the street in West Kensington. His death has traumatised his family and the community in White City in which he lived, and a 15-year-old boy has been charged with his murder. Tackling the scourge of knife crime across our country is both urgent and complex, and it will not be resolved by the Chancellor handing back a fraction of the money that has been taken from the police. When will the Government bring forward a comprehensive and adequate response to knife crime?”
“Until we have a comprehensive approach not only to fire safety generally but to the removal and installation of cladding systems—not just cladding, but cladding and installation together—we are not seriously tackling the problem, or seriously dealing with the legacy of Grenfell.”
“Is there a fail-safe method of warning people when a building needs to be evacuated? The fourth recommendation, which will come as no surprise to the Minister, is an extended ban on the use of combustible cladding. That is not the main topic today, but it is one that we return to time and again, because the Government’s measures are wholly inadequate. We have taken a long time to deal just with the issue of aluminium composite material cladding, and the Government are only now getting on to other forms of cladding, often more combustible than ACM, that are estimated to be on more than 340 high-rise buildings out there. Even the ban on use for new build or refurbishment projects is inadequate. It does not cover hotels, office buildings or lower-rise buildings used by vulnerable people, such as hospitals and care homes.”
“1 on the list is sprinklers: “a requirement for sprinklers/automatic fire suppression systems in all new and converted residential buildings…and in all existing residential buildings above 18m from ground level”, as already required in Wales. The other three recommendations are equally or more important. One is alternative means of escape. Buildings, including in my constituency, are still given planning consent although they have only a single means of escape—blocks that in effect replicate Grenfell Tower: 20-storey blocks of flats with a single means of escape—and that is purely for commercial reasons. It should not be tolerated. The third recommendation is for centrally addressable fire alarms. That deals with the stay-put policy and what happens when it fails.”
“The consequence of fires, even when successfully extinguished without injury, is often huge costs and disruption to people’s lives over many years. All that indicates the way in which we ought to be moving, and where we hope to see the Minister moving us. However, I have one other point to make, which is also made by London Councils: “While…sprinkler systems are very important, it is important to point out that they are not a substitute for a holistic, whole buildings, risk-based approach to fire safety.” The Royal Institute of British Architects makes four recommendations on where it thinks fire safety should be going. They will not be a panacea and cover everything, but looking at those four areas will go far towards reducing risk. No.”
“Introducing such systems seems to be a bit of a no-brainer. I can think of two examples from my constituency. In 2012, opposite the BBC Television Centre, we had a major fire in the Dairy Crest warehouse, which had a huge amount of combustible material in it—explosive material, too. It needed 15 fire engines and 75 firefighters. I think about the unnecessary risk to the lives of firefighters on such occasions. In 2016, a year before the Grenfell Tower fire, there was a major fire in Shepherd’s Court, overlooking Shepherd’s Bush Green. There were fortunately no casualties, but there was a full evacuation of the building. Six flats were substantially damaged by fire, but I think another 20 were substantially damaged by water.”
“This very much seems to be an English problem now. The first point is that, as many Members have indicated, sprinkler systems work. According to the London Councils briefing for today, “automatic fire suppression systems…operate on 94 per cent of occasions and when they do operate they extinguish or contain the fire on 99 per cent of occasions. They reduce fire injuries and fire damage by 80 per cent. They also reduce the environmental impact and the economic cost of fire.” Also, as has been said, no one has ever died from a fire in a fully sprinklered building. The relatively minimal cost—1% of build costs—of installing sprinklers has also been mentioned. In addition, as the London Fire Brigade reminds us, sprinkler systems on average use 90% less water than hoses, and can prevent costly water damage.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray, and to follow so many Members who are experts in this field. In particular, I thank the all-party group, which I have been a member of for some years. I have learned an extraordinary amount, especially from the hon. Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess) and my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick). I will do my best to follow those contributions. As we have heard, there is a great deal of consensus not just in this Chamber but among experts with an interest in this field—the insurance industry, fire safety professionals, including the London Fire Brigade, local government in London and England, architects and surveyors. We have also heard about the good practice in the devolved Administrations, which are substantially ahead of England.”
“I hope the Minister is grateful for this opportunity to indicate where the Government’s thinking is on this matter, in respect of the individual examples that I have given and in respect of reviewing the Freedom of Information Act generally. I hope that there will be enough time for her to reply in detail.”
“Given that the situation that I have outlined—in respect of contractors and the work that they do, and in respect of housing associations and other organisations—is exactly analogous to those public sector bodies that are fully subject to the Freedom of Information Act, so that there could be two institutions next to each other operating under completely separate regimes, this is not really a question of the Government making concessions, but simply a case of the Government correcting anomalies. Whether they do that through secondary legislation, by supporting my Bill or through primary legislation, the time has come for it to happen.”
“What more rousing recommendation does one need than that? Not only my party, but the Scottish National party, the Liberal Democrats and the Green party support this measure. The Minister might begin to cotton on to the fact that she is in a small minority here, constantly being pushed in the right direction. I will end by putting the following questions to the Minister.”
“Equally, Maurice Frankel and the Campaign for Freedom of Information, which was instrumental all those years ago in getting the Freedom of Information Act passed, are constantly scrutinising and pushing it in an exemplary way. I thank them in particular for their assistance with my Bill and with this debate. There have been previous attempts at legislation. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh), the shadow Policing Minister, is ably ploughing the same furrow. There is even some support from the Government Benches. The hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), after talking out my Bill, assured me that is was nothing personal; he was actually talking out another Bill at the time, and he commended my Bill and said he will fully support it next time there is an opportunity.”
“At one stage the Government agreed with us on that, so why it has not been done is a mystery. Local safeguarding children boards are another anomaly. They are not the subject of this debate and therefore I will not say a great deal more about them. However, it is an indication that, rather than being entirely resistant, having to be pushed every time and taking their time over it, it would be nice if the Government had a proper review and decided what would bring the Freedom of Information Act up to date in some of the ways that have been indicated. To conclude, I believe that a consensus is growing. The Information Commissioner is doing an excellent job not only of clearing the backlog of complaints and administering the scheme, which was the primary function, but of championing the cause of freedom of information.”
“That is just a fact of life, and freedom of information is another fact of life along those same lines. There is no barrier to charities—universities are a good example—coming under the Freedom of Information Act. There is no reason why they will be reclassified as public bodies simply by coming under the Freedom of Information Act. I cannot even say “good try” to the NHF on this occasion. It cannot actually bring itself in the document to say what it wants us to do. It just leaves it there. I think another push might take it on to the side of the angels on this one, but we will see. For completeness, in the Information Commissioner’s report and in my Bill there are some other anomalies that we ask the Government to address as a matter of simple logic. One such anomaly is electoral registration officers and returning officers.”
“The NHF’s arguments, whether commercial confidentiality, the ability to purchase land or the idea that housing associations might need to be reclassified as public bodies, are chimeras and fabulous tales. I believe that the legislation has been passed in Scotland and housing associations there will come under the equivalent Act later this year. There seems to have been no problem there. As for commercial confidentiality, there are exemptions in the Act, which are there to be used. All institutions, including universities, have used the excuse of financial burden. Any public body or a quasi-public body of this kind will have expenses. It will have to do consultations, run democratic organisations and be subject to more regulations on the whole than individual private citizens.”
“It seems entirely anomalous and illogical that they are not available to other social landlords’ tenants as well. In 2011, the coalition Government announced that they would consult housing associations on bringing them under freedom of information. Regrettably, they failed to consult or act, and the current Government show no sign of doing so either. I will refer briefly to the National Housing Federation. I ought not to have a go at the National Housing Federation, because it generally does a good job in representing its members. However, its arguments for not coming under the Freedom of Information Act, which it barely puts forward in its briefing, are thin. I think it knows in its heart of hearts that it should just give in gracefully, which actually would be to its advantage.”
“A tenant who asked whether the water supply to his premises was provided through potentially toxic lead pipes received no answer. A tenant was refused a copy of an electricity bill, which led to his being charged £1,200 to cover the cost of six communal light bulbs. Another unsuccessfully asked for the make and model of estate street lighting that he found “overpowering” at night. He wanted the information in order to contact the manufacturer to see whether it could suggest a remedy, but he was refused. Requests for the number of repossession orders served since the bedroom tax came into force and the number of those tenants who had no arrears before that date were also refused. Those are hardly state secrets; they would be available to any council tenant.”
“This will be a matter close to your own heart, Mr Betts, given that you chair the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee. In some cases, the tenants, and therefore the public, have lost freedom of information rights that they previously enjoyed when those homes were under council control. I have examples of such estates in my constituency. The Grenfell fire has highlighted what I would say is the irresistible need for a right of access if only on safety grounds, yet when Inside Housing asked 61 housing associations for copies of their fire risk assessments in 2017, only seven provided them. Let me give just a few more examples. A housing association tenant who asked for information about the cause of a fire in his premises in 2009 received no answer.”
“The Government often plead lack of time for this, but given that there are at least three routes to reach the same objective, as I have explained, one of those must suit the Government’s purposes. As I have said, there has been no attempt at all to bring private contractors within the remit of the Act so far. There have been some additions—I read out the list earlier—to the schedule of bodies that are subject to the Act, but that has been, if not grudging, rather nugatory in its effect. Some of the leading contenders are not yet on the list, and perhaps the leading contender—this is the second part of the debate today—is housing associations. Housing associations are not covered by freedom of information, although many of them have inherited local authority housing stock.”
“It recommends—this is what I was explaining earlier—that the Government should: “Designate contractors regarding the public functions they undertake where this would be in the public interest”. It also recommends that they: “Designate a greater number of other organisations exercising functions of a public nature, and do so more frequently and efficiently.” The report states: “Designation orders under section 5…would give the public the right to make requests directly to these organisations and require them to proactively disclose information in line with a publication scheme.” The alternative would be to amend the primary legislation. Given the 20-year gap, that might be a more sensible course. It would allow for amendment of the environmental regulations as well.”
“This would make such information available to requestors who make requests to the contracting public authority.” Most importantly, this January the Information Commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, published her report entitled “Outsourcing Oversight? The case for reforming access to information law”, which calls for changes in the FOI Act similar to those proposed in my Bill. It is not the first time that the commissioner has indicated that that is what she wishes to see, but this weighty and authoritative report makes the case far more stringently than I can, with the resources available to me. The report calls for, as one option, greater use of existing powers under section 5 of the FOI Act.”
“I regret that that has not been done under the UK Act as well. There is substantial support for action to deal with contractors. In 2012, the Public Accounts Committee said that “where private companies provide public services funded by the taxpayer, those areas of their business which are publicly funded should be subject to the Freedom of Information Act provision.” In 2018, the Committee on Standards in Public Life urged the Government to consult on extension of the FOI Act to cover information held by public service contractors. The Burns commission, which I have mentioned, recommended, in relation to larger contractors, that “information concerning the performance or delivery of public services under contract should be treated as being held on behalf of the contracting public authority.”
“The advantage of that approach is that it would not require contractors and, in particular, small bodies with few staff to spend time learning how to deal with FOI requests. The request would be answered by the public authority. The Freedom of Information Act itself contains a separate, but so far never used, mechanism for bringing contractors directly within its scope. Under section 5(l)(b), contractors can be designated as public authorities in their own right for FOI purposes and required to deal directly with requests. The procedure can be used only where the contract is for a service that it is the authority’s function to provide, which is not the case for all contracts. The Scottish Government have brought contractors that run prisons and their subcontractors under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 via such a mechanism.”
“The result would be that all information about the planned or actual performance of the contract would be subject to the FOI Act or, in the case of environmental information, to the parallel EIR. That does not mean that all such information would automatically be released. Disclosure would depend on whether exemptions applied—for example, for information whose disclosure would be harmful to the contractor’s or the authority’s commercial interests, or be a breach of confidence. I stress that the measure is not intended to guarantee disclosure of contractors’ information. Its aim is to ensure that the FOI process applies, so that information is disclosed unless there is good reason not to disclose.”
“One answer is to introduce into contracts an umbrella clause saying that all information relating to the performance or planned performance of the contract is held on the authority’s behalf for FOI purposes. All such information will then be accessible under the FOI Act or under the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 via a request to the authority. That is what my private Member’s Bill would do. The Freedom of Information (Extension) Bill would insert into the FOI Act a new section 3A stipulating that all contracts entered into by public authorities for the provision of services are deemed to include such a disclosure clause. The clause would also apply to the contractor’s subcontracts. It would cover existing as well as future contracts.”
“The extraordinary risk of allowing such information to be withheld from the public is obvious. We need to remove the uncertainty that led to that thoroughly unsatisfactory and dangerous situation. It is common to find contracts containing some impressive-sounding clause such as: “The contractor undertakes to assist the authority in complying with its obligations under the Freedom of Information Act.” That sounds fine until we realise that the authority’s obligations are to deal with FOI requests for information that the contractor holds on its behalf. What information is held on the contractor’s behalf? Such clauses take us no further in establishing that.”
“The other example is from the neighbouring constituency of Kensington and relates to a tragedy with which we will all be very familiar—the Grenfell Tower fire. For some time, the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation, which managed Grenfell Tower, refused FOI requests on the grounds that it was not itself a public authority. The Information Commissioner upheld such a refusal in 2012. KCTMO latterly accepted that it held information on behalf of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and began to reply to requests, but in July 2017, after the fire, it refused another request, again on the grounds that it was not subject to the Act. That was in relation to a 2005 consultant’s report documenting the failure by KCTMO and one of its contractors to maintain the Grenfell Tower emergency lighting system.”
“They are all employed by Sodexo—another large multinational company—and I heard horrific stories of the conditions that people had to work under and what happened when people were sick. If they had been directly employed, I could have made inquiries to find out the truth of the matter about at least some of those terms and conditions, but I know there is no possibility of that. I could try to talk to Sodexo if it would talk to me; I could try to talk to the trust about the contract, but I would like to be able to get access to information of that kind. I have only praise for the workers, who provide an essential public service, and for the GMB union, which is representing them in the dispute. It is difficult to do that when one hand is tied behind your back.”
“There was also a request for information on the number of prison staff at the privately run HMP Birmingham, and the number of attacks at the prison. Again, that information was held only by G4S and was not covered by the MOJ’s contract. A request for information on the value of penalty fares issued by London Overground and docklands light railway was also refused, as the information was held by private sector inspectors, as was a request on the cost of bringing TV licensing prosecutions, because the information was held by Capita and was not even known to the BBC. I will add two examples that are close to home. Last Friday, I attended a demonstration outside Hammersmith Hospital in my constituency by porterage, cleaning and catering staff, who are on very poor terms and conditions and, in many cases, the minimum wage.”
“The FOI requests that have been refused because the contract gave the authority no right to the information form a long list. That list includes a request for information on fire safety defects in the CT scanner room of a hospital that the NHS trust leased under a private finance initiative contract that did not give it the right to such information from the PFI body. When the request was made, the trust could not obtain the information, so neither could the requester. The list also includes a request for information on the number of complaints made against court security staff, and the number of those staff with criminal convictions. The staff were provided by G4S, and the Ministry of Justice’s contract did not entitle it to such information.”
“Here the story becomes a little more complicated. The Freedom of Information Act applies not only to information held by a public authority, but to information held by someone else on an authority’s behalf. But when is information held on an authority’s behalf? The test applied by the Information Commissioner and, on appeal, the information rights tribunal, is whether the contract between the authority and the contractor empowers the authority to demand that information from the contractor. If it does, that information is considered to be held on the authority’s behalf, and is available, via an FOI request, to the authority. If it does not, the information is considered to be held for the contractor’s own purposes and is not subject to FOI.”
“An enormous range of public services are now delivered by private companies, charities or not-for-profit agencies under contracts with public authorities, ranging from the running of prisons and immigration removal centres to the provision of meals on wheels, social care visits and parking services. The Information Commissioner estimated recently that more than £284 billion—a third of all Government spending—goes on the purchasing of public services. Some of the main recipients of that spending have become household names; some are perhaps better known than certain Government Departments, including Serco, G4S, Capita and the now infamous Carillion. Unfortunately, under FOI, those contractors are significantly less accountable to the public than the authorities that previously delivered the services directly.”
“The only ones that have been added since the Act’s passage are—I think this is an exhaustive list—the Financial Reporting Council, the Association of Chief Police Officers, the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service, the Financial Ombudsman Service, Network Rail and, most recently, the National Police Chiefs’ Council. It is inarguable that any of those bodies should have been within the ambit of the Act, but it took two years to designate the NPCC in that way. I will come on to this in more detail in a moment, but there are essentially two ways to expand the ambit of the Act: by adding bodies to the schedule or by incorporating different types of bodies, such as contractors, under the powers granted by section 5 of the Act. No use of those powers has been made at all, so far as I can see.”
“However good the legislation, in the 20 years since its passage, as it will be next year, we have fallen behind other countries and some of the limitations of the Act have been exhibited, which we probably now need to correct. I hope to hear from the Minister that we will attend to that. I am sure that my friend, the hon. Member for Edinburgh East, will tell us that things are done better in Scotland, but they are also done better in Brazil, Estonia, Macedonia, New Zealand, South Africa, Ireland and Hungary, some of which have incorporated some of the measures I propose. That is a rather eclectic group of countries. It is right that there have been some changes to the Act, but they have been limited; a certain number of bodies that were perhaps in a grey area are now subject to the Act.”
“Interestingly, the establishment of the Independent Commission on Freedom of Information, chaired by Lord Burns, by the coalition Government was widely believed to be paving the way for new restrictions; I believed that it was. However, having looked at the merits of freedom of information, it ended up recommending the opposite. Its 2016 report found that freedom of information had “enhanced openness and transparency”, and called for the right of access to be strengthened, not restricted. Indeed, one of that commission’s recommendations for strengthening the Act was to address the problem of obtaining information from contractors, which would also be addressed by my private Member’s Bill, the Freedom of Information (Extension) Bill, which is still before the House but is rapidly running out of time.”
“Secondly, and more commonly, it is on resource grounds by trying to restrict the amount of money spent by public authorities on responding to inquiries inquiry, which is ostensibly to save public money but is really to restrict the right of the public and others to freedom of information. I am afraid that that still goes on. The excellent Campaign for Freedom of Information published a report only this week on the variation between London councils’ response times to freedom of information inquiries. I will not go there, because that is not the topic of the debate, but that report bears a lot of scrutiny, as all its reports do.”
“In a 2012 report, the Justice Committee described it as “a significant enhancement of our democracy.” In a Supreme Court judgment of the same year, Lord Mance said the Act “reflects the value to be attached to transparency and openness in the workings of public authorities in modern society”, while Lord Phillips said it “adds to parliamentary scrutiny a further and more direct route to a measure of public accountability”. It is therefore sad that some former exponents of the Act have in the past 20 years sought to limit its scope, usually on one of two grounds. The first is on policy grounds, saying that they believe the Act restricts the ability of the Government to debate freely, because sensitive matters might be disclosed, which is at least honest.”
“Those complaints include four assaults, five bomb threats, seven hoax noxious powders, four reports of trespassing and 20 reports of criminal damage. There has been a threefold increase in reporting in the second half of that period since 2016, compared with the first part. I would have thought that was of great interest to many people, and particularly to Members. Those details were obtained under the auspices of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and are just one topical example of the importance of that Act, which was one of the great successes of the last Labour Government. It is used by individuals, campaign groups, journalists and Members to obtain information that the Government and public authorities have been unwilling to disclose voluntarily.”
“I beg to move, That this House has considered extending the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to housing associations and public contractors. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. This issue is very dear to my heart and, I know, to those of several colleagues. I am pleased to see the hon. Members who have attended, particularly the Scottish National party spokesperson, the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Tommy Sheppard), who is here on his 60th birthday. I will try to keep my remarks on this complex and interesting topic within reasonable bounds. I start by referring to a report from BuzzFeed News this morning on the specialist police unit that investigates crimes against MPs, which has received 558 complaints since it was set up after the tragic death of our colleague Jo Cox in 2016.”
“My hon. Friend has a long track record of campaigning on FOI—far longer than mine—and I am grateful that he is here for the debate. Does he agree that the decision to move freedom of information to the Cabinet Office—I do not mean this to reflect on the current Minister—was a mistake? It has been put in with data protection, which is often about restricting access to information, for the right reasons. In the Ministry of Justice, and with the Justice Committee, there was a far more robust approach to calling out the Government’s questions. A reassignment of Department and Committee might be a suitable step.”
“I gently say to the Minister that there are two weaknesses in her argument. First, disclosing information voluntarily, however laudable the aim or honestly done, is not the same as giving citizens the power to interrogate an organisation. Secondly, if the Minister is right—I think it was the policy of a previous Conservative Government to put the onus on housing associations, rather than councils, to deliver the lion’s share of social housing—and they are standing in the shoes of councils, there is all the more reason for them to be accountable in that way. If Scotland and other charities can do it, why does the Minister appear to envisage the risk of a housing association suddenly being classed as a public body, just because it is subject to FOI?”
“I am listening to the Minister’s argument, but again, I thought I had dealt with that point in my speech. The majority of inquiries will be about the major contractors that take the lion’s share. I entirely take her point about small contractors, but my Bill would put the onus and the responsibility for the cost on the public authority to do that, so there is a way round it.”