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Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill

I take my hon. Friend’s point. I was trying to answer the point made by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central, who suggested that unless publication was covered by statute it would be wrong and the House of Commons would not be seen in the right light. I was suggesting that many of the vital things that Parliament does, which are of huge importance to the nation, are dictated not by statute but by our own rules and procedures. They are covered by our conventions and by the fact that we would not dream of going back to the dark ages of another way of operating.