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Data Protection and Freedom of Information

I am sure that the Lord Chancellor would be able to supply that kind of information; it seems pretty inconceivable that there would be a motion for a 40 per cent. increase in pay without that kind of backroom work having been done. On the way in which the job has expanded, to follow on from my earlier intervention on the Lord Chancellor, there is arguably a bit of a conflict of interest between the job done by someone who is supposed to back freedom of information and the job done by a data protection registrar, who is, in a sense, against freedom of information. The first—the data protection side—is to do with guarding information and making sure that it is released only as and when needed. However, the Information Commissioner's role involves a certain bias towards releasing information, so that we can have transparency in public life and proper scrutiny of the workings of Government—and in due course, one would hope, the private sector, too. There is perhaps a bit of a conflict of interest there. If the Lord Chancellor is allowed to address us again before the motion is put to the House, I hope that we will have a little more information on the size of the operation—the number of staff and the budget—run by the Information Commissioner. The hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) reported that the Information Commissioner had 260 staff and a budget of £16 million a year, which is not peanuts. But, as my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor) said in an earlier intervention, when one compares the job with that of Secretary of State for Health, £140,000 is quite a lot of money for the Information Commissioner's role. To me, 260 staff does not sound like a huge operation, so it would be helpful to have some background information about the work load, the number of staff and the size of the operation, because we need to put the terms of the motion before us—£140,000 for the Information Commissioner—in a broader context. What lies behind the debate is a notion that, to my great regret, has declined in the past 30 or 40 years in this country: the notion of public service. We, as politicians, all cop for it. We wish to serve the society in which we live, we value public service, and quite a number of us, including myself, have taken a pay cut to come here because we believe in public service. Of course we have the constant comparators with the private sector. Chief executives of local authorities are on between £150,000 and £200,000-plus a year. They have big budgets, they do responsible and hard jobs, and I take my hat off to them, but I still cherish the notion of public service. If we constantly make comparisons with the private sector, as I suspect we have done with this motion that calls for £140,000 for the Information Commissioner, we do a disservice not only to ourselves as politicians, but, more importantly, to the public whom we seek to serve, because I, for one, very much wish to revive the notion of public service in our society.