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Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

These provisions give effect to the Government's response to the Dacre review of the 30-year rule. The House will recall that, in October 2007, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister announced an independent review of the 30-year rule, which generally requires that all national records be released into the public domain after a 30-year period, save where there are special exemptions. The review was chaired by Paul Dacre, a distinguished journalist and the editor-in-chief of the Daily Mail group of newspapers, who worked with Professor Sir David Cannadine, a distinguished historian, and Sir Joseph Pilling, a distinguished public servant. I am grateful for the care and interest that they took in conducting their review. I dare say that it is to be expected of a review written by a senior journalist and an eminent historian, but, in addition to containing good recommendations, it is a very interesting and informative read. I commend it to the House, which I do not do in terms of every review conducted on behalf of the Government. This one is deeply informative. We have considered the review's recommendations carefully. On 10 June, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister announced to the House the Government's intention to move to a 20-year rule. The Dacre review debated whether we should move to a 20-year rule or a 15-year rule and, on balance, it came down in favour of a 15-year rule. We considered the matter in some detail and my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister announced our intention to move to a 20-year rule. There was a subsequent period for further consultation, and last week, we published our response to the review in full. That is now before the House. The key proposals are to reduce the 30-year rule to 20 years, to amend the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and to reduce the time frame within which certain exemptions can apply to the 20-year period. New clause 22 will implement those proposals and it will amend the Public Records Act 1958. Those proposals will thus provide earlier access by 10 years to a wide range of material, and it is the next step towards greater transparency—a process that began under this Government with the passage of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Such a move involves careful preparation. It is often assumed that officials simply put the records on the shelves and open them. As I know, not least from my time in the Foreign Office, a huge effort is put in by historians and archivists to go through all the records carefully to ensure that all that can be made publicly available are made publicly available, while also ensuring that some are held back in conformity with public records legislation. The same is true of every other Government Department. Because the proposal involves a big change, the Dacre review recommended a transitional period and essentially proposed that until we reach the target time of 20 years, in the intervening period two years' records should be released every year to get down from the 30-year limit to the 20-year limit. The new clause makes provision for the transitional period to be brought in by order, because exactly when that new time limit is introduced will need to be considered by Government in the next Parliament. Dacre also recognised—as does everyone else and as did the House when we discussed the freedom of information legislation—that there must be a balance between increased transparency and protecting sensitive and personal information. That is a fact of life. The introduction of the Data Protection Act 1998 preceded the Freedom of Information Act 2000 by a couple of years, and one thing I believe I got right about the Freedom of Information Act 2000 was requiring a single commissioner for both data protection, which is about protecting information, and for freedom of information, which is about its release. Some other Administrations have two commissioners for those two purposes, which can cause immense problems. This represents one area where a balance must be drawn. In circumstances going beyond the protection of personal information, everyone accepts that there may be arguments for protecting the information for longer than the minimum period. Bearing that in mind, schedule 1 maintains the time limit for certain exemptions at 30 years. The first exemption relates to the protection of commercial interests. Some contracts, particularly those relating to large-scale infrastructure projects and procurement, can run for more than 20 years and may contain commercially sensitive information beyond that point.