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Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

One of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State's many enduring legacies is the introduction of the Freedom of Information Act, and it is appropriate that he is introducing an improvement to that measure in the last days of this Parliament. First, let me quickly welcome the dog that did not bark: the proposal to exempt Cabinet materials, which was the original intention. I understand that the Prime Minister made a most welcome intervention to ensure that that did not happen. I can understand the temptation for wanting to do it, however. I remember, many years ago, visiting Australia to look at freedom of information when we were contemplating it here. I remember, as might my hon. Friend the Member for Pendle (Mr. Prentice)—we have been together for a long time—that we stood outside the Cabinet room, where we were shown us a trolley loaded with papers. People explained that they pushed that trolley into the Cabinet room so that the papers became, ipso facto, Cabinet papers, therefore giving them a blanket exemption. They thought that that was a cunning wheeze, and I can quite see that there would be huge attractions in trying a similar wheeze here. I am glad that even though that idea was flirted with, it was resisted, and we should welcome that. I never thought I would say that I wanted to praise the editor of the Daily Mail, but putting him in charge of the review of the arrangements in this area now looks to have been an inspired decision. I am glad that we are now seeing, more or less, the implementation of what that Committee recommended and that the period is being brought down to 20 years. I want to say something about the royal family exemption, however. I know that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State told me that all such things were inconceivable when I raised the question of what would happen if a royal did something or other but, of course, there is a history to all this. Monarchs in the past have not behaved themselves terribly well in terms of the constitutional relationship. People did not know about it at the time, but they jolly well ought to have done. Just before the 1880 election, Queen Victoria wrote in a memorandum:""If the Liberals…intend to lean to the extreme Radicals, they can never expect any support from the Queen…These are dangerous times and any attempt to make our Institutions Democratic will be most disastrous"." I think that people would have been entitled to know that that was coming out of the palace. In 1906, when the Labour party did rather well in the election, people were entitled to have known that the Prince of Wales, who later became King George V, wrote:""I see that a great number of Labour members have been returned which is a rather a dangerous sign, but I hope they are not all socialists."" People are entitled to know such things. As it happens, I am quite an admirer of Prince Charles. He seems to be doing an interesting job—that is, an impossible job with interest—and I find myself in agreement with him on many things. If I were in his position, I would write similarly vigorous letters to Government Ministers about issues of the day. The question is whether such communications—after all, the amendment that we are being asked to consider is, in a sense, the Prince Charles amendment—should remain non-disclosable in perpetuity, which is to say until five years after his death. Given the splendid longevity of members of the royal family, that would be a long time away. As he is someone of robust opinions who tries to persuade Government Ministers to see the world from his point of view, it is not fanciful to suggest that a Government Minister might decide to see things from the point of view of the person writing from the palace. Let us consider homeopathy, which most sensible people think is not entirely supported by evidence. Suppose that Prince Charles, the heir to the throne, were to weigh in to the debate, giving heavy support to the idea that resources should be devoted to homeopathy. If a Government then decided to start allocating resources to homeopathy, people would be entitled to know that that act of lobbying had been extremely successful. We would want to know about it if it had come from any other source. We have an obligation both to respect the privacy of such communications at the time and to make sensible judgments about when they can properly be released so that people can see what has happened. What I do not understand is what has been the urgency of making changes in this area. I ask my right hon. Friend to address that point when he responds to the debate, because my understanding is that there is no difficulty and that the current exemption has been upheld whenever it has been tested by the Information Commissioner. I think that my right hon. Friend has to make the case for giving away a public interest test virtually in perpetuity, and I ask him simply whether representations on this issue have come entirely from him, or whether they have come from the royal family itself. With those comments, I extend a welcome to the measures.