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Protection of Freedoms Bill

My Lords, once again my noble friend Lord Wills has set out the purpose of these amendments. As he has said, one of them extends the duties under the Freedom of Information Act to a public authority, including local authority services which have been contracted out, where the contract made by a public authority with any person is for any sum over £1 million. The second amendment extends the definition, as he said, of a publicly owned company for the purposes of falling within the terms of the Freedom of Information Act to extend to companies where at least 50 per cent of their shares are held in public ownership—that is, by one or more relevant authorities. One point that my noble friend homed in on has been the desire of this Government to move more and more activities away from being directly provided by public authorities, including local authorities—he referred to the Localism Bill—and instead to see them contracted out. Yet when they are contracted out in this way into the private sector, it removes the access to information which is currently there through the Freedom of Information Act. On the one hand, then, we have a Government who say that they want to increase transparency and, on the other hand, through Bills such as the Localism Bill we find that on issues and activities where it was formerly possible to obtain information under the Freedom of Information Act when a public authority, including a local authority, was undertaking them, it will no longer be possible to get that information. The Public Bodies Bill was another Bill which will encourage this move. Unless the Government are prepared to indicate some sympathy with this amendment and to look at going down this road, at least to accept the amendment’s spirit if not its direct terms—and, as my noble friend has said, not to try and fob everybody off by saying, ““Well, there is post-legislative scrutiny taking place””, because nobody knows how long that is going to take—then I suggest that their claims to want to extend transparency are somewhat hollow, since their own activities as a Government are reducing that level of transparency.