Mr Alistair Carmichael (Shadow Minister (Northern Ireland), Northern Ireland Affairs; Orkney & Shetland, Liberal Democrat)

I beg to move amendment No. 40, in clause 24, page 11, line 44, leave out from ‘in’ to end of line 2 on page 12 and insert

‘avoiding a risk of damage to the economy outweighs the public interest in the information being revealed.’.

I do not think that I need detain the Committee unnecessarily on this amendment, because having assessed in part the Minister’s comments on the previous group of amendments, I am fairly confident that he will want to accept this amendment.

We are dealing with whether the cart or the horse comes first. The provision as it currently stands requires the panel to be satisfied that the public interest in the information that is being revealed outweighs the public interest in avoiding a risk of damage to the economy. That is to say that the disclosure outweighs the restriction. In fact, we would say—the Minister says that there is a presumption in favour of disclosure—that the disclosure should be the status quo or the presumption that requires to be rebutted. It is as simple as that, and I cannot imagine for the life of me why the Minister would wish to oppose the amendment.

Mr Christopher Leslie (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Constitutional Affairs; Shipley, Labour)

Clause 24 is designed to allow for cases in which only the Treasury, Bank of England or the Financial Services Authority will have access to the full background about why public disclosure of a particular piece of information risks seriously damaging the economy of the United Kingdom.

A European Community law bar prevents regulators of financial services from sharing certain information. In some cases, that will prevent the Treasury, Bank of England or the FSA from sharing the background information with the panel. That means that the panel would be making an assessment of the risks of disclosing a particular piece of evidence without the full picture available to them. For that reason, the balancing test in clause 24 needs to be more favourable to restricting disclosure. The inquiry panel would often be assessing the public interest while unaware of the true extent of the likely damage to the economy. Therefore, it is right that information should be released by the inquiry panel only when the public interest in disclosure clearly outweighs public interest in avoiding the risk of damaging the economy.

To answer the hon. Gentleman, I can certainly give the assurance that the tripartite authorities would not seek to make an application under clause 24 where the   information at hand would be disclosed if an application to see it were made under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. I hope that that helps him in his consideration of this matter and that he will withdraw the amendment.

Mr Alistair Carmichael (Shadow Minister (Northern Ireland), Northern Ireland Affairs; Orkney & Shetland, Liberal Democrat)

The Minister is a big disappointment to me; perhaps I need to be more imaginative when I anticipate his arguments. That said, this is not something on which I want to delay the Committee further. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.