Results 1-20 of 38 for "freedom of information" speaker:David Heath

Opposition Day: [Un-alloted half-day] — Dissolution of Parliament (10 Jun 2009) has video

David Heath: ...repeatedly that he is the man to cure Parliament of its ills. However, he is the man who, when the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (David Maclean) was trying to exempt the House from freedom of information legislation, could not be bothered to turn up to vote. Members can look it up in Hansard for 20 April 2007. That was the sort of leadership that the Prime Minister...

Opposition Day — [3rd Allotted Day]: Parliamentary Standards (Constitutional Reform) (2 Feb 2009) has video

David Heath: ...Parliament as an institution and in politics as a profession. The past fortnight has been a bad couple of weeks for parliamentary politics. We had the aborted attempt to exempt Parliament from the Freedom of Information Act 2000, the revelations about the activities of certain peers and a reminder, in the Standards and Privileges Committee's report, of the actions of one hon. Member. A...

Business of the House: Members' Payments and Allowances (22 Jan 2009) has video

David Heath: ...camps, nor enable any portion of the House to claim a specific sanctimony all its own, as that is unhelpful to the process of finding the right solution. I want to spend a little time on the Freedom of Information Act statutory instrument. It has been withdrawn, but it is extremely cogent to the proposed scheme of publication. I wholly welcome its withdrawal. I always intended to oppose...

Business of the House: Members' Payments and Allowances (22 Jan 2009) has video

David Heath: ...Dispatch Box yesterday, but it was spun a different way later, which is unfortunate. If we had been asked, we would have said no, because we do not believe that the House should be exempted from the Freedom of Information Act on this matter. We have always argued that that Act should not be diluted. The first Committee on which I ever served in the House was the one that considered the...

Business of the House: Members' Payments and Allowances (22 Jan 2009) has video

David Heath: ...that categorical assurance, because it would have been helpful to the House, particularly to those hon. Members who felt that we were going in entirely the wrong direction in trying to disapply the freedom of information provisions to ourselves.

Business of the House: Members' Payments and Allowances (22 Jan 2009) has video

David Heath: I have just indicated that I am about to set out three principles, so it would not be helpful for me to take an intervention just at that point. The first principle is that the concept of freedom of information applies to Members of Parliament as much as to anyone else in the public services. That is non-negotiable. The second principle is that the public have a right to know how public money...

Business of the House: Members' Payments and Allowances (22 Jan 2009) has video

David Heath: ...what I was going to say next. My difficulty with the proposals before us is the relationship between the scheme of publication that has been suggested, which has many admirable qualities, and extant freedom of information requests and decisions of the tribunal and the High Court, which cannot just be wished away; they exist. The tragedy is that if the House had used its brain a little more...

Business of the House (22 Jan 2009) has video

David Heath: .... Member for Rutland and Melton (Alan Duncan) to his new position? I am sure that he is indeed a pivot. In the spirit of his congratulations to the Leader of the House on her change of heart on the freedom of information, I also thank him for the change of spirit in the Conservative party from the position adopted in respect of the former Conservative Chief Whip's private member's Bill...

Opposition Day — [1st Allotted Day]: Emergency Care (21 Jan 2009) has video

David Heath: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Obviously, many Opposition Members will greatly welcome the withdrawal of the statutory instrument on freedom of information. However, is it in order to proceed with a publication scheme that is expressly not in accordance with the judgment of the High Court?

Post Offices (Somerset) (24 Jun 2008)

David Heath: ...about whether their views were taken into account. Will the Minister give me an assurance that the letters of objection and the plans that were submitted will be available? Do I have to make a freedom of information request to get them? Will my request be blocked for reasons of commercial confidentiality, even though this was supposed to be a public consultation?

Business of the House (7 Jun 2007)

David Heath: ...income while their cleaners, on little more than the national minimum wage, pay 20 per cent.? Is that really Labour party policy? Lastly, may we have a debate on the Government's attitude to freedom of information? For once, that does not relate to the private Member's Bill, but to the decision by the Office of Government Commerce to destroy the gateway review documents on the cost of...

Orders of the Day: Clause 1 — Exemption of House of Commons and House of Lords (18 May 2007)

David Heath: ...subsection (5), which would become subsection (4). Subsection (2) has already been discussed, so we cannot revisit it. It removes the House of Commons and the House of Lords from schedule 1 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Schedule 1, which is the list of public authorities to which the Bill would apply, would be minus the House of Commons and the House of Lords which, as I said...

Orders of the Day: Clause 1 — Exemption of House of Commons and House of Lords (18 May 2007)

David Heath: It is a pleasure to speak on the large group of amendments before us. As I said in an earlier intervention, I had the pleasure of serving on the Standing Committee that considered the Freedom of Information Bill, along with the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Mark Fisher), although when I asked him about it earlier, he had forgotten that he served on it, so broad is his experience...

Orders of the Day: Clause 1 — Exemption of House of Commons and House of Lords (18 May 2007)

David Heath: ...a sort of procedural anomaly that must be borne with forbearance, rather than a crucial part of the House's consideration of a Bill that will have a profound effect on not only the operation of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, but the reputation of the House. That is what causes many of us concern.

Orders of the Day: Clause 1 — Exemption of House of Commons and House of Lords (18 May 2007)

David Heath: Let us take the charitable view and suggest that the cases involved a properly constructed freedom of information request to a public authority, and that, for some reason, the bureaucrats involved had no idea what the law says, and were therefore prepared to provide information that they should not have provided, in contradiction to the laws that are already in place to give protection. Let...

Orders of the Day: Clause 1 — Exemption of House of Commons and House of Lords (18 May 2007)

David Heath: ...very clear exemption is the reason why many of us oppose the Bill. Is she aware that some of her earlier arguments are the exact reverse of the arguments adduced in the Standing Committee on the Freedom of Information Bill, on which I had the honour to serve, with the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Mark Fisher)? In that Committee, the Minister told us that class exemptions,...

Business of the House (19 Oct 2006)

David Heath: ...on finding the lost Bills that I drew his attention to last week; he obviously does not expect prolonged debate on the Fraud Bill, which gives me some cause for concern. May we have a debate on freedom of information and the application of the Freedom of Information Act 2000? Many people are extremely concerned that the good intentions behind the Act are to be undermined by the...

Public Bill Committee: Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill: Clause 22 - Functions to which sections 19 and 20 apply (9 Mar 2006)

David Heath: That was a difficulty that we also encountered when we were dealing with the Freedom of Information Act 2000, when discussing what constituted a public body. It was extremely difficult to identify what constituted a public body and, in the end, there was a capacity to list public bodies, or organisations and individuals who were to be treated as public bodies, and the capacity to amend that...

Public Bill Committee: Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill: Clause 12 - Draft order and explanatory document laid before Parliament (7 Mar 2006)

David Heath: I do not want to labour the point, but I want to be clear about the relationship with the Freedom of Information Act 2000. The Minister is right that a potential exempt category under subsection (5) is actionable breach of confidence, but under subsection (6) the test is that it appears to a Minister that disclosure would adversely affect the interests of another person. I am not sure that...

Public Bill Committee: Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill: Clause 12 - Draft order and explanatory document laid before Parliament (7 Mar 2006)

David Heath: ...question. Given that the clause provides for Ministers not to publish representations in response to consultation on certain grounds; is that on the basis that it falls within a category of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 that comprises advice to Ministers? If so, if anyone who writes to a Minister is deemed to be providing advice, that rather extends the definition. Or do other...