Results 1-20 of 41 for "freedom of information" speaker:Tony Wright

Nato: Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill (20 Oct 2009)

Tony Wright: ...necessarily been a consistent sense of direction, but there have been some important achievements. The reason we are having all the troubles with our expenses at the moment is that we introduced a Freedom of Information Act. As long as we had no such provision, we thought that we could do things in secret. The introduction of the Act has had a transforming effect on our whole political...

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

Tony Wright: ...conspired— [ Interruption. ] Well, my colleagues on both sides of the House had come together to persuade the Government to remove the House and Members of Parliament from the scrutiny of the Freedom of Information Act in relation to detailed spending. That was the proposal that we were to be presented with today, and because I have learned over the years that the dark forces...

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

Tony Wright: ...ourselves at the eleventh hour from the decisions that have made the publication of our expenditure inevitable. I say to those dark forces that that is not the case. Those who have followed the Freedom of Information Act will know that the obligation to produce publication schemes is a quite separate arm of the Act from the testing of disclosure provisions in the public interest. There...

Business of the House: Speaker's Committee on the Search of Offices on the Parliamentary Estate (8 Dec 2008) has video

Tony Wright: ...in the House, which my friend the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) took up with the aid of the Government, and as someone who spent a good deal of time when we passed the Freedom of Information Act 2000 trying to ensure that there was a public interest reason for disclosing official information, even in areas where the Government did not want a public interest test to...

[Mr. Martyn Jones in the Chair] — Ministers and Civil Servants (30 Oct 2008)

Tony Wright: ...past that his ability to reinvent history, as well as claiming authorship of anything that has ever happened, is simply extraordinary. First, he was completely wrong when he described my position on freedom of information. The idea that I said that all policy advice had to be covered is complete nonsense. The idea that I was ever not in favour of a civil service Act is nonsense. The idea...

[Mr. Martyn Jones in the Chair] — Ministers and Civil Servants (30 Oct 2008)

Tony Wright: ...you win an election, you get to control the show." That has changed slightly, because we have put more checks and balances in, particularly under this Government—we now have human rights and freedom of information legislation, devolution and so on. We do not quite conform to the traditional picture but, on the whole, my hon. Friend is right. We concluded from our examination that the...

Estimates Day — [1st Allotted Day] — Supplementary Estimates, 2007-08: Standards of Conduct in Public Life (5 Dec 2007) has video

Tony Wright: ...one for special advisers; we have set up a Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards; we have established an adviser on ministerial interests; we have set up the Electoral Commission; we have had a Freedom of Information Act, with an Information Commissioner; we have a House of Lords Appointments Commission to check for propriety; we have a commissioner for public appointments; and we have...

Estimates Day — [1st Allotted Day] — Supplementary Estimates, 2007-08: Standards of Conduct in Public Life (5 Dec 2007) has video

Tony Wright: I very much agree that that was not this House's finest hour. The Public Administration Committee was involved in examining the draft of the original Freedom of Information Bill, and we can claim to have made it rather more robust by the time it completed its parliamentary journey than it was when it started. There are a number of explanations for the paradox surrounding the enormous growth...

[Mrs. Janet Dean in the Chair] — Disabled Children (2 May 2007)

Tony Wright: ...at BDF Newlife found that that information was not available: it was not available from the Government; it was not available from normal sources. They had to go out and find it and they did that by using the Freedom of Information Act 2000. I have to confess that that was not my suggestion to them; it was their own idea. They therefore made a freedom of information request to every PCT and...

Freedom of Information (Fees Regulation) (7 Feb 2007)

Tony Wright: ...apologise because I shall not be here for the end of the debate due to a Select Committee commitment. I am therefore obliged to be extremely quick. Most in this Chamber have form on the issue of freedom of information in one way or another. We have lived with it for many years and taken pride in delivering for the first time a law on freedom of information. Naturally, we want to protect...

Freedom of Information (Fees Regulation) (7 Feb 2007)

Tony Wright: The examples being given are telling. I could extend the hon. Gentleman's point to the press generally, which hon. Members have mentioned. One of the great advantages of the freedom of information regime is that instead of simply making up stories, at which they are traditionally rather good, the press now have a discipline of finding the facts about cases. Then they can make up stories about...

Freedom of Information (Fees Regulation) (7 Feb 2007)

Tony Wright: ...public value is completely absent from what is proposed, yet it was completely central to the legislation. My conclusion, which has been hinted at already, is that the fundamental reason for wanting freedom of information has not yet entered the bloodstream of the Government. That is the truth of the matter. When we were passing the law, we always knew that unless it produced that culture...

House of Lords Reform (23 Feb 2005)

Dr Tony Wright: ...reform to their credit. I am bound to say that we did not achieve that record by giving people free votes. That is not how we got devolution for Scotland and Wales, the Human Rights Act 1998 or freedom of information; we got them by having a coherent position that we believed in and that we argued for. The truth is that we do not have that on second Chamber reform. Until we do, that reform...

Oral Answers to Questions — Constitutional Affairs: Written Constitution (11 Jan 2005)

Dr Tony Wright: ...clear up that puzzle if we began to write a lot of it down? As my hon. Friend the Minister said, this Government have done a lot more writing down of provisions on matters such as human rights and freedom of information. Although it might not have made much sense a long time ago to try to codify the constitution, surely we have now reached a point at which some kind of codification would...

Department for Constitutional Affairs: Freedom of Information Act (26 Oct 2004)

Dr Tony Wright: My hon. Friend will recall that the Government took a power under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to give certain public bodies the power to serve a veto, in order to override the Information Commissioner's decisions. Do I understand from his recent written answer to me that the Government might not in fact give that power to a range of public bodies?

Freedom of Information (9 Jun 2004)

Dr Tony Wright: ...in the Treasury—normally a great institution—who do not want the measure to cost much at all. Clear, unambiguous, categorical, unequivocal guarantees were given to the House when the Freedom of Information Bill went through. Amendments were withdrawn because of those guarantees. We in Parliament take many things on trust—not least Ministers saying, "There's guidance to...

Ministerial Accountability and Parliamentary Questions (8 Jan 2004)

Dr Tony Wright: May I try to be helpful? Surely, if the Freedom of Information Act has the consequence that we all hope for, it will produce a change in the way in which Governments do their business, which will have a good impact on citizens' requests. It will also have a good impact on MPs' requests. The most recent case was published by the ombudsman's office and was mentioned today. Its central point...

Ministerial Accountability and Parliamentary Questions (8 Jan 2004)

Dr Tony Wright: I agree. Those comments take me back a few years to when the Committee was spending much time examining the Government's freedom of information proposals. We took extensive evidence on the White Paper, the draft Bill and the Bill that emerged, and when we took evidence from business organisations, their concern was not to see information protected; they simply wanted to know what the rules...

Ministerial Accountability and Parliamentary Questions (8 Jan 2004)

Dr Tony Wright: ...policy process, but it is proper background information. The ability to make such distinctions secured the release of information that was not already available. That context is changing because of the freedom of information legislation that will finally come into effect next year, and the situation is beginning to produce a change of culture throughout Government. It will be possible for...

Orders of the Day — Freedom of Information Bill: General Right of Access to Information Held by Public Authorities (27 Nov 2000)

Dr Tony Wright: ...of the famous clause 28—the class exemption for investigatory bodies. The climate in which we have discussed that matter has clearly changed. Until recently, it could have been said that freedom of information was a matter for the chattering classes. Indeed, I am told that a Cabinet Minister said just that at some point. Since BSE, though, freedom of information is a matter for the...