Freedom of Information Act 2000 (Amendment)

Motion for leave to bring in a Bill (Standing Order No. 23)

I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to omit section 37 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000; to provide that the Sovereign, the Royal Family, the Royal Household, the Royal Archives and the Duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster are public authorities for the purposes of that Act; and for connected purposes.

I am grateful to have the chance to introduce this Bill alongside colleagues from parties across the House. I am very grateful for the breadth of support across many parties for the measures that it contains; that shows how much Members of the House recognise the importance of transparency and accountability in public office.

Today the people of France celebrate Bastille Day, to commemorate when they were driven to revolt because they were fed up of an aloof regime that they had no way of holding to account. One particular member of the royal family was travelling to shady destinations to meet secretly with foreign men of extreme wealth for reasons that would have shocked the common people if they had known. There is no record we can find to say whether or not Marie Antoinette spent three days visiting any of these men to tell them that she could not be their friend any more. Meanwhile, the elected representatives of the country—the Third Estate—were being blocked from having any say in the behaviour of the French royal family or even being able to investigate what members like that were up to.

To be clear, at this stage I do not believe that we in this place should be calling for an insurrection, as the Third Estate did then. Instead, the Bill I present today will go some way to adding a brick of transparency to the wall of secrecy and privilege that surrounds our own monarchy nearly 250 years later. The Bill also has support from the Campaign for Freedom of Information, Republic, the general committee of Labour International, and the National Union of Journalists.

There are two questions that we must ask in connection with the royal family and freedom of information. Under our constitution, which needs modernising in so many ways, are the royal family public servants or not? If they are, is it reasonable for one set of public servants to have such a blanket exemption from the rules that all others have to follow?

As MPs and Ministers, we are expected to follow the Nolan principles of public life, as are all public bodies and servants. The fifth Nolan principle is openness. It says:

“Information should not be withheld from the public unless there are clear and lawful reasons for doing so.”

Clearly, the Freedom of Information Act 2000 was created in that spirit. But despite meeting the criteria of a public body, and despite the royal family unarguably being public servants, the monarchy has its own special exemption carved out in the Act. Can that in any way be right? Some right hon. and hon. Members may be concerned that the Bill is not perfectly reasonable in what it asks for, but I assure them that it is. It is about providing the bare minimum of accountability to the royal family and closing loopholes that I think we all agree should not be carved out just for members of one privileged lineage.