Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)

My Lords, Amendment 6A is in the name of my noble and learned friend Lord Keen of Elie and myself. I will also speak to Amendment 19 in this group. There are a number of amendments in this group, and Amendment 6A happens to be the first, which is why I am standing up first. In the interests of time, I hope the Committee will understand if, at least in these remarks, I will focus just on the amendments in my name and on the Official Opposition’s amendment. I should say that we do not oppose the Government’s amendments in this group. Amendment 6A is a switch-off mechanism that seeks to limit the size of an inquiry where the requirement for notification and assistance applies, and it sets that limit at an inquiry where more than 100 individuals are involved. This is explicitly a probing amendment to explore the issues that might arise from large volumes of irrelevant or barely relevant and probably unnecessary notifications and information being provided to investigations and inquiries which have a very broad scope. Therefore, we would be interested in hearing from the Minister the Government’s assessment of the impact the broad duty of candour and assistance would have on the size of investigations and inquiries, and what effect, in turn, that would have on the speed at which these inquiries come to a conclusion. Many of us sometimes raise eyebrows at the speed, or lack of it, at which some inquiries come or do not come to conclusions. The impact assessment provided by the Government identifies the possible benefit of more inquiries taking place on a non-statutory basis and the savings that would result from inquiries getting it right the first time. However, it is silent on the risk that more public authorities and officials would come forward, especially where statutory inquiries have very broad terms of reference. We would therefore be interested to learn whether the Government have made an assessment of that risk. If so, could we have an updated risk assessment before the scrutiny of the Bill in your Lordships’ House is completed? The other amendment in our name is Amendment 19. This would require clear guidance on how the duty of candour—which would, of course, become a statutory obligation—would interact with duties in existing legislation. This is not a suggestion for the duty of candour to overrule existing legislation. The Bill is clear on that point in Clause 3(7)(a). However, as I mentioned at Second Reading, there is some complexity here. For example, public bodies have existing duties under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, which includes both requirements to disclose information and exemptions from disclosure. Data protection law, for example, restricts disclosure of personal information. Legal professional privilege can also prevent the disclosure of information.