I'm trying to be as gracious as I can. I still need your cooperation.
It strikes me that in our interest of defending the principle of parliamentary privilege, which I wholly support, we have to be cognizant of the fact that there's such a thing as too much privilege. There can be a surplus of parliamentary privilege.
I just read a book by Joseph Maingot on parliamentary privilege versus parliamentary inviolability. In the European Union, in some countries fugitives from justice hide behind being elected: they can be members of Parliament who can't be prosecuted, because they hide behind privilege.
The public has just about had it with concepts and notions like that. We live in a political environment. Guys like Berlusconi stay immune from prosecution while they're in office. The shroud of secrecy is over certain activities of Parliament because of parliamentary privilege.
These are not good things for us to run an election campaign on. I think we have to remind ourselves from time to time of the Open Government Act of John Reid, the former information commissioner.
Scott, I think you were probably aware of that in those days. The Conservative Party adopted it in its totality as a platform plank in 2006. He talked about “public interest override” having primacy over all other considerations in the administration of freedom of information, as he called it.
I see us drifting away from those laudable concepts.
I just had a conversation with Dominic here. Guys like David Dingwall ran afoul in trying to explain privilege to the public. It ain't no beach party trying to explain privilege to the general public. “Entitled”—he's still wearing that.
I think we should be really cautious. If there's a way to codify in legislation the notion that on a discretionary basis some activities of Parliament will be subject to freedom of information and some will be reserved, for good reason—such as what the Information Commissioner does on a daily basis in making that adjudication.... The notion of being excluded completely and—what's the other term?—exempted—