I move amendment No. 21:
In page 27, subsection (2), line 39, to delete "relates to" and substitute "contains".
This amendment deals with the judgment of the Supreme Court in the Attorney General v. Hamilton, 1993, relating to the beef tribunal. Section 19 contains a number of exemptions relating to meetings of Government. Subsection (2) deals with Cabinet confidentiality but appears to go beyond what is required by the Supreme Court decision. To quote from the judgment of Chief Justice Finlay “The claim for confidentiality of the contents and details of discussions at meetings of the Government in relation to the inquiry of this tribunal is a valid claim”.
It was the contents and details of Government discussions that the Supreme Court found to be confidential. This Bill appears to go further. It proposes that anything which "relates to" statements made at a meeting of the Government will not be disclosed. Thus, material of the most innocuous kind used by a Minister to prepare for a Cabinet meeting would be exempt under section 19(2) because it would relate to what he or she said at the meeting, even if he or she said something completely different. The Supreme Court only protected Cabinet discussions. The words "relates to" go beyond this. My proposal is that they should be replaced by "contains" to comply with the decision of the Supreme Court.
On Second Stage I said that it was extraordinary that this Bill makes no attempt to deal with the consequences of the Supreme Court decision. The Minister and her colleagues, particularly those in the Labour Party, were critical of that decision and promised to change the law by way of an amendment to the Constitution. However, if we are to take the Supreme Court's decision on board in this Bill, we should not go further than the court. It mentioned contents and details of discussions at meetings of the Government; it did not mention matters which relate to those contents and discussions.
