Government Spending (Website) Bill [HL]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, on introducing this Bill. There is a pretty widespread sense of unease across the country that the Government have spent very much more on public services, but that the additional output and improvement in services has not been seen to be proportionate. A frequently asked question is, ““Where has all the additional money gone?””. Under existing accounting rules and practices, it is extraordinarily difficult for a Member of your Lordships’ House, far less an ordinary citizen, to answer that question and to discover in any detail whatever how government expenditure has been incurred and spent. Therefore, this Bill opens a window into this largely closed world, which many citizens and specialists in particular policy areas would greatly welcome. Therefore, we support the Bill. At the very least, the fact that there was greater openness would cause both civil servants and those bidding for contracts to think even harder than they do about value for money. If I and the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, and anyone in the country can look up a particular area and see in some detail how money is being spent, we can exercise what judgment we have on whether value for money has been sought and achieved. Whether it is a civil servant or a consultant—I declare an interest as a consultant who sometimes bids for public sector contracts—if we think that someone is able to look over our shoulders, that is a very good constraint on all concerned. What, then, can the objections be to such a Bill? First, there could be a technical objection that it cannot be done and it is far too complicated. Secondly—I am not sure whether the noble Baroness mentioned this—there is the question of commercial confidentiality. It could be said that in dealing with many aspects of government policy, the Government are contracting with someone to deliver or provide something, and it would be completely improper for the details of that contract to be made public. The answer to both those questions lies in the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act in the United States. Frankly, if the US federal Government feel that they can do it and that commercial confidentiality is not an over-riding constraint, those arguments should fall here. I am extremely grateful to the noble Baroness for directing me to the White House website—not a website that I usually frequent. Two things struck me about the information that it gave about the Act, as it now is in the United States. The first thing is the extent to which it felt able to go down to pretty small contracts. I think the noble Baroness mentioned £25,000. The United States has gone down to $25,000, and it will publish details of expenditure down to that quite fine-grain level, which is very impressive. The other thing, which I hope might infuse our discussion, is that this was a bipartisan Bill in the United States. The President warmly signed it, it was supported by people on all sides, and one of its principal sponsors was Senator Barack Obama from Illinois, who is as near to new Labour, despite his wobble on Iraq, as you can get. Here we have a Bill that, in the United States, has bipartisan support, has been accepted as practicable and has been signed into effect. Therefore, although I do not necessarily want to follow American policy, I respect it, and I believe that this is one area in which we could usefully follow it.