Government Spending (Website) Bill [HL]

My Lords, I thank both noble Lords for taking part in today’s debate on my Bill. In particular, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Newby, for supporting it and for pointing out the important behavioural impact that the Bill would have on civil servants and on those who deal with government. They would know that information about their actions would be available if the Bill became law. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Newby, for pointing out that if it can be done in the US, then we can do it in the UK. Naturally, I was a little disappointed by the response of the noble Lord, Lord Evans. He started by providing a long list of the information already available on the Treasury’s website and on other departmental websites. I accept that a large amount of individual information is available, but the Minister did not address the point of my Bill—the provision of a single publicly searchable website on which information on expenditure would be brought together. At the moment, you can access various parts of Treasury’s website and perform multiple searches; you might obtain a few bits of information; but you certainly would not be able to answer the sorts of questions that should be answerable—for example, how much was spent on EDS and on travel and entertaining. Information at that level is not provided; only a different type of information is provided, not information on value for money.