Localism Bill

I hope that my noble friend will comment on a concern brought to me by a constituent when I was the Member of Parliament for North Swindon, which powerfully illustrates the case that he is making for the amendment. A couple of years ago the constituent came to me with his concerns about the Wyvern theatre in Swindon, which is owned by Swindon borough council but the management of which is contracted to a private company. My constituent had learnt that the business of the lead member in the Swindon borough council cabinet with primary responsibility for letting this management contract had been given thousands of pounds worth of business—from memory, it had been given £10,000 to £12,000 worth of business—by the theatre. It was clear that the councillor concerned had acted properly in leaving the room whenever this contract was discussed. However, that did not satisfy my constituent who made the point to me over and over again that if a Minister had been in an analogous position there would have been a scandal and the Minister would have had to resign. He kept saying to me that even if the councillor had done nothing wrong himself, the private management company might still be trying spontaneously to curry favour with that councillor as his decisions could be of enormous importance to its commercial well-being. I told my constituent that in my view there was nothing necessarily wrong with a councillor getting business in this way. Councillors are not paid a salary in the same way as Members of Parliament are, for example, and most councillors need to earn a living. I told my constituent that the way to deal with the matter was to find out whether a proper procurement process had been followed, whether the contract had been put out to tender, if it had not been, why not, and if it had been, how many people had responded to the tender, what prices had been offered and whether the contract had been awarded on price, quality or for some other reason—in other words, whether it was all transparent. My constituent pursued this route and I did so on his behalf. We went to the council, which could not do anything. We went to the private company which was not covered by the freedom of information legislation and refused to give any information, so the situation was completely opaque and remains so to this day. I hope the Minister will agree that such a lack of transparency on such a potentially sensitive issue is not acceptable and that this amendment may provide a way to tackle the opaque nature of such a transaction. I am sure that this situation is not unique to Swindon. If the amendment is not acceptable, perhaps the Minister can come up with some other proposal. I hope my noble friend will agree that his amendment would help to deal with this sort of issue.