My Lords, we are moving on to the transparency part of the provisions on investment contracts, but some of this reads across to other parts of the Bill. My amendment essentially would limit the exclusions in the information that the Minister will provide on the contracts and the transparency that they provide to Parliament. It would restrict it to trade secrets, which is provided for in Schedule 3(3)(b), and would delete two other exceptions on the grounds that they add nothing to the issue of trade secrets. Sub-paragraph (3)(c) refers to,
“information the disclosure of which, in the opinion of the Secretary of State at that time, would or would be likely to prejudice the commercial interests of any person”,
and sub-paragraph (3)(d) refers to,
“information the disclosure of which would, in the opinion of the Secretary of State at that time, constitute a breach of confidence actionable by any person”.
Quite apart from the subjectivity of that judgment by the Secretary of State, is not the information that we would rightly wish to exclude from any disclosure to Parliament or elsewhere all related to trade secrets? It is related to information held by the companies which are party to the agreements or other companies which are relevant to the agreement, which it would not be in the public interest to disclose and would not be in the interests of the signatories or contractors to the agreements to disclose.
I tried to find a definition of a “trade secret”. It apparently relates to anything which has not been disclosed to the public and which is of benefit to the holder of that secret. It is normally enforced by the confidentiality rules, which include commercial in confidence. In that case, surely sub-paragraph (3)(c), which deals with commercial in confidence, and sub-paragraph (3)(d), which deals with breaches of confidence that are actionable, fall under the paragraph dealing with trade secrets. If not, the suspicion has to be that the Secretary of State, by his or her subjective judgment, could exclude a whole range of other information that was pertinent to an understanding, by Parliament or by the public in general, of what are going to be pretty complex contracts. If we get a contract that is public and available to Parliament but heavily redacted because the Secretary of State thinks that in some direct or indirect way there might be a breach of commercial confidentiality of somebody who is not only not party to the agreement but not directly relevant to the agreement—or, indeed, any person—what does the Minister think, if I may boil it down to this, is covered by sub-paragraphs (3)(c) and (3)(d) which is not already covered by sub-paragraph (3)(b)? If other kinds of material are covered, we either need to be much tighter on the exclusions or spell out precisely what kinds of information could be legitimately redacted from any disclosure of the contracts.
These are hugely important contracts, matters of huge public concern which affect the future of our energy security, the cost to the consumer, the environmental impact and the cost to British industry and therefore British industry’s competitiveness. It is vital that as much as possible is disclosed about a contract without jeopardising the contract itself. That requires a relatively narrow delineation of what can be excluded: we must not have what looks like a fairly open door available to the Secretary of State to redact a whole lot more from the contract. I beg to move.
12.30 pm