International Development (Reporting and Transparency) Bill

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for drawing my attention to the provision in the Corruption Bill. In due course, I hope that he will be able to share with the House the definition of corruption and tell us whether he thinks that that would be a suitable definition to include in the annual report, if amendment No. 23 were agreed to. Amendment No. 5 is consequential on amendment No. 4. Both amendments would replace ““must”” with"““shall so far as reasonably practicable””." They would give the Government more flexibility in relation to the provisions of the report and provide scope to include more provisions, such as those set out in amendments No. 29, 30 and 31 to the schedule, which would require specific extra information to be included in the annual report. In amendment No. 29 we are not asking for a definitive answer on how much bilateral aid has been misused, because the Government might not be able to provide such an answer, any more than they can tell us how many illegal immigrants are in the country—but surely we can ask for their best estimate. If the Government are not making estimates of how much taxpayers’ money is going into fraudulent schemes, they should be. I hope that the Under-Secretary is happy to include that provision in the schedule. Amendments No. 30 and 31, by requiring the report to contain information on the individuals and organisations to which bilateral aid is paid, would be useful and significant improvements to the reporting requirements set out in the schedule. The information should already be available to the relevant Department, so I hope that the Under-Secretary is willing to accept the amendments.