International Development (Reporting and Transparency) Bill

I take my hon. Friend’s point, which he makes well. Amendment No. 26 would omit paragraph 7 to the schedule and replace it with the tighter requirement in amendment No. 28. As drafted, the Bill does not require information for any relevant period to be included in the annual report"““if the figures for that period are not (or not yet) available when the report is prepared; but if they become available later they must be included in the first annual report which is prepared after they become available””." In my view, if we—Parliament—require that the Government provide information, that information should be made available, and if it cannot be made available for some reason, the annual report should set out the reasons why it is unavailable and, by implication, when it will become available. In effect, the clever, subtle drafting of paragraph 7 negates the requirement in paragraph 1 that the annual report ““must”” contain various pieces of information by allowing the publication of the information to be deferred or delayed.