International Development (Reporting and Transparency) Bill

I support the Bill and I congratulate the right hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr. Clarke) on getting it so far. I am here not to delay or wreck the process but to support and strengthen the Bill, which has an awful lot of merit. My hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood) urged us not to delay the Bill’s passage unnecessarily, and I intend to take his advice. I am sure that he would also agree that it is crucial that all legislation is scrutinised properly in the House. On such an important issue, on which many of my constituents feel incredibly strongly, it is essential that we try to strengthen the Bill in every way possible, which my hon. Friend’s amendments go a long way to doing. When I talk about the importance of scrutinising legislation, I do so in the full knowledge that this is the first day of debate on private Members’ Bills since the tragic death of our former right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst, who always made it clear to me how important proper scrutiny of legislation was. I am sure that everyone in the House feels that these debates on a Friday will be the weaker for not having Eric Forth’s forthright, witty and important contributions. Amendment No. 2, which deals with annual reports being able to revise anything contained in a previous annual report, is particularly important. As I said earlier, an annual report talks about what has happened in the previous year, and if something has happened that revises something in a previous annual report, surely it would be contained anyway. The subsection concerned is unnecessary. The other main concern about an annual report revising anything contained in a previous annual report is that we may have to wait for up to 11 months for revisions to appear so that people are aware of them. Surely if anything needs revising, it should be done immediately and openly, not buried away in a later annual report under some obscure heading or subsection so that people do not realise that there has been a revision. The whole Bill is about reporting and transparency and my hon. Friend’s amendment improves both the reporting and transparency of information. Should the amendment not be passed, will the Minister consider ensuring that any revisions are made in an appendix to a future annual report, so that they are perfectly clear, not buried away and difficult to find? Amendment No. 3 deals with the subsection that states:"““Nothing in this Act shall be read as preventing an annual report being combined with any other report which the Secretary of State lays before either House of Parliament.””" I understand the many advantages of combining annual reports with other reports laid before Parliament. Obviously, the first advantage is the simple one that it might save considerable time and money, as printing costs are expensive. The reason that Opposition as well as Government Members feel that the Bill is important is that it is about transparency and proper reporting, which we want. My fear is that, if the annual report is combined with other reports, it might get buried and undermined and not receive the focus that it deserves. As we have a Government who think that it is important to bury bad news, I would not like to think that bad news on this subject was being buried deliberately in other reports.