I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak in support of new clause 2, which would add a considerable dose of fairness to the Bill. I will concentrate on the need to extend the use of the Freedom of Information Act.
As we all know, private companies that deliver public services are exempt from the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act. The Information Commissioner has no power to investigate private contractors. He cannot serve information notices to require a contractor to supply information for an investigation, nor can he take enforcement action if a contractor fails to comply with his contractual obligations. Put bluntly, that renders it nigh on impossible for us to get our hands on the details of much of what private companies get up to with public money.
New clause 2 seeks to correct that oversight, at least in relation to services that are provided to local authorities and health bodies. I hope that, in time, such provisions will be extended to all significant public sector contracts that are placed with organisations outside the public sector, whether they are charities, not-for-profit companies, mutuals or those that make vast profits for their shareholders at the expense of the taxpayer.
I have been hugely concerned for many years—not just under this Government, but under the previous Government and others before them—that there is a tremendous lack of transparency in the use of public money when it is handed to private companies and other organisations for the delivery of goods and services. Further billions of pounds of public money have been distributed from the public sector into the private sector in every year since the coalition Government came to power, so my anxieties have increased considerably.
There are good grounds for that anxiety, because many of the vital services, on which we daily rely, have been contracted out to private sector and other providers. The list seems endless, but until now we appear to have been largely content to see taxpayers’ money handed over to private companies for the delivery of services ranging from waste management and highway repair to schools, hospitals, the justice system, early years care and, as we were reminded yesterday, the care of elderly people.
No public service appears to be safe from the zeal for outsourcing that has been demonstrated by this Government, regardless of whether evidence exists to support such a model of provision. Should Ministers be allowed to further their ambitions to privatise even more services, without the providers being subject to proper scrutiny? I do not think so. If taxpayers’ money is involved, any citizen or Member of Parliament should be able to see the detail of where and how it is being spent. Applying the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act to such circumstances would enable that to happen.
We must make the best use of taxpayers’ money. I often hear Members from all parts of the House talk about the need to innovate in delivering services and to
share best practice so that people across the country can reap the benefits. Without the transparency that would be provided by new clause 2, through the Freedom of Information Act, we are destined to see service providers keep their cards close to their chests, protecting their information at the expense of better services across the country. That transparency would also provide us with data on organisations that are prepared to run services at a loss for a period to drive competitors out of the market and then make a killing in the long term when there is no one for them to compete against.
Although I am the first to acknowledge that the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act can, at times, be cumbersome, I am in no doubt about the greater good that they serve. It is those requirements that allow those who are on the outside looking in—who, let us not forget, consist largely of the taxpayers who fund service provision—to delve into the details and scrutinise the outputs to ensure that they are getting value for money through providers that are fit for purpose. It is also those requirements that allow politicians, the media and other organisations to scrutinise what companies are up to.
I spoke recently on the Offender Rehabilitation Public Bill Committee about the need for the extension of the Freedom of Information Act to services that are provided to the Ministry of Justice, including the probation services that are on the verge of being privatised. I said that I was offering Government Members an opportunity for the future. Just as they had the right to scrutinise the public sector by pressing for information under the Act after Labour brought it in, they could have any number of fruitful days examining the contracts that are let by the future Labour Government if the provisions are extended to the private sector, as outlined in new clause 2.
Perhaps I will not convince the Conservatives, who will doubtless plead that commercial confidentiality must be retained in contracts, but the Lib Dems would surely love to have the chance to exploit this new transparency. They will know that, with £100 billion of taxpayers’ money being spent each year on the provision of public services by private and voluntary sector companies, it is essential that such expenditure is evaluated properly and that service providers are held fully to account for their actions. It is a core tenet of our democracy that taxpayers are able to access the information that is necessary to do that thoroughly and vigorously.
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Under this Government, the number of services that are run by the private sector is growing. There is a parallel growth in the size of the democratic deficit. Not only is more taxpayers’ money being entrusted to companies that have limited or no experience of such service provision, as will happen with the probation service, but there is an increase in the number of activities that are undertaken by Departments that are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act. As a result, the number of contracted services that are unaccountable and lacking full scrutiny is increasing. As things stand, private sector companies that are responsible for delivering public services are able to hide behind a cloak of commercial confidentiality.
Billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money is being awarded to companies under contracts that are barely transparent. We cannot say that often enough. Billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money is being awarded to companies under contracts that are barely transparent. Those same companies are free to exploit the benefits of gaining detailed knowledge of successful public sector bodies through the submission of freedom of information requests. That information can be deployed to undercut, imitate or outbid the very same public sector bodies when contracts are tendered or renewed. That situation leaves private companies in the strongest possible position to exploit such knowledge. More importantly, it enables them to hide what they are doing with large sums of public money.
Departments are under considerable strain in monitoring their contracts because staff numbers have collapsed under the Government’s cuts. The public therefore deserve the right to do some monitoring of their own. There would be real accountability if the private firms and other organisations that spend those billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money were compelled to answer directly to the public by providing responses to questions about what they are doing.