My Lords, this has been a short but useful debate. I am grateful to all who have spoken in it and for the fact that everyone—except the Minister—has broadly supported the amendment. I congratulate the two new vice-presidents of the Local Government Association on their contribution on this subject. I am also grateful to the Minister and the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, and their officials for their willingness to engage continually with me on this subject. I have benefited from our discussions.
I am grateful, too, that the Minister expressed his continuing willingness for the Government to keep looking at this issue. That is a step forward from the Committee stage and the Report stage. Although the Government have not accepted the amendment, I am grateful for what I take to be a slow, almost imperceptible, warming of their position on it. However, looking at this issue is not the same as doing something about it.
It is not the same as taking advantage of what is likely to be quite a rare legislative opportunity to bring greater transparency to this important sphere of public life.
The Minister mentioned two primary reasons for resisting the amendment. One was commercial sensitivity. However, he will be well aware that the Freedom of Information Act 2000 has an exemption for commercial sensitivity—subject, of course, to a public interest test. So, with all respect to him, I am not sure how far he would wish to pursue that argument.
The Minister then focused on the idea that the amendment is not necessary. Both he and the noble Lord, Lord Palmer of Childs Hill, relied for their position on the fact that good local authorities should have this aspect covered anyway in their contractual relationships with private sector companies providing outsourced work. The noble Lords are, of course, right. Good local authorities should have this covered. If all local authorities were good local authorities, my amendment would not be necessary. But they are not. They make mistakes and they overlook things, as we all do. In Committee I gave examples. I notice that the noble Lord, Lord Palmer of Childs Hill, did not say that all local authorities do this. He said, quite rightly, shame on those that do not, but he conceded that there are those that do not. I think that the Minister himself said that “much” of this—not all of it—was covered under the contractual arrangements. That is precisely what the amendment seeks to remedy. It seeks to ensure that all local authorities bring greater transparency to this crucial area of public life, where billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money are at stake. We have seen already how necessary this is.
In the light of that, I am afraid that I shall have to resist the Minister’s invitation to withdraw the amendment. Because the Government are warming to this idea, I hope that this House can send a signal to the other place about the importance of transparency and perhaps encourage the Government, when the Bill gets there, to move further on this issue. I therefore beg to test the opinion of the House.