I speak to this amendment with significant experience as a senior local councillor. Obviously, the Nolan principles applied to all of us. Recently, in public-private partnerships such as the LEPs, all members had to declare their interests. Sometimes, because of commercial sensitivity, some of the private sector partners chose to step down from the LEP. That level of transparency is now accepted practice—and quite rightly so. It is an enormous tragedy that the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, had to table such an amendment but it reflects the extraordinary times we are living in.
I have to be honest: standards in public life are being severely scrutinised now and, in many cases, found wanting. It is with huge regret that we are in a position where such a requirement has to be brought forward in this debate, but that is where we are. The noble Lord, Lord Purvis, is absolutely right to draw attention to the current state that we are in.
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The points that my noble friend Lord McNicol raised around the need for transparency are absolutely pertinent here. I know that we will come back to this area, and that Members from across the House will be really keen to look at it in detail, as was raised in debates in the other place. The recording of details is
obviously fundamental. That is why all the debates on the database are so crucial. In this area, the public need to have more confidence than they currently do to ensure the decision-making processes, because we are talking about significant amounts of funds here, which make a huge difference to the recipients and to those who are not successful. That is what we have to be mindful of.
That is why we have been so keen to stress in debate that there need to be clear accountability criteria where decisions are made, so that people can follow the thread of fairness throughout the progress. We welcome that subsidies will be awarded and hope they will make a real difference; however, we should not get away from the fact that awarding subsidies is a political process. That is part of what we are doing here but it needs to be set against those criteria.
If an authority comes in having had in its manifesto, when standing for an election, a strategic plan prioritising green transport, for example, then you would expect subsidies to be delivered against that purpose. Unfortunately, we can all look at the awards of public money where the criteria do not seem to have been followed. These are the issues that we raised before: why is it that money has gone into areas of relative affluence and not into areas of high deprivation? This is an incredibly serious issue and the Government have some serious questions to answer on it.
Clearly, the levelling-up fund will have to face scrutiny of an intense kind to ensure that it is levelling up and addressing the life chances of people in those areas which are put as the priority. We hope that safeguards will be built into the schemes that we are discussing. There is a lack of clarity around this and I hope that the measures which exist in this legislation will be clear and honoured. I hope that the Minister can outline the Government’s thinking on this and how we can, in a very troubled time, all be reassured and get the clarity that we need so that the highest levels of probity will be followed in the award of subsidies under the provisions.