My Lords, Amendment 33 and the subsequent amendments in this group seek to ensure that the Government cannot refuse to publish information that is in the public interest without compelling grounds. As it is currently written, Clause 13(2)(a) allows the Secretary of State to withhold any relevant material which he or she believes
“would … prejudice the commercial interests of any person”.
This is an enormously wide loophole which makes no attempt to qualify the degree of prejudice to the commercial interests of that person or to balance that with the public interest in the disclosure of such information.
Amendment 33 would establish a primary duty on the Secretary of State to publish all relevant material. Amendment 34 provides that material may be excluded only in exceptional circumstances. Amendment 35 would insert the word “seriously” so that the test is whether disclosure would seriously prejudice commercial interests, not the much weaker test currently in the Bill. Amendment 36 would require that, should the Secretary of State exclude material on the grounds of serious prejudice to commercial interests, he or she must make
“a statement to Parliament that the prejudice to commercial interests”
set out in subsection (2)(a)
“is of such seriousness that it outweighs the”
overwhelming
“public interest in … the publication of material relevant to any”
costs that may be incurred by the taxpayer
“arising from any provision of this Act … the determination of the regulated asset base charge that may be levied on consumers under the powers in this Act, and … the cost to consumers of electricity produced by the project.”
It is critical for proper public scrutiny that Ministers cannot decline to provide information behind claims of prejudice to commercial interests. These are projects being funded by consumers, and they have the right to know all relevant material except in the most exceptional of circumstances. We already know how reluctant government and its agencies are to provide information on costs which are overwhelmingly in the public interest. One such example is the apparent unwillingness of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority and GDF to provide information on the breakdown of costs for cleaning up Sellafield and how the costs of GDF are accounted for in the NDA’s figure for overall nuclear liabilities.
For example, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority and the Radioactive Waste Management company, which is a subsidiary of the NDA, have been seemingly unwilling to provide a breakdown of how the estimated £96 billion clean-up costs at Sellafield were arrived at and what they account for. Likewise, there is no explanation of whether the nuclear liabilities costs include the additional figures of £20 billion to £51 billion for GDF that was announced in the NDA’s annual report. I noticed, when we debated the GDF issues,
that the Minister did not respond to my question about how that is accounted for within the overall NDA liabilities. We already have a reluctance to share information that is overwhelmingly in the public interest.
The record of transparency in these matters is very poor. This amendment would prevent it getting even worse. It is particularly incumbent on the Government to respond and provide assurance to the public, given that they are going to have these costs imposed on their bills for new nuclear power generation, and share all relevant information unless exceptional circumstances prevent that being possible. I beg to move.