A note on transparency in public contracts

Once the contract is agreed how much government pays to suppliers should be a matter of public record. Yet government - especially local government - still hides behind the provision in the 1972 Local Government Act allowing secrecy in the case of 'commercial confidentiality'.

Here Transparency International reports a couple of pretty shocking examples:

Transparency International cited Hackney London Borough Council as one case where redactions had made scrutiny difficult. In one month alone the council reported £14m worth of redacted transaction data that did not identify suppliers.

It also reported that Lancashire CC redacted numerous payments for a multi-billion pound PFI scheme, leaving no information about the name of the contractor, and Nottingham CC redacted the details of £10m - worth of expenditure.

The provision in the Act, in my view, is there to allow fair negotiation of contracts not to privilege price information about public contracts. It is in everyone's interests - the public, organisations competing for public contracts, public employees - for this information to be available for scrutiny.



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Freedom of Information requests are a pain. That is the whole point of them.

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My colleagues at the Local Government Association have decided they want something done about Freedom of Information requests:

Freedom of information requests are a ‘burden’ on local authorities, and their use should be subject to tighter controls according to council leaders. The Local Government Association (LGA) has suggested fees for requests should be introduced and the time councils have to spend responding to them lowered from 18 hours to eight

No. Just no. The whole point about the Freedom of Information Act is that it provides the means for the public to hold the bureaucrats, technocrats and politicians to account. And this is because that information held by local councils is public information - meaning that the public should have access to said information. As a matter of right not as some big favour granted them by some stuck-up bureaucrat.

If Councils are bothered about Freedom of Information requests being a burden, then the proper response isn't to dream up some cod 'public interest' test but the make a whole lot more information publicly available, accessible and searchable. If you do that then the public doesn't have to go to the trouble of crafting requests that the Council responds to - instead they can go directly to the data they need.
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Pathetic...

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Not content with spending a fortune on a 'civic centre' no-one wanted or needed, Keighley Town Council doesn't want its proceedings to be transparent either:

Town mayor Councillor Sally Walker repeatedly asked members of the public in the gallery to stop filming the monthly town council meeting.

The group of about a dozen people included Graham Forsyth and Elizabeth Mitchell, who had told of their plan to film the meeting beforehand.

They argued that the Government's own rules applied to all public council meetings, and that these rules now allow them to film. 

Now I appreciate that Bradford Council needs to change its standing orders too but this is just pathetic. This is a public body meeting in public, there should be no grounds at all for refusing the public rights to film just so long as it doesn't interfere with proceedings.  Plenty of councils including Leeds and Kirklees (but sadly not Bradford) now live stream their proceedings.

As I said Keighley Town Council's response is pathetic.

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Some MPs - including the speaker - just don't get it do they?

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This expenses thing - you know the one where they rent houses to one another. The public want to know about it - here's a poll in the Telegraph asking whether MPs should disclose whether they rent their tax-payer funded house to another MP:

Pretty simple really. We don't trust MPs not to fiddle so absolute transparency is essential.

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Undertanding how local government works. A lesson in making secret decisions

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Let me introduce you to the Association of West Yorkshire Authorities (can link to their website but it was down just now):

The AWYA is an association of the five West Yorkshire metropolitan local authorities – Bradford, Calderdale, Kirklees, Leeds and Wakefield. It was established in 1993 to provide a forum for the discussion and co-ordination of matters of mutual concern and interest.

The AWYA acts as the local government voice of West Yorkshire, promoting and lobbying for its interests and identity. It provides a means for the five Councils to reach joint views on proposed legislation and other matters of concern to West Yorkshire, and to express these views to organisations such as the Yorkshire and Humber Assembly (YHA), Local Government Yorkshire and the Humber (LGYH), central government and other appropriate bodies.

The AWYA also works to secure greater accountability and effective working relationships with bodies which impact upon the sub-region, such as the Government Office for Yorkshire and the Humber (GOYH), Yorkshire Forward, Yorkshire and Humber Assembly (YHA), the Learning and Skills Council (LSC), and the Strategic Health Authority (SHA).

This is a decision-making body, funded from the public purse. Just minutes ago I got an e-mail from a colleague saying this:

I have contacted the association they do not publish minutes or agendas

So I rang them and was told that the AWYA:

Does not meet in public so doesn't publish its agendas and minutes.

If we ask for them we can be sent them but they can't publish these papers because there is a "resourcing issue". However, when pressed, they told me that they have never published agendas or minutes.

So this organisation - chaired by Bradford's Labour leader - can make decisions, for example about £850 million of possible transport spending, in secret and without the decision being published.

Transparency?
 
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Openness? Transparency? Not in Bradford, we're a Labour Council

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Bradford's increasingly ridiculous Council Leader has proclaimed that we won't be - as many Councils have already done - put details of spending on-line "to protect business".

Coun Greenwood said Bradford Council would, for the time being, ignore the order from the Communities Secretary to publish details of every bill for expenditure of £500 or more. He told the district’s business professionals that the delay in publishing the details of invoices was to allow time for them all to be purged of any commercially-sensitive information.

He told the Bradford Professional Network the purging operation was intended to avoid giving firms outside the district information that could enable them to undercut suppliers to the Council.

I am aghast- not just at the temerity of not letting the public know how its Council is spending their cash but the reason. Seems decidedly anti-competitive!

Maybe Cllr Greenwood has something to hide?

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Bradford Council transparency - hiding behind the lawyers

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Back in October 2010 my esteemed Colleague, Cllr Glen Miller asked the Council's leader about the matter of opening up the Council's expenditure to public scrutiny. Essentially, we are looking to join Hillingdon, Windsor & Maidenhead, Worthing and other local councils in publishing on-line all items of expenditure in excess of £500.

However, our leader demurs, choosing to hide behind lawyers. In the formal written answer he said:

There are over 9,000 records detailing expenditure over £500 that need to be published. Whilst we are technically ready to publish (the website page and extracts are complete), legal advice says that unless we can be certain that all records do not form part of a Commercial Confidentiality clause in the contract then the Council could face a legal challenge until the request becomes law, which is expected in January 2011.

So the Council's lawyers are worried that we might be sued for being honest about our spending. One does wonder how those other authorities have managed! However, Cllr Greenwood - for he is our leader - elaborated further (after a load of waffle about protecting women's refuges) in a verbal response to Cllr Miller's supplementary question:

Supposing we breach commercial confidentiality then we are subject to being sued so I looked at it. In principle I think we should do it. If the law comes in then you have got the defence of the law.

This is of course complete nonsense - even after the requirement to publish comes in, Council's have to protect commercial cofidentiality. And let's be very clear, saying that we paid Bloggs & Co three grand to do some groundworks at a park - or indeed paid anything to any company - is not a matter of commercial confidentiality. It is right to either aggregate or redact names in the case of payments to individuals (for example, a discretionary grant for someone to attend a dance school) but, as already noted, other local authorities have managed this without complaint or mishap.

This is a case of hiding behind lawyers - the leadership and senior officers simply don't want to publish the full information about how they spend our money. Even though we could publish the information tomorrow.

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