Oral Answers to Questions

Jo Stevens Excerpts

Wednesday 9th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Hancock]

I can absolutely give my hon. Friend that assurance. As we said last week, we will not introduce fees because we think that it is important for people to use freedom of information to find out what is going on inside public bodies, including local authorities and more broadly, to ensure, rightly, that taxpayers’ money is spent better because the people who are spending it are held to account.

[Jo Stevens (Cardiff Central) (Lab)]

12. The Minister has just talked about extending the Act to cover private providers doing public service contracts, and he mentioned small businesses. Clearsprings runs a Home Office contract in my constituency relating to asylum seekers’ accommodation, but it is failing the taxpayer and the thousands of vulnerable asylum seekers living in its accommodation, safe from the scrutiny of the Act. Will he confirm that the Act will be extended to cover large companies such as Clearsprings?

[Matthew Hancock]

I cannot give the hon. Lady that assurance, not least because, having considered this question and listened to representations from both sides of the argument, the commission did not make a formal recommendation on this matter. I can tell her, however, that FOI can be used to scrutinise those who set up the contracts that businesses, large and small, supply into.