Public Institutions

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Thursday 30th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for letting me intervene. I am in receipt of a pension from a Civil Service trade union and I regularly participate in debates relating to employment. I observe that there are scientists in receipt of pensions who participate in debates in this House. I notice, too, that there are people in receipt of health service pensions. In general, rather than specific, terms, which the noble Lord has just come to, is he arguing that this debate is about a general application right across the board, or is he focusing solely on the EU?

[Lord Fairfax of Cameron]

In my submission, this situation is different because of the provision about forfeitability. That is the key point because, as I understand it, there is an exemption for most other pensions. The key point here is that any member of the public who was listening would not know that one of the noble Lords taking part in the debate was in receipt of a pension that they were not obliged to disclose but, more particularly, that if they said one word that the ECJ objected to, they could have that pension forfeited. That is the mischief that I am talking about and it is utterly different from the situation that the noble Lord has referred to.

I think that I have made myself clear. I have genuine concerns. I am raising this subject at an interesting time, but in fact it has come up because I am a new Member and had not come across it before. Although it is curious that it should come up now, in the era of transparency and openness in which we live it is a matter that is worthy of debate. Unless it be thought that this is a party matter, I am authorised to say that several Members of this House who countersigned the letter that we wrote have expressed their agreement with my words, including the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. I beg to move.

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[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving me a peg on which to hang another item that relates to the fundamental subject that he has raised. I give notice that in September this year I will introduce a Private Member’s Bill that seeks to amend existing legislation on lobbying, transparency and openness. If we are truly to have a better relationship with the public, I hope that will help us to go in that direction. The public need access to real facts, so that when they take their decisions they are basing them on real hard facts that they understand. My Private Member’s Bill will be along those lines.

Why does lobbying and transparency matter? Lobbying is an estimated £2 billion industry in the UK, and most of this money is spent by big business. As profit-making entities, it is entirely rational for companies to lobby, whether against a threat to their business from government—the sugar tax is a very good example of that—or because government is providing an opportunity for profit, such as the opening up of the £110 billion NHS budget, which is a big opportunity for business.

There is nothing inherently wrong with that, and companies should be allowed to seek to be heard by the Government, but those of us who participate in Parliament and the public at large should be allowed to know just who is being approached, what is being said and what influence is being brought to bear. The present legislation in this country does not permit that, and as a consequence much is happening that we should know about but do not know about.

Take the lobby for the alcohol industry, of which I have some knowledge. It enjoys enormous influence in government, in large part a consequence of the significant resources that it devotes to lobbying, which far outstrips those of the public health advocates—of which, I openly declare, I am one. The lobby in favour of fracking is another with a sizeable budget and many well-connected political insiders on its payroll, resources that community and environmental groups opposed to fracking cannot match in any way. These are the kind of issues that we should seek to open to wider debate.

I have only two minutes to speak on this topic. I am grateful to have the opportunity to do so, and I hope that the House will be willing to participate in a much fuller debate on the Bill later in the year.

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[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

I am not keeping a straight face. I am smiling—but I always smile.

The confidence with which our public institutions are held is the foundation that allows our great democracy to function. While government may have significant legal power to impose its will, it operates effectively with the people it serves with the consent borne of confidence and trust.

There are of course many examples of countries around the world where confidence in public institutions has been fatally eroded, often because of corruption or mismanagement, and where the ability to govern effectively is destroyed, hampering economic development and destroying prosperity. Confidence in public institutions is then precious, and the Government are committed to continually deepening openness and transparency to support it.

The noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, talked about this. I suggest that transparency and openness are different but connected parts of how modern government and institutions should function. Transparency, where the workings of institutions can be seen and understood, underpins openness, where government and institutions work with and alongside the people they serve to deliver the best possible services and outcomes. However, I agree that transparency should be used as a tool, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, said, and we have to be careful to use it with other things as well.

The UK should, rightly, be proud of its status as a global leader on both transparency and openness. The Government continue to push at the boundaries of the information they publish and they strive to ensure that citizens can fully participate in making the decisions that affect them. For example, the UK leads the world in the release of open data and has recently been ranked number one in the World Wide Web Foundation’s Open Data Barometer for the third year running.

Open data—the release in a structured format of key government data licensed in such a way as to allow anyone to use them—allows the public meaningful, open access to important data about how our public institutions function. These data on how public money is spent and on how well key parts of government are performing, as well as, importantly, data of high value held by government about things such as the transport network, create significantly greater opportunities for government to be held to account and, crucially, allow others outside government to come forward to build new data-driven products and services using previously hidden government data. One example of that is the tool Citymapper, a smartphone application developed in the UK that takes into account a wealth of open transport data to help you get from A to B in the fastest possible time.

The economic benefits of transparency are clear but perhaps it is harder to measure the impact of greater transparency and openness on public confidence in institutions. What seems indisputable is that trust in public institutions is growing. Research by Edelman as part of its annual Trust Barometer shows that since 2012 trust in government has risen. More strikingly, research by Ipsos MORI shows that civil servants in particular have seen a large increase in trust since 1983: only 25% said they trusted civil servants to tell the truth in 1983 compared with 55% now.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

Are these the polling companies that forecast the outcome of the last general election and the result of the referendum?

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

Is the noble Lord casting aspersions on what I say? As my noble friend Lord Norton mentioned, sadly, in the same research it is revealed that politicians are still among the least trusted groups in the UK.

It is clear, then, that there is much more to do—more data and information to open up and publish and more opportunities for citizens to become involved in developing the policies that affect them. As the Minister for the Cabinet Office recently stated:

“We want to build a Britain where the citizen is an editor as well as a reader”.

Only through increasing openness and transparency can that be made a reality.

One mechanism by which government is approaching this task is the OGP—the Open Government Partnership. This is a very exciting initiative. The OGP was formed in 2011 by the UK and seven other countries to promote transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption and harness new technologies to strengthen governance. It has now grown to the extent that it has been taken up by 69 countries. It exists to ensure that each participating Government work closely with citizens to develop open-government reforms that matter to them.

In May, the Government launched their third Open Government National Action Plan. Among other things, it made ambitious commitments to tackle corruption, including establishing a public register of company-beneficial ownership information for foreign companies which already own or buy property in the UK or which bid on UK central government contracts. As part of this plan, the Government also committed to implement the Open Contracting Data Standard for the Crown Commercial Service, becoming the first G7 country to apply this new type of data release about public procurement to its central purchasing authority. In addition, this new standard for transparency will be applied to HS2.

When implemented, these commitments will provide unprecedented transparency about the real owners of the companies buying property in the UK and bidding on public contracts, as well as detailed, structured and more usable information about how government buys goods and services.

It is such transparency that can provide the hard data to reinforce confidence in our institutions. It is for this reason that the Government have placed significant emphasis on the better use of their own data so that the public can be confident we are doing all that we can to ensure we deliver better public services. The Government’s digital services data programme has been created to address this challenge and ensure that through the more effective use of data, the Government can make better operational, policy and economic decisions.

Significant work is required to deliver on that promise, and in practical terms this means that we need to do the following things. First, we must ensure that all parts of government are equipped to make better use of data, having the technology and skills to use new and innovative data science techniques. Secondly, we must ensure that the infrastructure of data in government—how they are stored, found and accessed—is up to date and that the policy and governance around how data are created, used and released is fit for purpose, allowing us to maximise the benefits of increased data use in government and the wider economy, while ensuring that is done in a safe and ethical way.

These measures, taken together with a continuous drive to release more information on open data, are vital tools to reinforce and grow confidence in government. We are delivering the most transparent, effective and open government ever. Through initiatives like the Open Government Partnership and the work of the digital services data programme, along with countless other parts of government all pushing in the same direction, we will continue to improve supporting ever more people to hold government to account.

There is no doubt that these are big issues and that we are working with powerful tools. However, used properly, data can build a better, more efficient government that more effectively meets the needs of those it serves, and so deliver institutions fit for the 21st century.

I know that there are some questions I have not answered, including that from the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, on charities. I am afraid I will have to get back to her on that as I do not have enough information to give a full answer. I thank all noble Lords for taking part and, if there is anything else that I have not covered that noble Lords have mentioned, I will of course write to them in the near future.