‘Follow the money’: opening up access to information

It was recently revealed that Atos, the controversial sponsor of the Paralympics receive £3bn in public money through a range of contracts.

Compare Atos and Birmingham City Council- the UK’s largest local authority. The former received around £3bn in public money from the Government, the latter around £2.4bn. There are many differences between the two, but let’s focus on accountability and transparency. For Birmingham City Council you have overview and scrutiny panels; councillors from a range of parties scrutinising each other; and the general public- who have the power to change political control of the council as they did at the last election. Additionally, and importantly, we have the Freedom of Information Act, allowing anyone to obtain information about what the council is doing and how it’s spending public money.

Now contrast this to Atos, where an optimist can hope that someone somewhere in Government is managing the contracts; or that a Select Committee will at some point look into the contracts in detail. But unlike local authorities, Atos, despite spending huge sums of public money, is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act.

This seems at odds with the will of the Prime Minister who said in a Telegraph article last year: “Information is power. It lets people hold the powerful to account, giving them the tools they need to take on politicians and bureaucrats.” And that “information is a national asset, and it’s time it was shared”. However perhaps here we see again one of those instances where his words apply to those in the public sector, but not his friends in the private sector.

With the increasing privatisation of public services we face an erosion of access to information. We should therefore extend the use of the Freedom of Information Act so it applies to all private companies receiving public money.

Whilst it is true that some contracts do already contain clauses providing for access to information there is by no means a uniform approach. And public awareness of the right to access certain information held by private companies is limited at best. Which is why we need to extend the use of the Freedom of Information Act.

This idea is not new. The Public Accounts Committee, in its report on the Work Programme published in May this year said:

“We remain of the view that in the interests of transparency, where private companies provide public services funded by the taxpayer, those areas of their business which are publicly funded should be subject to the Freedom of Information Act provision.”

And the Justice Committee in its post-legislative scrutiny of the Freedom of Information Act in July this year said:

“The right to access information must not be undermined by the increased use of private providers in delivering public services”.

Unsurprisingly the CBI came out against the idea on the grounds of commercial sensitivity. It is true that there are commercial sensitivities. But these also exist in the public sector. Local authorities have to comply with the duty of Best Value. To understand whether you’re delivering best value you keep performance data. This data is hugely valuable to private companies.

Private companies have an unfair advantage at present. They regularly use the Freedom of Information Act to obtain this performance data – and other information – to then use this to undermine in-house delivery in local authorities, for instance. The Tories like to talk about open-competition, and an open-market for services. So why then can’t local authorities, and others, use the Freedom of Information Act to obtain information from these private companies; at least in the interests of competition if not transparency?

The select committees had caveats on their proposals. The Justice Select Committee didn’t want to see the Act expanded to specifically include the large private companies. And the Public Accounts Committee felt the Act should only apply within companies to those areas that are publicly funded. But we should be bolder than this.

Private companies receiving large public contracts can, and should, be made subject to the Freedom of Information Act, in their entirety. It would be far too easy undermine the Act by moving money around the company to make use of the Work and Pensions Committee’s caveat. To bring these companies under the Freedom of Information Act would be relatively easy and quick. The Minister would simply need to use the power under section 5 of the Act to designate the companies with large public contracts as public authorities for the purposes of the Act and thus bring them within the scope of the Act.

It is time that private companies with public contracts are forced to realise that with public money comes public accountability. It is time access to information followed the money.