Lord Laird – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Cabinet Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Laird on 2016-10-10.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what criteria they set in respect of the requirement for transparency and openness in the decision-making processes of all public and publicly-funded bodies.

Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen

As a matter of principle, members of the public should be able to routinely access information that is in the public interest and is safe to disclose. Access to information helps ensure accountability for public authorities and facilitates better informed and more productive public debate.

All public bodies have a publication scheme, which outlines what they will publish. The Information Commissioner’s Office provides guidance on the publication scheme for each body. This covers evidence of decision making, board meeting minutes, agendas, consultations and datasets, including those pertaining to public spending and to public service function, in an accessible format. Datasets are published on the data.gov.uk website, while other evidence is available on individual body websites.

All central government departments are required to publish information about key aspects of their management and operations, including details of senior staff salaries and departmental expenditure.

The Cabinet Office also publishes guidance for departments on transparency for their arm’s length bodies. This guidance states that they should:

• make an explicit commitment to openness in all their activities;
• publish details of senior staff and board members, with appropriate contact details;
• hold open board meetings or an annual open meeting;
• publish annual report and accounts;
• publish a management or mission statement;
• proactively publish performance data;
• publish spend data over £500; and
• establish effective correspondence and complaint handling procedures.

Statements by Accounting Officers are published in arm’s length body annual reports. The publication of these statements demonstrates how Accounting Officers have fulfilled his or her personal responsibility to manage and control the resources in the organisation.

In its annual Public Bodies Reports the Cabinet Office sets out high-level information on arm’s length body transparency in areas including publication of annual reports and open board meetings.

The transparency data published by government does not disclose personal data. Where necessary, minutes and papers which detail decision-making are edited to remove data which could be used to identify individuals.

Transparency information published by the local government is governed by the transparency code. The principles that underpin the code are the same, and similarly, data pertaining to function and spend data must be disclosed. The code has just undergone consultation. Proposed changes include altering the way transparency data is published and presented to increase accessibility.