Do you often wonder where all that money goes? Do you wonder how all the taxes that are collected are divided between departments and how they are spent? Do you often wonder how much is paid to consultants for their work in government?

If the  Government Spending (Website) Bill passes through the Houses of Parliament and becomes law, then you will. 

This bill is designed to force Treasury and Departments to place in a single database all expenditure with explanation 30 days after the money has been spent. 

The government as expected is opposing the passage of the bill, citing as reasons The Varney report on Service Transformation, and the fact that the Treasury has a database of its own, which consists mainly of forward plan estimates rather than actual expenditure, does not enter data until the end of the year, and because the Treasury says ‘Audited resource accounts for government departments provide the most comprehensive and accurate information on actual expenditure outturn’ in other words its need to ‘sanitise’ it.

The government represented by Lord Evans of Temple Guiting, said “Although the Treasury seeks monthly expenditure information from all government departments and already makes some information available on its public website, as I have mentioned, such information is inevitably very provisional and could not be regularly produced at a detailed level without a significant impact on resources.” 

Are we to assume therefore that the treasury, just like the Home Office, does not have any idea of how much money is being spent?

Baroness Noakes in presenting this Bill to the Lords for its 2^nd reading on Friday, said “My party believes that when Governments spend money, they are spending our money. We paid the taxes, and it is our right to know what the Government are doing with them. The Government owe it to taxpayers to be transparent about how they spend money when they remove it from us by way of taxation.” 

The Bill is based upon US legislation which is already in force via the White House website

Baroness Noakes in response to the government emphasised the important behavioural impact that the Bill would have on civil servants and on those who deal with government.

They would know that information about their actions would be available if the Bill became law.  

She said “I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Newby, for pointing out that if it can be done in the US, then we can do it in the UK.”

Here Here,  these are the government databases that we want.

It will be interesting to see in the coming weeks how Gordon Brown views this Bill and its transparency of Government.