The Bill “makes provision for a website in order to enable public access to information about government expenditure”.

Conservative shadow chancellor George Osborne unveiled his "Follow the  Money" campaign and plans for the Bill on November 2006. He said: “By allowing the public to follow the money, we would improve accountability for government spending, and increase pressure on the government to justify what it spends”.

The Bill makes provisions for the creation by the Treasury of a free website containing government expenditure information for the public to search. The information would have to be made available online within 30 days of the expenditure occurring and remain available for a period of five years.

Discussing the main tenets of the Bill during second reading, Baroness Noakes commented that the main aim of the Bill was to create transparency in achieving value for money in government spending. On the implementation of the Bill, she said: 

“There has to be a website, it has to be publicly available, and it has to be searchable. In essence, once it is up and running, citizens can go online to find out, for example, how much the government have spent with individual suppliers such as EDS, or on particular things, such as travel and entertainment.” 

Included on the website would be information from 30 days after expenditure, to five financial years after the expenditure, to allow time related comparisons to be made. 

Baroness Noakes said: 

“The philosophy of the Bill is to trust the Treasury to want to implement it in a way that achieves maximum transparency and value for money. But it is also right that there is scrutiny by Parliament, so Clause 7 provides that the Treasury must prepare a report each year on the use of the website.” 

Lord Newby (Lib Dem) broadly welcomed the Bill, though mentioned issues surrounding corporate confidentiality, and whether it was appropriate to disclose commercial operator’s information to the public. 

Treasury spokesperson Lord Evans of Temple Guiting responded on behalf of the government, outlining the government’s view of the Bill. Lord Evans emphasised the level to which the Treasury was already committed to making “up-to-date and comprehensive government expenditure information” freely available. 

Lord Evans discussed the Varney Review, and how the government had responded to this. He asserted that “setting up additional government websites would be contrary to work currently underway to improve the provision of public information and service delivery through government websites.” 

Baroness Noakes concluded, responding to Lord Evans’ comments, saying: 

“I accept that a large amount of individual information is available, but the Minister did not address the point of my Bill—the provision of a single publicly searchable website on which information on expenditure would be brought together.”