Roads Minister, Lady Hayman, today announced that all DETR contracts signed in future would, as far as possible, be publicly available documents. This is in line with the Government's commitment to freedom of information.

Lady Hayman said

"I have asked my officials to place a high value on accessibility of information in all future contracts. The assumption will be that contracts to which the Department is a party will be made available on request once they are signed. If there are good reasons why, exceptionally, certain parts of contracts should remain confidential, these will need to be specified by tenderers and negotiated during the tendering process.

"In general, those issues where there remain good reasons to apply confidentiality should be dealt with in clauses separable from the rest of the document, for example, as annexes to the main agreement.

"Even where confidentiality has to be applied, the reasons for it are often relatively short-term. Technical and other innovations, for example, where intellectual property issues arise, seldom now retain their value for long. I therefore intend that even the confidential parts of an agreement should be made available within a limited period, which should be as early as practicable and which should not normally be longer than seven years from contract signature.

"I have asked my officials to apply these principles to all future contracts except where negotiations and drafting are already well advanced. They will, for example, be set out in the invitation to tender for the A13 DBFO which will be issued soon. I also propose to encourage local authorities, nationalised industries and other bodies sponsored by my Department to adopt these practices.

"I expect these changes to make a real contribution to a more open culture on these issues."