When John Denham gave evidence to your Committee on 20 May he agreed to consider again your request to release in confidence to the Committee the letters which the Government sent to the Research Councils in 2007, in relation to the allocation of funding as part of the Comprehensive Spending Review settlement.

  We have now done so. Our commitment to make the next spending review more consultative than before is clear. We shall have specific discussions with key stakeholders about the broad strategic choices faced by the Government during the allocations process, and Councils will all be engaging with their own communities about their own strategic priorities. Much work on this is already underway, with a number of Councils consulting on updates to their current strategies.

  That said, as the Government explained in its original response to the Committee's report on the allocations, it does regard the process of discussions between Councils and Government on specific allocations, leading up to Ministerial announcements on allocations, as properly conducted in private, on the same basis as discussions between Departments and the Treasury during Spending Reviews. This promotes candid discussion and a robust appraisal of options. Contemporary disclosure of such discussion, or knowledge that subsequently they would be subject to specific scrutiny, would inhibit effective preparation of advice to Ministers. This is a well understood distinction in terms of good governance, recognised for example in Freedom of Information legislation.

  The right obligation on Government and Research Councils is to provide clear explanation of decisions on strategic priorities, which we seek to do through publication of the Government's Allocations Booklet and the Delivery Plans of each Council. For the next review we shall aim to improve the quality of both these publications.

19 July 2009

15  Not printed.

16  Not printed.