Cameron accused of ‘governing from the gloom’ over attack on freedom law

DAVID Cameron will today be accused of attempting to ‘govern from the gloom’ as Labour demand he scraps plans to scale back the public’s right to know.

Tom Watson, the party’s deputy leader, will call for the Prime Minister to put an end to his ‘sinister’ review of the Freedom of Information Act.

In a major speech this morning, he will accuse the Conservatives of ‘trying to turn off the lights’ by making it harder for people to access facts about how the Gov- ernment is running the country. Mr Watson will claim Mr Cameron is ‘methodically closing all the doors and the shutters, drawing the blinds and the curtains, retreating to the shadows’.

And he will accuse Downing Street of stuffing the so- called independent FoI review with known opponents of the Act so it is ‘predestined to reach the conclusions the Government wants’.

The commission is considering whether to impose charges for making requests, or increasing exemptions to allow officials to keep discussions quiet.

But last week, information commissioner Christopher Graham described the review as an attempt to return to the ‘dark ages’ of ‘private government’.

This week, Lord Kerslake – the former head of the Civil Service – said transparency needs to be increased as ‘the default is to conceal’. He criticised his successor Sir Jeremy Heywood – known as Sir Cover-Up – who has claimed the FoI Act is having a ‘chilling effect’. This morning Mr Watson is expected to say of the review: ‘It’s been condemned by the Information Commissioner and slammed by a former head of the Civil Service. It’s a waste of taxpayers’ money and it’s time it was scrapped.’

Labour’s deputy leader said the fact that Mr Graham, the ‘person charged with upholding transparency’, was raising concerns shows the Government’s plans were ‘sinister stuff’.

He will go on to call on the Government to abandon its review, insisting that it ‘doesn’t have the support of the public’.