Sir Cover-Up and the public’s right to know

IN a speech to Westminster insiders, Cabinet Secretary Jeremy Heywood lives up to his name of Sir Cover-Up by delivering a sinister attack on what he called the ‘chilling’ effect of the Freedom of Information Act.

Sir Jeremy and his colleagues dislike the legislation because it means the public might one day find out what advice – disastrous or otherwise – they have given behind Whitehall’s closed doors.

Ministers, meanwhile, hate it because it exposes policy failures, waste and the egregious abuse of taxpayers’ money – notably the MPs’ expenses scandal.

In what looks like a stitch-up between the Civil Service and Government, Sir Jeremy told his audience of fellow mandarins that an ‘independent panel’ had begun work to look at the ‘pros and cons of the current regime’.

Its membership? The five person cabal includes the chairman of Ofcom, which is itself subject to FoI, and two ex-Home Secretaries – including Jack Straw, who has repeatedly argued the law allows too great a level of disclosure.

Little wonder that 140 freedom of information campaigners wrote to the Prime Minister this week to complain that the commission is prejudiced and appears to have been established to propose savage new curbs on the public’s right to know.

David Cameron – who, let’s not forget, was elected on a promise of greater ‘transparency’ – should stand ready to throw this biased panel’s findings in the Downing Street bin.

As for Sir Cover Up – the man who tried to block the Chilcot Inquiry’s access to key letters between George Bush and Tony Blair in the run-up to the Iraq War – it’s not the FoI Act that’s ‘chilling’.

It’s his own arrogant disdain for openness, honesty and genuine democratic accountability.