Sneak

It isn't often that a report in Britain's leading liberal newspaper uses a verb like "sneak", even when discussing the House of Commons; but Westminster correspondent David Henckek found it to be le mot juste in referring to the former Conservative chief whip's private member's bill to emasculate the Freedom of Information Act.

"The two-clause bill," says Henckek's report, "effectively removes both the Commons and House of Lords as public authorities obliged to release information under the act. It also protects all MPs' correspondence from release and stops authorities even being able to confirm or deny whether they have received a letter from an MP. ... The bill would also prevent challenges to the information commissioner or to an information tribunal if a member of the public wanted an MP to provide more information." It received what is tactfully called a "second reading" in the Commons on the same day as the Vicar of Downing Street's aide Ruth Turner was arrested in connection with his reverence's unofficial privatisation of the honours trade.

The main purpose of the bill, according to its sponsor, David Maclean, is "to prevent MPs' letters on behalf of constituents being released to the press and public"; but he acknowledges that one unforseen side effect would be "to exempt parliament from the [Freedom of Information] act at a time when the parliamentary authorities have lost a case at an information tribunal after trying to block more detailed disclosure of MPs' expenses". Well, fancy that. When some cynical hound observed that Maclean had chosen to get his second reading at the end of a more than usually hectic Friday, he said: "I am showing some of the younger hands how you can get a bill through parliament after long experience as a whip in both getting and blocking bills through parliament." I suppose that if one is showing the new bugs the ropes, virtually anything is excusable. Maclean also noted that the bill "will now go to a committee where all the issues can be debated" by people chosen by David Maclean.

Norman Baker, the Liberal Democrat MP who recently used the Freedom of Information Act to make public the details of how much our faithful representatives spend on transport, commented on the silence of the government whips, "which I can only assume means they are secretly sympathetic to this proposal as it fits in with their plans to curb the Freedom of Information Act." Well, really. As if it had ever been a secret.