AFTER THE Asylum Bill, Jack Straw's latest draft legislation, on Freedom of Information, looks like being the next example of donning Tory clothes. In opposition and in the white paper, 'Your Right to Know', Labour promised to open up Britain's secret world of decision-making. From being one of the countries with the least transparent state machinery, Britain was going to be at the forefront of opening up to scrutiny.
Yet Straw's draft bill reverses all this. While it does open up new areas to transparency, it includes a wide range of exemptions - up from seven in the white paper to 21 in the draft bill - and allows public authorities which have a discretion to withhold information to do so without challenge.
Instead of the bodies concerned having to show that release of information could cause "substantial harm", they can merely decide to restrict access.
Release of information can take up to 40 days, those seeking information can be asked for their reasons and can be asked to keep secret what information they are given.
An indication of how little would change under Straw's proposals is shown by the fact that the change of policy ' which the Tories made in order to sell arms to Iraq would be just as difficult to uncover as it was under Thatcher.
While the bill opens up new information to the public on education, health authorities, the prison service and the administration of the police and provides for public authorities to be held in contempt of court if they refuse to cooperate, the list of exemptions * rather undermines the effect of this.
The 21 exemptions include national security; defence; policy advice; international relations; relations between the parliaments and assemblies of the United Kingdom; the economy; police investigations; court records; commercial information and information provided to the government in confidence.
Hostility
Straw, having fought tooth and nail in Cabinet to secure the watering down of the proposals and secured the sacking of David Clark, the minister responsible for the original white paper, has found his bill met by universal hostility by a whole range of organisations concerned with public information.
He has begun to make noises about concessions, but like on the asylum bill these are more likely to be about defusing parliamentary opposition than changing the substance of the bill.
Freedom of Information is important to all those who want to hold the activities of those who rule over us up to the light of day.
The left must support moves to stop Straw in his tracks and amend the bill to lift the shroud of state Cecrecy • Labour's secretive record in government - page 18