Geeklawyer is a great fan of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOI). It’s rare that neo-Labour does anything good. It would be easier to persuade him to drink warm vomit soup sprinkled with polonium coated broken glass than to get him to say anything that might be taken as vaguely complimentary of Tony ‘Want a conference $peaker?’ Bliar. FOI is an exception. It is a valuable and sterling piece of democracy.
If he were to be cynical Geeklawyer would say that it was a PR job gone wrong: they did it for the headlines and didn’t realise how effective it would be. On this analysis the attempts to castrate it because it is too effective are understandable.
First they are attempting to ensure that there is a compliance cost assessment with a threshold sufficiently low to allow the exclusion of disclosure of anything but the most trivial and bland to the public.
And now this. Not because they are embarrassed at the revelations about themselves: oh no, quite the contrary it’s to protect democracy. Honest.
For a slightly less polemical and more temperate opinion see the post by the ever excellent Andrew at Freeth Cartwright (and not excellent just ‘cos they sponsored LawBlog 2007! )
Lib dems (bless ‘em) have launched a petition against this, and are asking Gordie and Davie to sign up http://www.ourcampaign.org.uk/foi.
According to Ed Davey:
“There should not be one law for MPs and one for everyone else. Exempting politicians from Freedom of Information requests only adds to the public perception of Parliament being opaque and clouded in secrecy.
“If Gordon Brown is serious about reforming our democracy this is his first real test. If David Cameron is serious about new politics now is the time to show real leadership rather than grandstanding.”
Yes, they tried hard to talk it out of session. You would think waffling on was something that comes naturally for a politician.
There are some signs that Gordon is looking for a compromise, being a private members bill he could clip it’s wings without it adding too much dirt to his neo-labor machine. Despite the number of labor ministers who voted for it.
Let’s keep our fingers crossed that he is a nicer man than my aura of cynicism predicts.
Surely our excellence is demonstrated by our sponsoring of Lawblog 2007!
And if you can encourage that attitude more widely, you should be in for a bonanza of sponsorship offers from law firm bloggers for Lawblog 2008.
Of course my editorial independence is hideously compromised by taking your sponsorship dosh. If Freeth Cartwright set up a grisly trog I will have to lay off a Watson Farley Williams style kicking or risk next year’s sponsorship. arghh, fuck.
Outmanoeuvred yet again …