Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Conservatives - freedom of information if it embarasses Labour, unless...

it might embarrass us too!

Just as I was beginning to worry that the Conservatives might be able to fake a concern over our civil liberties long enough to fool enough of the people just once, Dominic Grieve kindly demonstrates that all they really want is to be in power so that they can use the cover of national security to keep key information nicely hidden, away from the public eye. In the midst of a pretty lame whinge against the Government, he gave the game away, saying;

"The code of practice on access to Government information introduced by the Major Government specifically and deliberately excluded minutes of Cabinet and Cabinet Committees, for the very reasons that the Secretary of State sets out in the statement of reasons he placed in the Library, and which plainly extend to all Cabinet minutes in general. Given what the Secretary of State has resorted to today, would it not be sensible to reintroduce that rule?"

So. let's see. His Party supports an enquiry into the Iraq War and the 'dodgy dossier' but wants the key information, the minutes of the relevant Cabinet meetings, to be secret. Is he not bright enough to see the contradiction, or is he an example of the distance the Conservatives have to travel before they have sufficient credibility to be a real governing Party, not just a pale imitation.

There you have it. Conservatives don't actually believe in civil liberties and freedom of information, they just want your votes. Hell, even Iain Dale thinks that they're wrong... albeit for an equally unprincipled reason.

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