Openness, transparency, and accountability. These three values underpin the public service ethos, they are the foundation of good government and a healthy democracy.
As a taxpayer you have a right to know and to question how your money is being spent. However, your ability to question is being slowly eroded piece by piece as our public services are outsourced, fragmented and privatised.
While companies such as Atos, G4S and Serco become dominant in our public sector taking over multibillion contracts, the responsibilities of running a public service do not follow as companies hide behind a cloak of commercial confidentiality, and remain beyond the scope of the Freedom of Information Act. Continue reading
Blair’s failure to co-operate with the Parliamentary select committee investigating the effectiveness of the Freedom of Infomation Act (FOI) shows just how important it is and why it now needs to be strengthened and extended. What he’s afraid of is, of course, how much more it will reveal of the unsavoury background to his autocratic style and how what really happened diverges sharply from the slick spin with which it was presented.
The Government has set great store on claiming that the Fox saga was a one-off. He had broken the Ministerial code, he had refused to heed warnings from his Permanent Secretary that his behaviour was outside the constitutional guidelines for such a sensitive position, and in effect he was running a privatised foreign and defence policy independent of the FCO and MOD. But, Cameron and others insisted, there were no wider implications because no other Ministers were behaving in this way.