Writing in the Daily Telegraph today, Nick Clegg said:
When opposition politicians heard about Damian Green’s arrest, many of us asked ourselves the same question: “When did it become a crime to hold the Government to account?”
We already operate in a system where Parliament is effectively neutered, little more than a rubber stamp for legislation that ministers have already decided…
One of the weapons MPs do still have in their armoury is to play the Government at its own game. By releasing information of our own we can highlight matters of public interest that ministers would rather people didn’t know about.
With parliamentary scrutiny so feeble, the media has become a surrogate debating chamber. And when dealing with an administration legendary for its secrecy, you increasingly have to rely on whistle-blowers to see the full picture…
Our political system is already in deep trouble: sinking public confidence in MPs, feeble parliamentary scrutiny, a rigid culture of Whitehall secrecy, and an electoral system that hands unprecedented powers to governments freed from any meaningful scrutiny from other parties.
This unprecedented arrest is a wake-up call. We must save our broken democracy.
You can read the full piece here.
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Almost as scary as the police arresting opposition MPs for doing their jobs is the reaction to Nick’s piece on the Torygraph website. If you want a salutary reminder of how many right wing nut jobs there are out there,read the comments.
Nick’s response so far has been excellent. Hopefully this won’t get buried by other news, with the BBC in particular being rather keen not to dwell on it.
You don’t have to be right wing to be very very concerned. Green was doing his job, holding the government to account. LibDem MPs should support him wholeheartedly and not put up with any evasions by the Speaker or Smith and Brown.
If MPs can’t have privileged, private communications with their constituents and with civil servants concerned about the activities of the particular party in government, there will be no scrutiny possible of the executive. As far as I am concerned, Smith and Brown (I do not accept their denials of culpability) have just stolen one of our rights to provide confidential information to an MP and not have it carted away by the police.
The police not just taken papers relating to the alleged leaks – but all Green’s computers and other papers to read. So people who have complained about the police, discussed private health dificulties, a government department or even just their neighbours in some other entirely unrelated matters, as people frequently do to their MPs, will now have the papers relating to that read by “anti-terrorist” coppers who have no right to know about those matters.
Green has broken no laws as far as I can tell. In fact he has done what Parliamentarians have always done – such famous leaders as Churchill relied on leaked information when in opposition to help them prepare for government and to expose the truth about the government of the day. Brown himself has admitted on camera that when in opposition he received and used such leaks when trying to hold the Major government to account.
If we accept this behaviour by the government I suppose we will also have to accept less well informed MPs. There is, a VAST amount of business which goes on, some formal, some informal, some under “Chatham House Rules” in which the government, civil service, NGOs and the Opposition discuss information which is deniable, potentially embarrassing and sometimes technically secret. Usually, most people involved know the game and respect each others’ positions and roles. Most of the information is incredibly unspectacular but vital for good legislation. I would expect that a conscientious MP or member of the House of Lords would routinely see masses of such stuff, as they are involved in these kinds of exercises continually over a range of topics.
What the drying up of that information will do for the quality of debates and legislation would be interesting to consider. I suspect there are a number of government ministers who would be only too happy if they don’t get asked difficult questions, as there would be civil servants who feed them the policies. On the other hand, civil servants who know when the government has lied or is ignoring the facts, might find they have no-where to go with that knowledge except the media, which might not be such a good thing for the government compared to them quietly going to an elected MP.