John Reid - silencing critics and shooting messengers
Rather than improve the performance of his "not fit for purpose" Home Office, John Reid has decided to suppress any research that might further embarrass the department. Earlier this month, when talking about introducing a British version of Megan's Law, he told the News Of The Screws:
Well that doesn't seem to be the position he starts from when it is his department that is being held up for scrutiny. In this latest New Labour effort to bury bad news, John Reid has introduced a moratorium on important government research.
The move affects research commissioned by the Home Office and carried out by leading academics. One of the delayed papers, a gun crime study by Prof Chris Lewis of Portsmouth University, was set to highlight the ease with which criminals can obtain firearms.
Sources said the findings of the £80,000 project were ready last week when its authors were told that publication had been postponed because of a "moratorium" on research.
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Normally, the Home Office publishes research papers on the last Thursday of each month. But last week, "research Thursday" was cancelled. No new work is being commissioned and, controversially, projects already under way are also affected.
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David Davis, the shadow home secretary, said: "John Reid has a duty to release to the public research that the taxpayer has paid for and not to try to bury embarrassing news until it suits him. It is long past time that the Government put public protection before spin."
John Reid's attempts to silence criticism don't stop there. He also wants to bring in new laws to punish whistle blowers after the leak of a memo that exposed Britain's role in spying on Security Council members in the run up to the Iraq war. He also wants to prevent further information concerning the MI5 investigation into the July 7 London Bombings (which we were told came "out of the blue") coming out.
He wants longer jail sentences and the removal of a key legal defence of "necessity" for whistleblowers.
The crackdown is aimed at preventing cases such as that of Katharine Gun, a former translator at GCHQ, the government's eavesdropping centre, who leaked a memo showing that in the months before the Iraq war in 2003 the Americans wanted GCHQ's help in bugging the homes and offices of UN security council members.
The government dropped its case against her after she threatened to use the necessity defence that she broke the law to prevent a greater "crime" in the form of an invasion of Iraq.
Ministers are also concerned at the growing number of leaks of sensitive documents by dissident officials, including those relating to the MI5 investigation into the July 7 bombings.
So how will this fit in with the 1998 Public Interest Disclosure Act which was supposed to protect whistle blowers? Labour certainly seems to have changed its tune in the ten years since Blair campaigned for Open Government.
Employees of GXHQ. the
Employees of GXHQ. the Secret Service MI5 and the Secret Intelligence Service MI6 are already excluded from whistleblower protection via the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 section 11 National security
Thanks for pointing that
Thanks for pointing that out, I should have known. It does make me wonder what need there is for further laws though. The necessity defence seems like an important part of English law even though it rarely succeeds. Removing it for whistleblowers sounds like a dangerous move, especially in cases of public safety.
This is yet another attempt
This is yet another attempt to silence criticism from the thin-skinned authoritarians of Nu Labour. As Britain grows increasingly into being a police state, conscience shrinks within the corridors of power.
So the question becomes 'why
So the question becomes 'why does John Reid think that draconian legislation designed to protect national security needs extending to, say, a council employee speaking up about a councillor taking a bung for a helpful planning decision?'. There are numerous recent examples of this, check Private Eye's 'Rotten Boroughs' page.
As ever, the acid test for
As ever, the acid test for government legislation in security/related matters is - would such proposed legislation/rule change help a future authoritarian UK government to oppress political dissent and protest?
In the light of most of Nu Labour`s efforts in this area, the answer is a resounding `Yes`.