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Brown under fire over secrecy on ID costs

Sunday, June 3rd, 2007

Jamie Doward, home affairs editor
Sunday June 3, 2007
The Observer

Gordon Brown was accused last night of breaking his promise to create a more open style of government after it emerged that the Treasury is launching a High Court appeal against a decision instructing it to release information about the cost of ID cards.The Prime Minister-in-waiting pledged a new era in transparent government during his leadership campaign earlier this year, saying: ‘Government must be more open and more accountable to Parliament.’

But civil liberty groups and opposition politicians said the Chancellor’s claims were undermined by his department’s decision to resist an order compelling it to share confidential information.

‘So much for his talk of rewarding trust in politics,’ said Nick Clegg, home affairs spokesman for the Liberal Democrats. ‘Gordon Brown is deluding himself if he believes public trust can be built on government secrecy. Why should taxpayers pay for his attempts to hide how much they are paying for this project in the first place?’

The Office of Government Commerce (OGC), the Treasury department responsible for ensuring that taxpayers get value for money, says it is not in the public interest to publish two of its early assessments evaluating the government’s ID cards scheme. Written in 2003, before the project was given the green light, the so-called ‘gateway’ reviews outline whether experts believe the scheme will be successful and how much it will cost.

The Information Tribunal, the body that hears appeals against freedom of information decisions, ruled that the Treasury must publish the official documents this month. It reached the decision after receiving freedom of information requests from the Liberal Democrats and the anti-ID card campaign group, No2ID. Despite the tribunal’s decision, the Treasury is refusing to hand over the documents.

Instead it has lodged an appeal - kicking the issue into the long grass for months. The Treasury, which could take its case all the way to the House of Lords, argues it is in the public interest to keep such reviews secret as it protects commercially sensitive material and encourages those submitting information to the review to be honest and open.

‘In the government’s view, disclosure would seriously undermine the effectiveness of the gateway process, as confidentiality is essential to the process,’ an OGC spokesman said. ‘It is not in the public interest to put that effectiveness at risk through disclosure of the information contained in the two reports concerned in this case.’

Critics of ID cards say they will cost billions more than the official £5.5bn the government claims, itself a £2bn increase on its original estimate.

Phil Booth, a spokesman for No2ID, said he was concerned that Brown might seek to use a clause in the Freedom Of Information Act that allows ministers to veto the Information Tribunal’s decision. ‘Decisions have been made behind closed doors about the private lives of every individual in this country,’ he said. ‘I can’t think of anything more in the public interest that should be released.’

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This entry was posted on Sunday, June 3rd, 2007 at 9:09 pm and is filed under Surveillance, Civil Liberties & Human Rights News . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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