20 Year Rule - Brown's latest wheeze?

Gordon Brown's announcement today about the package of reforms he wishes to bring in have a characteristic twist. Whenever he does something like this he is always looking for schemes and wheezes to slip in that he hopes will not garner much attention (until it is too late) and will yield some partisan advantage.

The one today vying for that honour is the announcement that the 30 year rule could be relaxed to 20 years. He mentioned specific exemptions for the Royal Family and cabinet papers. However I thought he had hedged this a bit when I heard it. This is what Hansard records that he said:

I should also announce that, as part of extending the availability of official information, and as our response to the Dacre review, we will progressively reduce the time taken to release official documents. As the report recommended, we have considered the need to strengthen protection for particularly sensitive material, and there will be protection of royal family and Cabinet papers as part of strictly limited exemptions. But we will reduce the time for release of all other official documents below the current 30 years, to 20 years. So that Government information is accessible and useful for the widest possible group of people, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who led the creation of the worldwide web, has agreed to help us to drive the opening up of access to Government data on the web over the coming months.

I have highlighted the section "there will be protection" because it does not state what the scope or limits of this protection is and states they will be "part of strictly limited exemptions" again without defining what that means. It does not say cabinet papers will be completely exempted.

Now call me an old cynic but as soon as I heard this my first thought was that this could be a highly political and partisan measure. By the time this came in in 2010 we would suddenly find a lot of information from the entire 1980s would come out in one fell swoop. It cannot be a coincidence that happens to coincide with the entirety of Margaret Thatcher's reign as Prime Minister. Even if there does end up being an exemption for all cabinet papers there will surely still be some politically embarrassing things that went on further down the chain and journalists will have a field day with 10 years worth of data to mine.

This is unjust and unfair. Brown is trying to move the goal-posts and use his power in a way that could give his party an advantage and disadvantage the Tories. If Brown wants to convince us that he is not trying to pull a fast one here he should pledge to decrease the limit say by a year or two every year so the information comes out gradually (although a bit faster than before) until the 20 number is reached and not until after the next election. That way, there will be limited or no partisan advantage in the scheme.

I see that Mr Political Betting, Mike Smithson also thinks there is something suspicious about Brown's plans here.

The 15 Year Itch?

I am all for opening up government. Indeed I think that the way this current Labour administration has done its best to go against the spirit of its own FOI legislation is a sad indictment of them.

At the weekend there was a report in the Independent on Sunday which indicated that the 30 year rule which has been in place for many years and prevents the publication of sensitive government information for 30 years (when presumably the protagonists will have retired or passed away) may be changed to 15 years. I personally think this is a good move and will lead to more open government.

However I have to question the motivation behind this move. The government must be aware that if this was to be brought in, say next year then all of a sudden we would have 15 years of the Tory administration's most sensitive details running from 1979 - 1994 suddenly released into the public domain in the run-up to a general election. There will doubtless be all sorts of juicy details that political junkies like me would love to be able to get hold of. However would it be fair for all the information to come out like that so close to a general election given that "sensitive" often means "potentially embarassing". Sure, most of the key players are no longer in senior positions in the Conservative party but e.g. Ken Clarke may well be back in the shadow cabinet next year and he was a minister throughout both Thatcher's and Major's time at the helm.

Now I do not want to seem partisan in favour of the Tories, I most certainly am not. However this proposal seems to be unfair were it to be implemented in a blanket way in the near future. It would be better to wait until after the next election, and then perhaps decrease the time gradually, say 3 years every year so after 5 years we have the 15 year limit.

I fear that this very tribal Labour Prime Minister is making precisely the calculations described above and may well conclude that he can appear to be opening up government whilst at the same time getting one over on the opposition by forcing the airing of a large chunk of their dirty linen. I hope I am wrong about this.

Finally, if this does go ahead then it could eventually backfire on the government. Imagine if Brown was to win the next election (I know it seems unlikely) but with things quite volatile as they are at the moment, you never know. If this did happen in an election called next year, he could still be PM in 2012 when the dirty linen of the 1997 Labour administration would be being aired. There may well be some things that come out that would be very embarrassing for Brown, especially if some of the things I have heard alleged about his appalling behaviour towards Tony Blair when he was Chancellor turn out to be true.

I wonder if Brown has thought this through properly. He would do well to stem the urge to scratch that itch for now.