Re: The Inquiries Act
 

Technically different, but they are so closely related, most of the definining charactistics overlap.. certainly for this case.

From wikipedia: "As a political movement, communism is a more radical branch of the broader socialist movement. "

Rather than get caught up in the hysteria of it all, I would be interested to know what the government doesn't want us to know, first. I am sure there are plenty of things we shouldn't be told for our own protection, but wouldn't these be covered under the Official Secrets Act anyway?

I guess this is to help stop another 'David Kelly' happening, where a report comes out that is so dangerous, someone will commit suicide over it, or cause some sort of deaths or mayhem through social unrest. The only other thing is, if someone says something, and he isn't part of the government, then can that be covered under the Official Secrets Act? Can the government just designate whatever they want to the OSA? I don't think so which is probably why they wanted to come up with this. Still, i'd like to try and find out more about it before automatically labelling the government as some oppressive censoring, BB styled regime for implementing this, or wether it works out to be common sense.

Re: The Inquiries Act
 

About as likely as the Tories reverting to their roots, which professed the old-style The-King-Is-Boss idea that worked so well in keeping the US colonies on-side in the 1770s.

Incidentally, Tory is derived from the Irish word for outlaw or robber. Apt, really (That's why there's a Tory Island off the north coast of Donegal).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tory_Party

Well, we don't know what the government might not want us to know in future, that's the point. The objection to the Inquiries Act is that it effectively allows the government to intervene *directly* in an inquiry that is supposed to be independent. I'm leafing through it at the moment, and here are a couple of things that seem odd:

7 1 (b) - the Minister (who seems to do everything) can appoint new people to the panel during the inquiry (with the consent of the chairman or through some nebulous declaration at the start that seems rather unclear)

10 1 - if the Minister wants to appoint a judge of any description as chairman or member of the inquiry he has to 'consult' the judge's boss. Whether he has to take any notice of what the boss says is unclear, as is why he has to consult in the first place.

9 - if a member of the panel discovers he's got an outside interest in the case he has to tell the Minister, not the inquiry chairman. Ditto if he wants to resign.

11 - the Minister can appoint assessors to help the inquiry, and only has to 'consult' the chairman about it. If the chairman doesn't want the assessor, however, he has to obtain the consent of the Minister to his removal. So while the chairman can also appoint them, he can't stop them being appointed by the Minister and can't sack them without the Minister's approval. This leads to the rather obvious abuse of the Minister putting his own plants inside the inquiry knowing they can't be removed.

12 - The Minister only has to 'consult' the chairman if he wants to remove any member of the inquiry panel, the decision is purely reserved for the Minister.

13 - The Minister can suspend the inquiry at any time - the usual 'consult' comes in, of course. Inquiry members can't do anything that would disqualify them while the inquiry is suspended, but the suspension can be indefinite, which could be interesting.

14 - Inquiries end either when the chairman says so, by reporting back, or, hilariously, when the Minister says so. Guess what, he has to 'consult' the chairman first.

18 - Some interesting stuff about exemptions from the Freedom of Information Act.

19 - the Minister can bar anyone from attending the inquiry or disclosing information about it *at any point*, even after the inquiry has started. The reason is 'public interest' and can include 'damage to the economic interests of any part of the United Kingdom' and 'commercially sensitive information', plus the usual national security stuff. Again, it's purely the Minister's decision, this time he doesn't even have to consult. Rather ominously one justification is that disclosure might 'inhibit the allaying of public concern'. So if it might frighten the public, you aren't going to hear about it, the point of inquiries is to stop us worrying about messy stuff, not get the truth out.

20 - Restrictions in section 19 continue *indefinitely* if the Minister wants it. This means that if in 20 years you want to write a book about it, you can't.

25 - the person responsible for publishing the report is the Minister, unless he chooses to delegate it to the chairman. The Minister can withhold bits if he thinks they might frighten people, as in section 19, subject to the FoA, for what that's worth.

35 - a whole bunch of new offences - not giving evidence, concealing evidence, distorting evidence. A year in jail is the maximum term. I'd be interested to know if you're allowed to protect journalistic sources. Disclose stuff you're not allowed to and the Minister can take you straight to court.

That's about it from a quick skim, apart from the interesting note that the Queen and Prince Charles (as the Duke of Cornwall) are exempt.

[that's enough Act. Ed.]
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Posted that cos it's taken me two hours to write and I didn't want to lose it. So what does all that mean?

Effectively the Government has total control over any inquiry - it can set the terms of reference, the personnel, appoint new people to it or remove existing ones, dictate what evidence can be disclosed, edit the report as far as it wants to and even ban you indefinitely from knowing what went on in the inquiry in case it frightens you. When you see the words 'Lord So-and-so has been appointed to hold an inquiry' look who appointed him. That's the guy who's really running the inquiry. He's also the only one who doesn't have an obligation on him to own up if he's got a conflict of interest with the terms of the inquiry.

Does this really help open government?

The first inquiry under these terms is likely to be into the murder of Pat Finucane, where there is strong suspicion that government agents (police, army or secret services) were involved either directly or indirectly. Clearly there's no conflict of interest in the main body being investigated having total control over the inquiry.

Re: The Inquiries Act
 

What's this "if" business... :mad: :(

Re: The Inquiries Act
 

Good post BBKing... reading the gumpf so we do have to :)

All except point 7 1 (b) do seem to relegate the chairman to a mere consultant's position rather than the leader, which is wrong. Like you said, it is supposed to be an independent report on the government, not the minister's intrepretation of what he thinks an independent report should be.

I would still like to know why the government feels this is necessary, as something must have triggered it. It should be standard practice as with any new law, examples of justification should be given.

If I may put my cynic hat on for a minute, would it actually make a real world difference? The last couple of independent reports have beeen labelled as whitewashes (proabbly because it doesn't say what people want to hear).

Re: The Inquiries Act
 

The last couple of independant reports have effectively been whitewashes because the chairman has restricted them to a very narrow interpretation of the scope of the investigation.

What the reasons for this were are not entirely clear.