Robin Wilton's esoterica

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28 Sep · Wed 2005

Britain's Oldest State Secrets

At the beginning of this year, a Freedom of Information Act came into force in the UK. One of the things it did was rescind a provision called a "Lord Chancellor's Instrument". It was probably also the first time most people had been aware that such a thing existed. The Lord Chancellor's Instrument was a mechanism for extending the secrecy of particularly sensitive documents beyond 30 years. Naturally, the BBC wanted to find out what could possibly be so secret that it should not be revealed for 100 years. Early in February they published the list. Looking through it, I was struck by two thoughts. First, several of the themes in question are just as topical now as they evidently were all those years ago: the rules and process for deportation of foreign nationals (two cases); the question of whether someone should be arrested just because 'she wishes to walk up a certain street' (in this case, handing a petition in at 10 Downing Street); law enforcement access to personal communications (interception of telegrams); the governance and accountability of monopoly utilities (the Post Office); trades union unease about the transparency and fairness of public sector procurement practices. Second, why on earth were some of these documents so classified? The BBC report doesn't go into a lot of detail about any of the cases, but here's the 10th one in full, as an example: "10. POACHER'S SENTENCE CONFUSION A minor wrangle over the way a sentence was handed down to a poacher has been a closed file since 1909. Thomas Joy, from Shrewsbury, convicted for carrying a gun without a licence and "night poaching", lost out on prison privileges and potential early release because the judge gave no direction on whether his sentences should run consecutively." Now, if you can tell me what about that is so sensitive that it should be buried for a century, I'd love to know! I wish I could believe that, now we have a Freedom of Information Act, this sort of apparent absurdity just couldn't happen any more. The Act, though, contains quite enough exemptions to ensure that anyone with a strong enough incentive can bury information as before. Am I being paranoid? I don't think so. After all, our government is on record as having reversed the burden of proof, proposed detention without trial for 3 months, and deported people to countries with a record of human rights abuse. Stacked up against those, what's the big deal about 'losing' a few documents? Especially if it's something really critical... like a decision on concurrent jail terms for a night-time poacher.

Posted by racingsnake @ 11:27 AM GMT+00:00

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