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Tony Blair did some good things - and he did some bad things too. You all know what they are but this isn't the place to weigh them up. This is the place to look at just one thing he did - and then quickly tried to undo. Something that seems to, in microcosm, sum up the entire Blair premiership. Early years of hope and possibility. Later years of cynicism.
The Freedom of Information Act was introduced by the Blair government in 2000 (in his first term, before the Iraq War, when most of us still held a positive view of the man). By the time his memoirs were published, ten years later, in 2010 he described himself as an "idiot" and a "naive, foolish, nincompoop" for passing the act. He wrote of of his own "stupidity" for doing so and said he would still "quake" at the "imbecility" of it.
And what irked him so much was that journalists were using it to find out things he didn't want find them to find out. I was at Greenwich Skeptics in the Pub (in their new home The Plume of Feathers, they've already closed down The Star of Greenwich and The Duke of Greenwich and decided better of using Davy's Wine Vaults) to hear the admirable investigative reporter, and Greenwich local, Meirion Jones talk about The Freedom of Information Act and how it's not delivered what was promised. He'd called his talk How They Hide The Truth From You and, sadly, that title is only too accurate.
Meirion has reported on toxic waste dumping in Africa, tsunami aid, and bogus bomb detectors, and, not long after Jimmy Savile's death, worked on a Newsnight programme that was to expose, too late sadly, perhaps Britain's most notorious paedophile. Shamefully, Newsnight's then editor Peter Rippon, suppressed the programme although the truth, as we all now know, eventually came out.
But Meirion wasn't with the Skeptics to talk about Savile (I imagine he gets bored of being asked about him) but about the Freedom of Information Act. If that's sounds like a drier, if far more edifying, subject then it proved to be anything but.
A quick straw poll of those in attendance found that about 10% of people had put in a Freedom of Information request and that reflects, roughly, the number of people across society that have (a figure I suspect is skewed by people like Meirion putting multiple requests in) so it's not as if everyone is doing it all of the time.
When it came in two decades back, high hopes were held for it and Meirion himself made early use of it to find out if, as was widely believed, Britain (when Harold MacMillan was in power) had helped Israel get hold of nuclear weapons. The UK government had long denied they were and it was expected that places like Aldermaston and Burghfield (both down the road from where I grew up) would find a way not to hand over their files to an interfering journalist but to Meirion's surprise they did.
And a lot of them too. A three foot high pile which included stuff marked Top Secret, stuff marked Top Secret - UK Eyes Only (even the Americans don't get to see that), and stuff marked Top Secret - UK Eyes Only - Guard. This means that to look at them you have to be accompanied by an armed guard and should you try to copy them, or take a photo, that guard has legal permission to shoot you dead.
Most of the paperwork had names of senior MI5 figures but they were mostly old and retired or even dead. But it became apparent from the files that the French had been secretly helping Israel make their own nuclear weapons, near the city of Dimona in Israel's Negev desert, for some time.
Three things are required to make a nuclear weapon:- a nuclear reactor, uranium, and heavy water to convert the uranium into plutonium. The French had provided the reactor and the uranium but were getting itchy feet so the ever obliging Brits stepped in and provided Israel with the heavy water. Enough of it for them to make a nuclear bomb ten times as strong as the one that destroyed Hiroshima.
Meirion Jones was able to get the story on Newsnight and even spoke to the former American secretary of defense (sic) Robert McNamara who served under both Kennedy and Lyndon B.Johnson. McNamara was a bit peeved that us Brits had gone behind the American's backs (the Americans were quite happy with only three countries - them, the USSR, and the UK - having nuclear weapons at the time) but the person who was most pissed off was Jack Straw.
Straw was then Secretary of State for Justice under Blair and he soon found himself taking flak both from Israel and from the leaders of Arab countries. For obvious reasons. He persuaded Blair to do a reverse ferret on the Freedom of Information Act but because the genie was out of the bottle it was, and remains - this is still ongoing, a very slow process. Certainly the last five Tory Prime Ministers (Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, and Sunak) have all eroded the efficacy of the bill as much as they could in their short reigns. The two Labour MPs since Blair, Brown and Starmer, have been no better on this front.
Techniques used to block people accessing freedom of information, as promised in the act, include a clearing house (in actuality a blocking house), absolute exemptions, and politicised use of what those who hold power over us call the public interest.
It was a short, and very succinct, talk but Meirion did speak about one other case he'd been involved in. Some years ago it became apparent that Thurrock Council had borrowed over a billion pounds from over one hundred other councils across the country and they wouldn't say what they'd spent it on. A Freedom of Information request to Thurrock Council was refused but it soon became apparent that most of it had gone to one man who had promised to deliver solar panels for the council.
Which he did. But on top of that he found enough money to buy a £2,500,000 Bugatti, a Lamborghini, a private jet, a villa in Majorca, a house in Dubai, a yacht, a Swarovski crystal wall, and a £20,000,000 country house. He also had enough left over to employ the law firm Carter-Ruck to threaten Meirion Jones with court should he investigate any further.
The man in question, Luke Kavanagh (his name and this case is on the Internet so I hope the dodgy geezer doesn't sue me - he won't get much if he does), lived high on the hog while Thurrock Council went bust and the Treasury had to bail out the other councils who Thurrock were unable to pay back. With our money. With taxpayer's money. £130,000,000's worth of it.
This was a story that Meirion Jones was able to bring to light eventually but because of how the Freedom of Information Act has intentionally been rendered almost completely unfit for purpose it took him a lot longer, and involved a lot more work, than it should have done. The privatisation of most of our previously state owned facilities (water, gas, the railways) has also made it much more difficult to find out what our money is being spent on.
Private firms, by and large, do not have to comply with FOI requests. The alternatives to FOI (Subject Access Requests, Environmental Information Regulations, and Rights of Public Inspection) don't really touch the sides so what Meirion Jones proposes is that we campaign for a reset of public interest in the subject, a lay panel to oversee FOI requests, and to bring utilities firms and state contractors (like Thames Water and Serco to name two of my 'favourites') under the FOI act.
That, like getting the original act passed in the first place, could take decades as powerful people and institutions are very much against it. But it needs to be done so that those we give power to don't abuse that power. Which, history tells us, they always will.
Thanks to Greenwich Skeptics in the Pub, host Professor Chris French, and to The Plume of Feathers (a nice venue although I'm less keen on the new Monday evening slot) for a great night. Thanks also to Pop'n'Pier chip shop for feeding me beforehand, to Jade and David for keeping me company, and, most of all, to Meirion Jones for both a fantastic talk and for doing such wonderful work for so long. Those in power should not be able avoid scrutiny just because they're in power.
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