Not what you do …

Friday, November 28, 2008

Not what you do …

There is much fluttering in the dovecotsabout the arrest by the Metropolitan Police of Tory MP Damian Green, for the alleged offence of "aiding or procuring misconduct in public office." The arrest, we are told, is connected to the disclosure of several Home Office documents over the last year, which were subsequently leaked to the media.

It has been remarked that MPs have no specific protection from police action if they are involved in criminal activities, whether or not – as some claim – such activities are in the public interest. You can trash a power station in the name of global warming, but it is illegal for an MP (and anybody else) to leak to the press confidential information sent to him by a civil servant who is in breach of his (or her) legal obligations to protect information obtained solely and exclusively by virtue of his (or her) employment.

As to whether this happened in this instance we cannot comment. But it is fair to make the point that the situation is different if on receipt of leaked confidential information, the MP sends it to the "proper authorities". If he then uses the information so gained to "guide" questioning in the House - whether written or oral – and thereby puts that information into the public domain, then he is pretty much watertight, protected by Parliamentary privilege.

The place for opposition to hold the government to account is the House of Commons, not the pages of the press. If the media then publish the proceedings of the House, that is a matter for them and, generally, to be welcomed – that is democracy at work. MPs leaking confidential government information, passed to them illegally by civil servants, is not. In that context, it is not so much what you do, but how you do it. 

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Window Dressing

We are not unused to government continuing unabated in the face ofcontradictory evidence. Therefore, we remain unamazed by the government's response to the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee report on "The Economics of Renewable Energy." It was commenting on the plan to generate "15 percent" (actually 32 percent) of the UK's energy from renewable sources to meet EU targets by 2020, stating thus:

The government should shift its investment in renewable energy away from "unreliable" wind power to nuclear and carbon capture and storage to avoid putting the security of the UK's energy supply at risk.

Yet as of Monday we learn that government is to extend its renewable energy support mechanism (subsidy) to 2037.

Clearly, all the experts in the world will not deter politicians. If there's a shop window to dress they will dress it and as ever we will pay, in more ways than we even begin to realise.

Yet, such are the distortions in the debate that even the "voice of sanity" is barking mad. A shift in investment to carbon capture - apart from doubling the costs of new-build coal plants and adding anything up to 60 percent to our coal burn - would be backing totally unproven technology. The best outcome it that it would lead us up a cul de sac. More probably, it would have the effect of reducing the electricity produced from coal by a half or more - and only if the technology could be made to work.

That, though, is modern politics for you. Even the critics can't see the window dressing for what it is.

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