Turmoil?

The Sunday Times reports that Scotland Yard is in turmoil after senior police officials criticised temporary Metropolitan Police Chief, Sir Paul Stephenson and admitted its handling of the arrest of a Tory MP had been “catastrophic”. In fact most of the Sunday papers are full of articles questioning Police tactics and in particular the decision to allow officers to raid the Commons office of Damien Green.

Peddling back just a little bit from my initial reaction on Friday I think that Matt Withers is right in his efforts to put this incident into context in this morning's Wales on Sunday. He points out that for all the hyperbole on the part of opposition politicians Britain cannot be compared to Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe or Josef Stalin's USSR as some have attempted to do:

Mugabe has rigged elections, attacked civil society, killed and maimed opponents and suspended the rule of law. Opponents of his regime are routinely arrested and many have been tortured and burnt alive by his personal militia.

In the Soviet Union under Stalin millions of people who were suspected of being such a threat were executed or exiled to Gulag labour camps in remote areas of Siberia or Central Asia, where many more died of disease, malnutrition and exposure. Estimates of the number of deaths associated with his Great Purge run from the official figure of 681,692 to nearly two million.

In Britain, an obscure shadow minister was arrested, questioned and released without charge.

A commentor on my last post on this blog was right in saying that the issue here is the use of the Official Secrets Act and the way it is used to suppress information that should be in the public domain. Some poor judgement has been shown by the Metropolitan Police, by the Home Office Official who started the inquiry off and by the House of Commons authorities but the biggest losers in this whole affair are those who believe in British democracy.

There may be a Freedom of Information Act but compared to its American cousin it is not fit for purpose. If opposition spokespeople need to rely on illicit leaks to reveal poor government decisions and mismanagement then our Parliamentary system and the scrutiny it supports needs to be overhauled. Perhaps when all the dust has settled over the arrest of Damian Green those shouting the loudest will turn their attention to tackling that problem.