UK Government Machine in meltdown

[T_i_B]

Good analysis of the Hutton enquiry and the questions it asks. Make of this what you will.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/hutton/story/0,13822,1030056,00.html

This episode casts light on something larger than one administration or several careers. It exposes the way we are governed, and reveals that our system is badly flawed.

Start with the delightful novelty of open government. The Hutton inquiry has thrilled political observers by allowing them to wallow in paper normally kept secret for decades. But releasing government documents is not just a treat for historians and Whitehall buffs; it is surely a legitimate expectation of all citizens. After all, we pay the government's wages; ministers and civil servants work for us. Shouldn't we be able to see how they reach the decisions they take in our name, and according to which they risk our blood and treasure?

Unhappily, what lies behind the veil is even more troubling. One clear theme, unrelated to Iraq, the BBC or even the cult of spin, emerges from all the Hutton evidence. It is that the democratic apparatus of the country is faulty. Where other nations have a system of checks and balances, each part carefully weighted against the others, we have an overmighty executive that towers over all the rest.

So when parliament's foreign affairs committee wanted to ask questions of Dr Kelly, it had to seek the permission of Geoff Hoon: he granted it only on condition that Dr Kelly not be asked his wider views on Iraq's military capacity. When the same committee asked to see John Scarlett, the intelligence chief who testified before Hutton yesterday, it was refused by Scarlett's notional boss, Jack Straw. It's tempting to see this as evasiveness by Hoon and Straw, or "monumental cheek" in the words of yesterday's first witness, Andrew McKinley MP. But that's not the point. The problem is a constitutional one: parliament, the legislature, should have its own authority to scrutinise the government, the executive. It should not have to go cap in hand to the very people it is meant to be watching over.

[punpirate]

1. Ummm, our own Congress has the right of oversight...

... and has chosen to go begging, cap in hand, to the executive, only to have the door slammed in its face, repeatedly. Has it, like an insistent salesman, shoved a foot in that door? Nope. Our own Congress has even gone so far as to threaten its own independent investigative body, the GAO, rather than let some sunlight in.

Disgraceful, here, and abroad.