The last few days have brought to the fore the problems of ‘secrets in government’. In theory of course, in these days of freedom of information, there shouldn’t be too many of these. Official secrets that if made public would threaten national security are another matter of course, and few would argue that it is right to publish these.
However, there are other matters which can prove embarrassing to those in power, such as those contained in the leaks from the Home Office that have caused so much excitement in recent weeks. Even in local government there is some pressure not to draw too much attention to the shortcomings of the council when they become apparent internally. At Babergh this may be more marked than elsewhere; no party has overall control, and thus there is less obvious accountability and less excuse for public political point scoring.
All organisations make mistakes from time to time, and sometimes it is better, I think to ‘fess up to them than to try to defend the indefensible. Where a council isn’t very ‘political’ however, the incentive to frankly debate matters of this type is often absent, and they only come to the fore where there is a public outcry of some sort. The controversy with regard to the recently installed ticket machines in Sudbury car parks is a case in point.
As the writer of a blog I am fairly unusual at Babergh, in fact I think I am the only Member who has one. It is not always easy to know what it is appropriate to say and how far to go in expressing my opinion. Some things are clear; for example it is generally not considered right to report the goings on at our occasional Members’ Seminars. The whole point of these is to allow Members of the Council to express their honest, and possibly as yet unformed, opinions in an informal setting about council related issues. It would clearly be wrong to reveal the content of these conversations. What happens in Committee and Council meetings, which are in any event open to the public (who rarely come), are clearly fair game for the blog however. In between are a whole raft of issues which are less clear cut however, and it is often difficult to know what and how much to reveal!
