The Spectator’s Notes | 17 November 2007

Politicians find it impossible to say they are against Freedom of Information because it sounds as though they must be hiding something if they do so. But the way FOI is now being used means that government will become more and more secretive. When David Cameron suggested in Parliament last week that Gordon Brown had not been contemplating changing the rules on inheritance tax until the Conservatives proposed doing so, the government used FOI to try to refute this, publishing document-based accounts of what had happened. This was opposed, I gather, by Treasury officials who could see that if recent government documents get dragged into party political games no one will commit his honest advice to paper. Confidence (meaning confidentiality) is closely allied to confidence in the broader sense of the word. In Washington, where Freedom of Information also causes trouble, a circumvention has been found. Post-it notes, apparently, do not have to be released. Therefore the most important bits of government policy are now written and recorded on tiny, sticky, yellow squares.

Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, the leader of the Muslim Council of Britain, was in the clerical party at the Cenotaph for Remembrance Day. I wonder what he was commemorating. The MCB consistently refuses to condemn the killing and kidnapping of British servicemen in Iraq and Afghanistan. The day before, Dr Abdul Bari said that Britain resembled Nazi Germany. In its recent report, ‘The Hijacking of British Islam’, the think-tank Policy Exchange revealed that among the various publications for sale at Dr Abdul Bari’s East London Mosque and Islamic Cultural Centre (as well as one called Women Who Deserve To Go To Hell) is a multi-volume, Saudi-funded work called Islamic Verdicts. The book includes questions and answers. In one, a man seeks guidance because he lives with ‘Christian brothers’.