"If I Stop, They Win"

While in Spain last week covering the protest that has been taking place in Madrid’s main square, Puerta del Sol, I spent a great deal of time speaking to some of the activists and demonstrators whose action has sparked a wave of similar protests in more than 60 cities across the country.

It all began on May 15, when police arrested 24 political activists who were marching through the city, as part of a protest against mass unemployment and austerity measures.

The arrests sparked more protest, and numbers snowballed. Within a few days a handful of around 100 protesters had become a mass demonstration of tens of thousands.

By chance, in Puerta del Sol I met one of the 24 activists who had been arrested on May 15. He was handing out pamphlets that detailed his and his fellow protesters’ ordeal while in police detention. Though he did not want to give his name for fear of police reprisal, he agreed to give me a short interview.

The activist, a 22-year-old sociology student at a Madrid university, spoke about the harsh treatment he faced while in police custody. He detailed what he believed could be next for the movement, and gave a fascinating insight in to the origins of a demonstration that has since sparked protest across Europe – in London, Italy and Greece.

Audio of the interview along with an edited transcript can be found below by clicking "read more".

Inside the Spanish Revolution

There are thousands of people in Spain right now who feel that they are on the cusp of something very important – a revolution, even. The streets of Madrid are thick with a sense of optimism and hope, crammed with protesters of all ages carrying placards and posters, many scrawled with slogans such as "They do not represent us!" and "In defence of our dreams!".

The city's main square has become a tent city, occupied by groups inspired by uprisings across the Arab world. Everywhere you look, there are banners demanding change and "real democracy".

No one had seen it coming, not even the activists. What started as a fringe protest against rising unemployment and the Spanish government's multibillion-euro bank bailout escalated after several activists were arrested by police and held for 48 hours.

A demonstration against the arrests was organised in the city's main square, Puerta del Sol, and numbers soon snowballed when word got out over the internet. What began as a group of fewer than a hundred activists reached an estimated 50,000 within less than six days.

The protesters whose arrests had sparked the initial demonstration were released and immediately returned to the square. By the time they arrived, the demonstration was no longer just about their treatment at the hands of the police. It was about government corruption, lack of media freedom, bank bailouts, unemployment, austerity measures and privatisation.

"We cannot find a job, we cannot find a house, we cannot find health from the state," says Alejandro Jalón, a 20-year-old student. "I am here because I think we can change something."

The young people's sense of optimism is sincere. The protesters at Puerta del Sol are interested only in action, not rhetoric. In the square, they built a makeshift campsite, including everything from a children's nursery and a library to a kitchen offering free food donated by local businesses.

In the space of a few days they had created separate working commissions to form proposals for change to current government policy. A social and migration commission would look at immigration policy, the health commission would focus on how to deprivatise health-care services. Other commissions were formed to handle politics, education, the economy and the environment.

Among the camp's immediate demands were calls for electoral reform, the dissolution of the Spanish parliament's second chamber, and an end to a much-despised policy of "salaries for life" for politicians.

The movement itself has no single leader or figurehead; all decisions are made by consensus at general assemblies, held twice daily. Hundreds, sometimes thousands, attend the meetings, and no decision is taken until every single person is in agreement.

The meetings are long and laborious – occasionally lasting more than four hours at a time – but seem so far to have been successful.

"The leadership is our assembly, where the decisions are taken by consensus," says Nadia Moreno, 29. "Many people think that this doesn't work – the reality is we are where we are after six days because of this consensus."

Although the movement is driven by highly political young people between the ages of roughly 20 and 35, a large cross-section of Spanish society appears to support the occupation of the square. There is a festive atmosphere, with families, music and workshops of every kind imaginable taking place throughout the day. Everyone who attends is encouraged to submit suggestions, using ballot boxes, to each of the commissions. All of these are later scrutinised, tabled and debated.

The organisers say that they think the huge success of the camp, which has since spread to more than 60 other Spanish cities, stems in part from what has taken place in Tunisia and Egypt.

"Egypt and Tunisia was a very important catalyst for the movement in Spain," says Beatriz Pérez, a 29-year-old spokeswoman for the movement who also acknowledges the influence of the recent UK student protests. "I think the people are in the street because they have hope – that's the most important thing."

The feeling of hope is such that many at the camp believe it could be the start of a social and political revolution. It is the first sign, they say, that the uprisings across the Arab world are about to spread across Europe.

Manuel Ferreira, a 66-year-old retired engineer, says the scenes at Puerta del Sol remind him of the student protests in France during the summer of 1968. "It's the same war against capital, against power, against politicians, against the establishment and so on," he explains. "It [the Puerta del Sol protest] is more significant, because through Facebook and the internet, this movement is worldwide . . . I think I am living a new world order."

The start of the demonstrations coincided with regional elections across the country, which the right-leaning Partido Popular (People's Party) won by a landslide.

At one point last week, an electoral committee assembled by the government declared the camp "illegal". But even though there were strong rumours of an impending police "clean-up" operation, and seven riot vans gathered at one side of the square, protesters have remained at all times in a defiant spirit.

"If they take us from the square tomorrow, the only thing that they will get is that they will make us stronger and we will come back stronger," says 22-year-old Juan Martín. "We want a new society. This one doesn't work any more."

This article originally appeared at: http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2011/05/puerto-square-spanish-work

Dr Thornton and the University of Nottingham Saga

A professor was suspended earlier this month after calling for a public enquiry into alleged serious malpractice perpetrated by senior management at the University of Nottingham. Dr Rod Thornton, a lecturer in international security and terrorism, presented an 112 page paper at the British International Studies Association Conference in Manchester last month detailing a series of failings and subsequent cover-ups he claims took place at the university three years ago, after the arrest of a postgraduate student and a member of university staff, both Muslim, on "terrorism related charges.”

In response to his suspension, a call for his immediate reinstatement was published in the Guardian by a significant list of influential academics from India to America, headed by Noam Chomsky and including Paul Gilroy, Dr Karma Nabulsi, Charles Tripp and Neera Chandhoke. Meanwhile yesterday around 100 demonstrators gathered in Nottingham to protest against the university's treatment of Thornton, with a campaign around the case now generating national interest.

The saga began in May 2008, when social sciences research student Rizwaan Sabir and his friend, Hicham Yezza, were arrested and detained for six days after a copy of an al-Qaeda Training Manual (AQTM) was found on Yezza’s office computer by a member of the University’s staff. The AQTM is recommended reading on most terrorism courses, and was also available through the University’s library. Sabir, who had obtained it as part of his research for an MA dissertation around the role of al-Qaeda in Iraq, sent the file along with two other articles (from the academic journals Foreign Affairs and the Middle East Policy Council Journal) to Yezza by email.

Yezza worked in the University’s modern languages department as the principal school administrator, and in order to avoid paying print costs Sabir had sent his friend the articles and asked if he would print them from his office for free. Several months later, a member of staff used Yezza’s computer and discovered the dubiously titled AQTM (which was incidentally given its name by the US Department of Justice; it was originally titled, Military Studies in the Jihad against the Tyrants). The concerned member of staff promptly reported the find to senior members within the department; the university’s Registrar, Dr Paul Greatrix, was informed, and the police were subsequently called in to investigate.

Greatrix was later quoted in a police statement as saying that there was no “valid reason whatsoever for the documents [found on Yezza’s computer] to exist” and that the AQTM was “illegal”. It was also apparent from a document given by police to Sabir’s lawyers that comments made by Bernard McGuirk, a Professor of Romance Literatures and Literary Theory at the university, were integral to the investigation. According to a police note released under the Freedom of Information Act, McGuirk had told police the AQTM was not a “legitimate document”. Thornton claims that on this basis alone police arrested both Yezza and Sabir, who were detained under Section 41 of the Terrorism Act on suspicion of being involved in the commission, preparation and instigation of an act of terrorism. During their six days of incarceration, the university did not contact the two men or offer them any support.

The day after the arrests, the university prepared an exclusion letter for Sabir which set out to ban him “from all parts of the university with immediate effect”. When Sabir was released without charge, however, the expulsion was never issued. Specialist counter terror police had conducted a meticulous search of Sabir’s family home, which involved all of his family – including his elderly grandmother – being forced to vacate for 24 hours. But after a "bag and tag" search, all that the police discovered was an array of academic texts including works on Nietzsche, postmodernism and educational research. They had failed to find any connection between Sabir and Yezza and terrorism.

Even two months after the arrest of the pair, though, Greatrix continued to reiterate that the AQTM was “illegal”. In one letter to Sabir, dated August 4th 2008, he conflated the downloading of the AQTM with the downloading of child pornography. Both, he said, were available on the internet but were “still nevertheless illegal”.

This clearly frustrated Thornton, an expert on terrorism studies. He knew that the AQTM was available through the university's own library and was considered “required reading” on any terrorism course; to compare it to child porn was “unconscionable” and “malevolent”, he wrote in his paper. Thorton also felt part of the problem stemmed from the fact that the AQTM was misleadingly titled – by the US government – as it contains no information about how to build bombs or other weapons. “The al-Qaeda Training Manual is a mainstream student source,” he wrote. “It is in no way illegal, illegitimate, seditious or extremist.”

But he was most disturbed at how quickly the university’s management had gone to the police. Despite what the university would later claim, Thornton alleges that the Registrar, Greatrix, did not carry out a "risk assessment" in accordance with university guidelines. Greatrix should have – but ostensibly did not – consult first with senior academic staff and with experts in the field of terrorism before going to the police.

Thornton also suggests that a culture of Islamophobia was a key factor in the arrests. At one point in his paper he recounts the comments of a police officer, made during one lengthy interview about the suspicions surrounding Sabir and Yezza. Thornton writes that, seemingly exasperated, the officer let out a sigh and said: “This would not be happening if the student had been blonde, Swedish and at Oxford University”.

In the aftermath of the incident, Thornton tried to raise the issues he had with the handling of the case internally. He claims that he “stopped stories running in the media” and that he “[gave] senior management at the University of Nottingham every chance to carry out their own investigations and to take the necessary actions.” He also says that he wrote to the government minister then responsible for universities; went to the English universities funding body, the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE); and appealed to the Parliamentary Ombudsman, whose role it is to oversee the activities of public institutions. But all of this yielded no response. Unless universities are engaged in financial impropriety, he concluded, they are “allowed to be completely autonomous and accountable to no-one.”

With no other avenue to pursue, Thornton decided to “go public”. Shortly after he did so, by releasing his paper in late April, he was suspended from his post at the University of Nottingham with immediate effect. In the days following his suspension, Sabir, now a doctoral researcher at the University of Strathclyde, helped organise the open letter in support of his former lecturer, and is working actively with a campaign group to raise the profile of the case.

Sabir, speaking on the phone from Nottingham, described Thornton as "talented, brave and courageous" and said his suspension was "totally absurd".

He added: “Because the university has failed to investigate these matters internally over the last three years, no other option exists now but to have a public, independent enquiry through which the issues can be resolved. Until a public enquiry is undertaken we can’t ever bring closure to this.

“They have failed in their duty of care to me. They have failed in their duty of care to Hitcham [Yezza], and they are now failing in their duty of care to all other staff and students that have spoken up for justice to be done at this university.”

A spokesperson for the University of Nottingham refused on policy grounds to confirm or deny whether Thornton had been suspended, and stated that at all times the University has acted in an ethical, transparent and fair manner.

“The fact remains that the article produced by Dr Thornton is highly defamatory of a number of his colleagues," the spokesperson said. "Academic freedom is a cornerstone of this University, but it is not the freedom to defame your co-workers and attempt to destroy their reputations as honest, fair and reasonable individuals. The University rejects utterly the baseless accusations Dr Thornton makes about members of staff.

“It is important to remember that the original incident, almost three years ago, was triggered by the discovery of an al-Qaeda Training Manual on the computer of an individual who was neither an academic member of staff, nor a student, and in a School where one would not expect to find such material being used for research purposes. The individual concerned was an administrative member of staff with no academic reason to possess such a document. The University became concerned and decided, after a risk assessment, that those concerns should be conveyed to the police as the appropriate body to investigate.”

Abuse of process?

It seems clear that with each side accusing the other of wrongdoing, the only way forward can now be an independent public enquiry into Thornton's allegations. If the university believes it has conducted itself in an ethical, transparent and fair manner, then it should encourage a full and thorough investigation into not only its handling of the original Sabir and Yezza incident, but also its dismissal of Thornton, which in itself raises serious questions. What cannot be in dispute at this point is that two wholly innocent individuals were arrested three years ago on spurious grounds, and a highly regarded lecturer has now been suspended for citing numerous significant, evidence-based instances of alleged malpractice at the highest levels of the institution. If in either of these cases there has been a cover-up, or an abuse of process and power, it is paramount that we find out about it. No publicly funded institution should be permitted to function behind closed doors, and the University of Nottingham is no exception.

This article originally appeared at: http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/ryan-gallagher/two-arrests-suspension-accusations-of-islamophobia-nottingham-university-m

Work Elsewhere

I don't post all of my work on this website, because not all of it would fit. So here's a short update of some of the other things I've been up to which have appeared elsewhere.

Last week a story I spent a great deal of investigative work on was published in the Guardian, and was later followed up by several other national and international news outlets (Daily Mail, Speigel, the Independent, the Inquirer, Europa Press, MSN, Silicon Valley, ZDNet, Belfast Telegraph among others).

WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize gold medal for peace with Justice at the Frontline Club. I attended and put together a write up of proceedings for Frontline here (more here and here, and audio here).

I also wrote a report on pre-emptive arrests and squatter evictions that will be appearing in next week's Big Issue in the North (read here), and have two features for the same publication in the works. Watch this space for more info. Much more coming soon. - RJG

Stokes Croft: Reporting a Riot

When rioting broke out in the Stokes Croft area of Bristol in the early hours of Friday morning, swathes of people across the country found themselves glued to Twitter, following the action as it unfolded.

The unrest began when Avon and Somerset police descended on a squatted property at Cheltenham Road late on Thursday evening, in an attempt to arrest squatters who they claimed had “criminal intentions”.

The squat, known as Telepathic Heights, is located opposite a Tesco Express store, which recently opened despite strong resistance and campaigning from local people who felt it would pose a threat to local businesses. Police said they had received intelligence that the squatters were making petrol bombs, and obtained a warrant to search the property on that basis. “There was a very real threat to the local community,” said Assistant Chief Constable Rod Hansen.

After four arrests were made, protesters gathered in the streets. Police told the crowds to disperse, but were ignored. There was a confrontation, the Tesco was attacked and objects were thrown at police. What happened next has been documented in detail by Oli Conner in his first-hand account, published yesterday on ourKingdom. Bristol resident Adam Ramsay has also provided a useful eye-witness report here, which includes some of the background story.

The mainstream media were extremely slow to respond to the chaotic scenes. Twitter was ablaze with people shocked at the lack of coverage. “Searching for info on #StokesCroft uprising in the absence of proper media coverage is like living in fucking China or North Korea,” tweeted @meowist_gorilla.

Others speculated it was a conspiracy to suppress details of the riot getting out. “Looks to me like the media has been ordered not to run the #StokesCroft riot story,” wrote @SDMumford. “Sounds to me completely botched by the police.”

A more likely and less sinister reason for the absence of instant coverage, though, was the timing. The event occurred in the early hours on a public holiday . . . most of Bristol’s small congregation of working hacks were probably in bed or somewhere far from the newsroom. (If it had occurred in London, there is little doubt that the story would have been given more immediate attention – for no other reason than that there are a far greater number of journalists living and working in the capital, particularly at night time.)

Nonetheless, when the story eventually did break, there can be no excuse for the poor standard of the reporting. Most of the major national news outlets – the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail, the Independent, the Express, the Guardian, the Sun, the BBC and the Times – ran with a “police hurt by protesters” headline, yet most of the photographs and videos available on the internet depicted injured protesters.

According to a scan performed by churnalism.com (a Media Standards Trust website that can compare a press release with articles published by national newspapers), the Telegraph had simply copied and pasted 74% of its report from a police news release. The Express wasn’t much better, at 71%; and the BBC, too, were also guilty of a cut and paste job – their report, which was later amended, copied 68% of the police line.

Of more concern was the striking lack of accuracy. Despite no eyewitness accounts to corroborate it, almost all of the major newspapers published a bogus assertion that the Tesco opposite the squat was “petrol bombed”. The alleged incident, which seems to have originated in a report by the Press Association, formed the basis of several newspapers’ headlines.

“Riot police bombarded and shop petrol-bombed,” stated the Daily Mail; “Tesco store petrol bombed,” recounted the Telegraph; “PETROL BOMBS FLY IN BRISTOL TESCO RIOT HELL,” howled the Star. Even the respectable Times was guilty: “mob petrol bombs Tesco," they wrote, before later amending their piece to read instead, “Bristol mob wrecks Tesco store and attacks police”.

In the first instance, it was pure anti-journalism: uncorroborated rumours presented as fact, with the police’s account of events regurgitated scarcely without question or counter. (It should also be noted that two of the better reports came from the Guardian and, unusually, the Sun – both of whom gave claims of police heavy handedness moderately fair prominence.)

Even at the time of writing – 24 hours after the riot – the “petrol bombs thrown at Tesco” line still stands on the websites of several of the above listed newspapers. It has not been corrected, substantiated, verified or cross referenced. But it is still being presented to the world as if it is fact – and for all those who are not in the know, it will be treated as such.

This is a problem, of course, not least because journalism that is inaccurate is journalism that is worthless. There is already a sense of disdain and distrust for the mainstream media among many protesters and activist groups – and unfortunately the subpar reporting of the Stokes Croft riot illustrates precisely why.

As we have witnessed throughout several recent large protests involving students and cuts demonstrators, there has all too often been a high prevalence of regurgitated police press releases, paired with obvious bias in favour of the authorities no matter what the circumstances. Inaccurate reporting is, on this occasion, the final nail in the coffin.

Consequently, more and more people, particularly those involved in various protest movements, are now shunning the mainstream press altogether. This can result – as Dan Hancox argues in his introduction to OurKingdom's Reader on the Winter Protests, Fight Back! – in a form of “self kettling”, a kind of self-imposed isolation. Increasingly, information is shared and disseminated on a peer-to-peer basis via social networks (live video streams are also a growing phenomenon, and on Friday morning on-the-ground live footage from @grantikins was watched by thousands). Where the mainstream media has fallen short, it seems, citizen journalists have stepped in.

Many, particularly the young, now appear to feel that the only way to obtain the factual truth is from those ‘live tweeting’ at the scene. For honest, traditional journalists (and there are still a few), this is a sad and problematic state of affairs. But who can blame people for their media disillusionment? They have been failed by bad journalism and with nowhere else to go have turned to each other for a better alternative.

On Twitter, as the scenes on the streets of Stokes Croft reached a conclusion at around 4am on Friday, the feeling was summed up by @BrumProtestor in no uncertain terms. “Twitter has been great tonight, thanks to all #StokesCroft people tweeting,” he wrote. “Fuck you mainstream media, we don't need you anymore."

This article originally appeared at: http://www.opendemocracy.net/ryan-gallagher/reporting-riot-in-britain-how-police-spun-battle-of-stokes-croft

The Inslaw case: Dirtier than Watergate

It was described as dirtier than Watergate, and involved US government dealings with Iraq, Libya, Korea and even the late British publishing tycoon Robert Maxwell. The story is deep, dark and complex; a web of strange dealings and dubious characters, it implicates wealthy arms dealers, Israeli intelligence services, the Soviet KGB, MI5 and the CIA. But unlike Watergate, this scandal, from a particularly dark chapter in American history, has appeared in no Hollywood film and is yet to reach a satisfying conclusion.

It began in the late 1970s, when the Washington-based software developer Inslaw pioneered people-tracking technology, designed to be used by prosecutors to monitor case records. Known as the Prosecutor's Management Information System (PROMIS), the software was developed under grants from the US department of justice. The US government, as it helped fund the creation of PROMIS, had been licensed to use the software on condition that it did not modify, distribute or create derivative versions of it. The government, however, did not stick to this agreement.

Under the Ronald Reagan administration's covert intelligence initiative known as "'Follow the Money", the US National Security Agency (NSA) misappropriated PROMIS for sale to banks in 1982. The version of PROMIS sold by the NSA had been "espionage-enabled" through a back door in the programme, allowing the agency to covertly conduct real-time electronic surveillance of the flow of money to suspected terrorists and other perceived threats to US national interests.

A letter from the US department of justice in 1985, later obtained by Inslaw, documented more plans for the covert sale and distribution of the espionage-enabled version of PROMIS, this time to governments in the Middle East (which would surreptitiously allow the US to spy on foreign intelligence agencies). The letter outlined how sales of the software were to be facilitated by the late Saudi billionaire Khalid bin Mahfouz and the arms dealers Adnan Khashoggi and Manucher Ghorbanifar. PROMIS should be delivered without "paperwork, customs, or delay", it stated, and all of the transactions paid for through a Swiss bank account.

In the years that followed, friends of then attorney general Edwin Meese, including a Reagan associate, Dr Earl Brian of the government consultancy firm Hadron, Inc, were reportedly allowed to sell and distribute pirated versions of PROMIS domestically and overseas. As a House judiciary committee report found in 1992, these individuals were apparently permitted to do so "for their personal financial gain and in support of the intelligence and foreign policy objectives of the United States".

Brian, who was later jailed for four years on an unrelated fraud charge in 1998, has since denied any association with the Inslaw case. According to the former arms broker and CIA "contract operative" Richard Babayan, however, he was instrumental in selling PROMIS to the governments of Iraq, Libya and Korea. When Brian was unable to market PROMIS further, it is claimed that, with the help of Rafi Eitan, a high-ranking Israeli intelligence officer, the British publisher Robert Maxwell was recruited to assist.

In a sworn affidavit, the investigative author Gordon Thomas recounts how Eitan told him Maxwell alone sold over $500m worth of espionage-enabled versions of PROMIS – including licences to the UK, Australia, South Korea, Canada and the Soviet KGB. The British counter-intelligence agency MI5, according to Eitan (who himself was an adviser to the UK secret service MI6), used PROMIS to track members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), as well as Irish republican political leaders including Gerry Adams.

Inslaw alleges the US government, by selling PROMIS to other governments around the world, engaged in what equates to "multibillion-dollar theft". This claim was supported by two separate courts in 1988, which ruled that it "took, converted, stole" PROMIS from Inslaw "through trickery, fraud and deceit". Three years later, however, a court of appeal overturned both rulings on a "jurisdictional technicality" after pressure from the federal justice department.

Now more than two decades since he pioneered PROMIS, the Inslaw president Bill Hamilton today believes the story illustrates an enduring, fundamental problem at the heart of the US justice system. "[It] chronicles the continued inability of the US government to enforce federal criminal laws in cases involving national security issues, or even to render ordinary civil justice," he says. "National security appears to suspend the checks and balances built into the system of government in the United States, to the detriment of the citizens."

Some, including the US government, have tried to dismiss the Inslaw saga as conspiracy. But a message relayed to Bill Hamilton and his wife from the former chief investigator of the Senate judiciary committee, Ronald LeGrand, seems to confirm that the strange PROMIS affair – which remains unresolved – is much more than just a case of chronic paranoia.

"What Mr and Mrs Hamilton think happened, did happen," LeGrand wrote, conveying information he had received from a trusted government source. "The Inslaw case is a lot dirtier for the Department of Justice than Watergate was, in both breadth and depth. The Department of Justice has been compromised in the Inslaw case at every level."

This article appeared originally at: http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2011/04/promis-government-inslaw

Outsourcing Accountability: Privatisation and Freedom of Information

Since it was introduced in 2005, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) has helped expose a wide range of scandals. It has uncovered MPs exploiting their taxpayer-funded expenses system, child abuse in Northern Ireland as well as the scale of civilian deaths in the Afghan war. The Act, which is based upon the principle that the public has a “right to know” information contained in government records, has become an important means by which power can be held to account.

But freedom of information as we know it could be under serious threat. In towns and cities across the country, there are rapid, expansive changes taking place. As the government implements the biggest public spending cuts in a generation, many public services are struggling to survive. From Manchester to Devon, libraries, care homes, schools and even hospital wards are faced with a very real prospect of closure. What this means is that, almost inevitably, we are set to see control and ownership of public services being handed over to the private sector on an unprecedented scale.

The FOIA, in its current form, can only be used to gain information from public bodies “wholly funded” by public money, such as the police force or local councils. Private companies not owned by public money, even if they are providing key public services such as care provision, are not bound by the Act. Therefore, as more and more of our services become privatised, freedom of information is likely to diminish.

According to freedom of information campaigner, author and journalist Heather Brooke, this poses a serious problem for the future.

“We’re going to see increasing privatisation of what were public services, and there is a danger that because they’ll be privatised they won’t have the same accountability that they had when they were overseen by public bodies,” she says. “In principle I don’t have a problem with privatisation; my problem is when public money or policymaking or public decisions are outsourced, there’s no way for the public to hold that to account.”

The coalition government expects that as the public sector slowly disappears and the state shrinks, privately owned companies will step in to fill the void. Journalists and citizens will still be able to request information about specific private contracts if they have been paid for by a public body – such as when a council contracts a private company to provide a service – but they cannot make direct FOI requests to the company or ask for information relating to any other matters. The implications of this are potentially huge.

“It is a matter of concern where functions are being removed from public authorities to private contractors,” says Maurice Frankel, director of the long running UK Campaign for Freedom of Information. “A vast range of information is going to be lost from public access.”

Frankel predicts that if the coalition’s plans to privatise elements of the NHS go ahead, GPs will have a right to access only partial information about the performance of contracted private healthcare providers. “If you want to know how many cases of reinfection occurred in the hospital, that’s not going to be covered by the individual GP’s contract,” he says. “The solution is to make the contractors themselves public authorities under the [FOI] Act.“

Across the housing sector, similar changes have already taken place. Private companies are now responsible for building most of the UK’s “affordable homes” – a role that up until the Thatcher era was carried out predominantly by councils using public funds. Often councils will now contract private developers as part of regeneration projects. Consequently, there has been a direct impact on transparency and accountability.

Researching a story on a regeneration project in New Broughton, Salford for Big Issue in the North earlier this year, I encountered firsthand the impact of privatisation on freedom of information. After a significant statistic was quoted to me by a public relations (PR) firm employed by private developer Countryside Properties, I asked to see its origin. Following a lengthy exchange of emails, however, my request was refused. The survey was “confidential and not in the public domain,” I was told. The PR firm would allow me to see snippets of the survey, but not the full thing; they wanted to reveal the favourable statistics, but nothing else.

The government’s plans to create new ‘free schools’ – schools that can be started by businesses, parents, teachers or other groups – have also caused transparency concerns.

Jane Eades, treasurer of campaign group the Anti-Academies Alliance, was refused information about free schools after submitting an FOI request to the Department for Education last year.She believes part of the problem is that a charity called the New Schools Network (NSN) has been set up to help fund free schools. The NSN has received £500,000 from the government, and anyone wishing to set up a school can apply to it for funding. But as it is a charity, it is exempt from the FOIA.

“The Government have been very cunning in the way they have set up the free schools process,” Eades says. “Unless the group [the NSA] publicise what they are doing, there is no local consultation or information. In other words, the whole deal seems to be very secretive.”

Such instances could become commonplace if privatisation is to spread across the public sector. Yet prime minister David Cameron maintains that the coalition government aspires to become “one of the most transparent governments in the world”. In recent weeks, for instance, the government has revealed plans to somewhat strengthen and widen the powers of the FOIA. Under the changes proposed in the new Protection of Freedoms Bill, some organisations previously exempt from freedom of information requests would be included. Bodies performing “functions of a public nature” such as the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) and the Advertising Standards Authority are among those who would be made to adhere to FOI legislation.

Freedom of information campaigners have welcomed these changes; however, although the Freedoms Bill widens the scope of the FOIA, it still fails to address the issue of privatisation. While on the one hand the government is strengthening the ability of citizens to gain information from public bodies, on the other, by privatising public services, they are reducing the amount of information that is freely available. Whether intentionally or not, the coalition is outsourcing accountability.

According to the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), the arm of government responsible for freedom of information policy, the FOIA will soon be reviewed to ensure it remains an effective means by which people hold the government to account. But the speed and scale of the government’s rapidly implemented privatisation agenda seems to have already caught the MoJ off-guard.

When questioned about the potentially regressive impact of privatisation on freedom of information, an MoJ spokesperson responded: “We have to strike a balance between our commitment to increasing transparency and that of reducing the regulatory burden on business. We do not consider it necessary to extend the Act to bodies that provide public services under contract at present.”

Meanwhile, the Information Commissioners Office – the independent authority set up to “uphold information rights in the public interest” – pointed to a statement made by Commissioner Christopher Graham in January.

“It would be perverse if by going for alternative provision of services – privatisation, contracting out, looking at new and imaginative alternative ways of delivering public services – we suddenly found that we are giving important public functions to authorities that are not within the FOI Act and they became less accountable," Graham said in an interview with the Guardian newspaper. “We've got to think through the implications; we can't be so starry-eyed that we can't see the downside. There is a potential for services to become less transparent and less accountable.”

For Brooke, who won a landmark High Court judgement in 2008 forcing the disclosure of MPs expenses, the only real solution is to expand the provisions of the FOIA further. “What I would like to see is a change in the Freedom of Information Act,” she says.

“A better situation would be if it was about the criteria, about how much funding does that organisation receive from the public or are they providing a public service. If they are doing one of those two things then they should fall under the purview of being a public body for the purposes of the FOIA. We’ve definitely got to see some kind of change to the law."

This article appeared originally in Issue No.871 of Big Issue in the North.