UK MPs criticize new gagging rules on former diplomats

By IRNA,

London : The British Foreign Office was accused Tuesday of wanting to impose wide-ranging, even draconian restrictions on former diplomats to prevent them from discussing anything that draws on their experience in the diplomatic service.


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The Public Administration Select Committee condemned new rules to prevent former civil servants and diplomats speaking out about their experience of government have been condemned as an attack on free speech.

“Freedom of information means it is not up to the government to decide what information is made public, and what stays private. Yet there seems to be different rules for memoirs,” said chair of the parliamentary committee, Tony Wright.

“If I were a minister or a civil servant writing my memoirs, I would think it was reasonable for government to suggest changes I should make for public interest reasons, but not for it to censor me,” Wright said.

In a new report on regulations governing memoirs by former civil servants and diplomats, the all-party group of MPs was considering rules proposed by former foreign secretary Jack Straw after a spate of high-profile autobiographies criticizing government policies.

The changes have been widely criticized not least because no such rules would apply to former MPs such as Tony Blair, who is writing his political memoirs.

Wright said the Foreign Office was “clearly disturbed” that diplomats like former ambassadors to Washington Christopher Meyer and former ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray were able to publish highly critical memoirs.

“But in trying to stop that happening again, they have changed the rules in a way that has – at least on paper – serious unintended consequences,” he warned.

Not only will Whitehall control more tightly what information can be published in political memoirs but it will also own the copyright of any such book, the report said.

The move is “unduly restrictive” and “may be restricting free speech,” as the crackdown would apply equally to interviews with the media, it said.

In effect, the MPs suggested it means that former diplomats could not appear on the radio for the rest of their lives to explain news events in, for example, Zimbabwe, Kenya or Pakistan.

In contrast, the new rules have not applied to recent political autobiographies have come from former deputy prime minister John Prescott, former home secretary David Blunkett and former prime minister Tony Blair’s official spokesman Alastair Campbell.

The committee proposed instead that an independent body should adjudicate in disagreements between the government and former diplomats. The office of the information commissioner could decide on whether publication was in the public interest, it suggested.

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