AT LAST, Home Secretary Jack Straw grasps the hem of the cloak of secrecy that envelops government, councils and public bodies in Britain and prepares to unveil a long-awaited and sorely-needed Freedom of Information Bill next week.

Not only this, he dismisses the concern of critics and cynics that the Bill would be a watered down, token attack on the all-pervasive secrecy in public affairs and pledges that it will be a "radical and reforming" piece of legislation.

We welcome this, but we will look on the Bill's progress to the statute book as a test of that pledge and of the government's integrity.

For what will only suffice is a Freedom of Information Act that has not been shorn of its radical and reforming promise on its way to becoming law.

And, indeed, it will be a test. For no matter how committed Mr Straw and the government may be to the ideals of open government, the culture of secrecy that saturates state departments, town halls and bodies like the police and health service is not only deeply-ingrained, but it is sustained most often by officials reluctant to relinquish the control and power it gives to them.

This runs from the mighty Civil Service mandarins - the Sir Humphrey sorts whose fictional furtiveness is based on a real-life empire-building and alternate influence - down to the town hall clerks who instinctively place items of public interest on the private parts of committee agendas. But all of this amounts to more than an issue of high-minded principle about open government and the public's right-to-know how their representatives and servants operate on their behalf.

It touches everyday life in countless ways.

There are, for instance, plenty of parents in East Lancashire who, right now, would like to know which person decided to deny their child a place at the school of their choice and why.

A Freedom of Information Act would grant them the right to be told - and strengthen their right to appeal.

And witness the web of intrigue and bureaucratic fingerprints all over the decision-making process in the recent arms-for-Sierra Leone scandal that, after the event, revealed how supposedly in-charge politicians can be kept in the dark or manipulated by people in their own departments.

A Freedom of Information Act would deter all that.

Other countries have such laws and function efficiently with no damage to their security or economies. It is only that, in Britain, those belonging to the faceless establishment that permeates our public institutions have too long arrogantly assumed that government of and for the people should be by them more than by the people.

Let Mr Straw now disabuse them.

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