COUNCIL SECRECY

Some time in spring 2000, I read for the first time about new laws which could shut reporters out of their local councils. "Thank God it won't happen until 2001," was my first thought. "I'll be gone by then and someone else will have to deal with it." Unfortunately for me the Labour group on Derby City Council had other ideas which put paid to my "I'm all right Jack" attitude. Like many other councils, they decided to introduce a cabinet system before the legislation came into force - I was going to have to deal with it after all.

Relations between the city council and the Derby Evening Telegraph started off amicably enough with a delegation of officers and top councillors visiting our offices to explain the changes ahead. But within a year the council leader, Robert Jones, had publicly compared us to Josef Goebbels, while we had likened him to King Canute in our leader column. I'm still not sure what gave rise to a state of affairs which has seen town halls up and down Britain fighting tooth and nail with their local papers.

Was it New Labour's devotion to spin doctoring and press management passed from Westminster to local government? Was it councillors' yearning to shut out annoying reporters even more than they do already and have an easier life behind closed doors? Or was it just that no politicians had ever heard of the Local Government (Access to Information) Act 1985? Whatever the reason the Local Government Bill seems to have created a rod for councillors' backs.

Few people would disagree that the old committee system was deeply flawed - councillors of all parties meeting, having debates and taking measured decisions in public? Pull the other one. We all know that power is in the smoke-filled rooms and that everything is decided by pre-committee party group meetings. But while having cabinets of leading councillors being scrutinised by investigatory committees might more accurately reflect the way local government is run, it also legitimises all the abuses of the old system.

The new system says it's all right for a handful of councillors to hoard all the power and to shut everyone else out. It says it's all right for everything to be done and dusted at party group meetings without having the chore of being dragged into a public forum. For a local government reporter used to getting their bread and butter from council papers, it's a nightmare. For a council tax payer wanting proper coverage of what their council is doing it's a nightmare. And so it was to be in Derby. All my committee papers, except policy and education, disappeared at one fell swoop last November as cabinet meetings and decisions delegated to officers and cabinet members became the order of the day.

The council published "notes" of its cabinet meetings, which barely reached a sentence on each item. And we had a nice new Council at Work newsletter delivered to us which neatly compacted into a few sentences all the decisions we used to get in detailed council reports. Great news for officers and councillors wishing to hide their mistakes. Bad news for everyone else. As for the scrutiny committees, well, the councillors on the committees don't seem to know what they are doing, so I don't see why we should pay them much heed.

When a council decides to give its local paper the absolute bare minimum of information, there's no longer any relationship to lose. You might as well give them a good slagging off because things can't get any worse. So that's what we did. We called the cabinet's eight councillors the "Gang of Eight" and told our readers exactly what was going on at the Council House. We called for more, not less, openness in local government. We told our readers that power was being taken away from the public forum and printed a front page photograph of an empty council chamber to illustrate it.

But the symbolism was lost on Mr Jones, who called the Evening Telegraph "Goebbels-like" for creating an impression that public meetings would not take place any more. He said: "I think Goebbels said: `If you are going to tell a lie, tell a big one. That was a big one." When asked about having cabinet meetings in public his reply was: "Anyone who knows anything about how organisations operate will realise we are not going to get a full and frank exchange of views if members of the public can attend."

"Distorted, emotive and destructive" was Mr Jones' next broadside at us in a letter we printed at his behest. Meanwhile the council's press officer was accusing me of mounting a campaign because I was lazy and didn't want to look for stories instead of getting them through agendas. Oh, and after a meeting at which Mr Jones promised us a press protocol for the new system, the Council at Work newsletter was sent out on Saturdays instead of Fridays, giving an advantage to the local broadcasters who had played ball with the council.

We carried on chipping away and in January published a front page revealing that Derby was the only council in Derbyshire holding secret cabinet meetings. I promptly received my first-ever unsolicited phone call from Mr Jones who told me not to speak to him ever again. He said I had ignored the fact that other councils were secretive because they were holding Labour group meetings before the public cabinet sessions. He said his deputy leader had told me that.

Unfortunately the deputy leader had told me that "off the record" and if he didn't see fit to put his name to an opinion, I didn't see fit to report it. Anyway, I had been told that Labour was still holding private group meetings about cabinet business. The situation was bleak. I couldn't have a discussion about an open day at a care home without a council officer lecturing me about how wrong the Derby Evening Telegraph was. I went to a scrutiny committee meeting at the request of a Labour councillor to hear a councillor say we were now the "gutter press". I walked out.

I had read about papers in places such as Southend forcing their councils to think again and have their cabinet meetings in public, but I never thought it would happen in Derby. Then in March local MP Bob Laxton rang up to say he was signing an Early Day Motion calling for less secrecy in the Local Government Bill and that he thought the cabinet should be open. The Local Government Information Unit, which Derby City Council subscribed to, was saying the same thing. I faxed our story for the next day's front page to Robert Jones. Within minutes of him reading it he rang back to say that cabinet meetings would be in public from now on.

How big a victory that was remains to be seen. We know that if the council has an awkward item to debate they will do it properly behind closed doors, but at least we will have some public debate on the policy-making side of the council when the new laws come in next year. The problem of getting all the facts about delegated decisions will be even harder to solve. But my advice to any reporters in the same situation is to go in as hard as possible if your council is trying to shut you out. Embarrass them until they can't ignore you any more. If you don't do that, the council will think it's okay to feed you on a diet of bland press releases and the situation will get worse and worse.

And if you're anxious about falling out with your councillors, don't worry - they'll always be your friend again come election time. (Source: Hold the Frontpage)