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DAILY MAIL COMMENT: Fighting the State propaganda machine

Published: 18:04 EST, 13 November 2015 | Updated: 18:04 EST, 13 November 2015

Sir 'Cover Up' Jeremy Heywood says the Freedom of Information Act has become too costly

Today the Mail reveals how an NHS which complains of being desperately short of funds, and which is rationing life-saving drugs, has not bothered to collect £65million it is owed by health tourists.

Shockingly – despite armies of pen-pushers – one in four hospitals do not even have a member of staff dedicated to chasing up payments from the foreigners, according to documents released under the Freedom of Information Act.

Taken in isolation this would be alarming. But it comes at the end of a week when a special investigation by this paper and the TaxPayers' Alliance – based on replies to nearly 6,000 FOI requests – has exposed public sector greed and waste on a truly epic scale.

The police chief on a package worth £700,000 ... Dentists taking home £690,000 a year ... Massive bungs from the taxpayer to pay for senior police to move house ...

At a time of pay restraint for ordinary public and private sector workers, and with services such as elderly care and meals on wheels being slashed, a privileged, self-serving elite is spending your money like it grows on trees.

Ministers have praised our revelations.

But how hollow those words ring, given the cynical onslaught they are planning against the FOI Act, currently under 'review' by a government panel stuffed with known critics of the legislation.

Officially, ministers and the Civil Service – led by Sir 'Cover Up' Jeremy Heywood – say the act has become 'too costly' to administer. Yet last year, the bill was only £5.6million – 50 times less than the Government Communications Service (GCS) is spending on spin, propaganda and marketing.

Incredibly, the Government now employs 3,650 communications staff – a figure close to the combined staff of every newspaper in Fleet Street.

The blunt truth is that the FOI review is not about saving money.

It is an attempt by a vengeful political class – still smarting at the exposure of the MPs' expenses scandal – to shackle newspapers and shamefully obstruct transparency and accountability.

Indeed, if Whitehall gets its way, the public will in future be fed a diet of Pravda-style government-produced propaganda that would make the Soviet Union proud.

Justice Alison Hunter, pictured, imposed her own moral and social agenda on the court

How else to interpret the Orwellian words contained in a new GCS communications strategy, passed to the Mail by a whistle-blower, which says: 'The media industry's struggle to cope with a declining business model offers the opportunity for government to produce more 'direct-to-consumer' creative content.'

The free Press – aided by the FOI Act – plays an invaluable role in exposing corruption and waste, defending the public interest and holding the powerful to account.

To curb the legislation would not only be an unforgivable act of petty vengeance by MPs caught with their snouts in the expenses trough. It would be a disaster for democratic accountability and the public's right to know.

Insidious secrecy

On these pages, a woman whose baby was forcibly taken from her and placed in the care of two gay men by the family courts tells her harrowing story for the first time.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the case – and we believe most people will find it profoundly disturbing that a feminist judge chose to impose her own moral and social agenda on the court in this way – it should never have been heard in secret or the distressed mother silenced by a gagging order.

From secret court hearings to attacks on Press freedom, the principle of openness that has underpinned British justice for centuries is being eroded at an alarming rate.