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Labour calls on government to come clean in secrecy row over £800m research agency
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Labour has urged the government to stop “ducking oversight” and “immediately publish” any evidence behind its controversial decision to exempt a new £800m defence research agency from Freedom of Information (FOI) law.
The move comes after ministers refused openDemocracy’s request to release the evidence behind the highly unusual decision to spare the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) from being subject to transparency legislation.
All public bodies are ordinarily subject to FOI but ministers have previously insisted that ARIA, the brainchild of Dominic Cummings, should not have “the burden of processing” information requests.
But the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) has refused to confirm whether any evidence ever existed to back up the decision to exempt the “high-risk, high-reward” scientific research agency from FOI.
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Labour’s Ed Miliband has called on the business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, to “immediately publish the evidence that informed his decision-making".
"The government cannot keep ducking oversight,” the shadow business secretary told openDemocracy.
Miliband pointed out that the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency – widely seen as the model for ARIA – is subject to American FOI legislation.
“There is no justification for a blanket exemption for ARIA from FOI laws, and this decision has no precedent,” he said.
[1] Url:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-investigations/labour-calls-on-government-to-come-clean-in-secrecy-row-over-800m-research-agency/
