Integrity, objectivity, accountability, transparency, and honesty

These are the words that our current Prime Minister has removed from the Ministerial Code. They have been removed at the exact time the current Prime Minister is under investigation for violating the Ministerial Code.

He has also removed the rule that ministers resign if they have been found to breach the Ministerial Code - while he himself is being investigated for breaching the Ministerial Code by misleading Parliament and the people of the country.

They are also principles that are at the heart of investigative journalism and news.

They are the principles at the heart of a functioning democracy.

They are the principles at the heart of Rule of Law.

The systematic erosion of democracy is at work both in this corruption of the Ministerial Code and in the determination to destroy Channel 4 despite no mandate and wholesale resistance to the plan. It is a pattern of behaviour.

It is not democratic.

It is irrelevant how anyone votes on the political spectrum.  It is all our responsibility and duty to protect the principles at the heart of our democracy. They are the principles that create the confidence and the trust that those in power will be scrutinised and held to account for wrong-doing irrespective of which side of the political divide they sit.

Democracy is not a partisan matter.

Integrity, objectivity, accountability, transparency and honesty must be demanded of all those who are in public service whichever political party they belong to.

 

You wouldn't buy a used car from someone you didn't trust, from someone you didn't have confidence in, from someone you suspected of being dishonest.  How can we put our faith in a government who is systematically eroding the checks and balances that ensure our trust?

 

We go on Trip Adviser or Which? to get reviews if we're going to spend some money online and want to feel secure about our decision. How can decisions about all our futures, our children's futures, the economy, housing, the NHS backlog, the cost of living crisis, future healthcare crises, the Climate emergency be in the hands of those we cannot trust?

All of these things are related.

Nadine Dorries was clear in her feelings about Channel 4 News - 'they don't do themselves any favours' - a news programme so many of us trust over any other. How can she be allowed to persist in ploughing ahead with a plan that 96% of those on her consultation paper were against?

It is undemocratic:  it is part of the same pattern that is seeing the dismantling of the Ministerial Code. 

 

Why would anyone follow any rules this government were to set in a future healthcare crisis? Pandemics are expected to become more frequent as the climate crisis unfolds. Confidence and trust in the necessity of rules under these conditions is vital - and the only method to save lives before new effective vaccines are produced. Vaccines that always take time. Time when lives are lost.

 

Please keep signing and sharing our petition - it's all part of the same pattern.  A pattern that is a threat to every last one of us - except to those who are shoring up their power and protecting themselves and their own.

If we are too caught up in Party Politics as if it is a game to be won, we will allow the conditions to be eroded that are integral for the basic health and well being of our democracy - of any democracy.

No one who is confident of their honesty and their integrity would be motivated to change the rules to hold them to account. They would be confident that they had done no wrong and would be open to the scrutiny that creates trust and confidence.

 

It would be beyond foolish for any of us not to protect the conditions that create trust and confidence in those who make decisions that effect every last one of us.