{"id":3127,"date":"2020-01-20T14:00:01","date_gmt":"2020-01-20T14:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/?p=3127"},"modified":"2020-01-20T14:00:02","modified_gmt":"2020-01-20T14:00:02","slug":"light-and-shadows-the-rhi-scandal-and-the-temptations-of-secrecy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/?p=3127","title":{"rendered":"Light and Shadows: The RHI Scandal and the Temptations of Secrecy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Marilyn Stathern, in\nher famous article on the \u2018Tyranny of transparency\u2019, asked: \u2018what does visibility conceal\u2019?<\/a>  While openness can shed light on some areas, it can also\ncreate shadows and shade to hide in. One of the biggest fears for transparency campaigners is that openness\nwill create an opposite and equal reaction. Instead of letting in the light,\ncould freedom of information laws, open meetings or open data lead to officials\nand politicians trying to hide from them, or even fight them<\/a>? Could it create what\u2019s called a \u2018chilling\neffect\u2019, whereby officials and politicians bury their decisions elsewhere? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finding any firm\nevidence for resistance, avoidance or concealment is notoriously difficult. It\ncould take place in numerous ways, whether avoiding questions or requests,\nkeeping records and decisions off paper, or using non-official emails or networks\nlike WhatsApp. It\u2019s hard to prove a negative, that something isn\u2019t happening\nand, if it\u2019s done well, it should stay hidden. Only the most incompetent or\ninept are likely to be caught. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few concrete\nexamples have surfaced. We have had flashes of an apparent \u2018chilling\u2019 in the Trump White House<\/a> and closer to home with Michael Gove using a private email address for public\nbusiness<\/a> in 2012 (as\nurged by his then advisor Dominic Cummings). More worrying was the evidence in\nScotland in 2018 that some parts of government were engaged in \u201cdeliberate delaying tactics and\nrequests being blocked or refused for tenuous reasons\u201d.<\/a> But are these isolated cases or the tip of an\niceberg of systematic resistance? Studies have come to varying conclusions and\na Select Committee in 2012 concluded there was no firm evidence<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, it now looks\nas though transparency campaigners\u2019 worst nightmare has come to pass in Northern\nIreland\u2019s RHI scandal, as detailed in Sam Macbride\u2019s new book Burned. The RHI\nscandal, as the later Inquiry FAQ explains<\/a>, concerns \u201cthe non-domestic renewable heat\nincentive… a financial incentive for businesses to move away from\nnon-renewable sources of energy\u201d. However, the FAQ goes on, \u201chow the scheme\ncame about in the form in which it was adopted, how it has been operated and\nthe possible financial consequences of the scheme have become the source of\nconsiderable public concern\u201d. You can see the background here<\/a> and a timeline<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Put simply, the\n\u2018tiering\u2019 system, controls and review in place in the Westminster version of\nthe RHI law were removed when it was applied to Northern Ireland in 2012. This\nhelped create a system of perverse incentives whereby fuel cost less than the\nsubsidy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What was trumpeted as\na popular policy was actually one running out of control, based on some very\nquestionable assumptions as to who would pay. Though by no means all those\nsigned up gamed the system, non-domestic properties could potentially do so and\nthere was a rush to sign up. The cost could be around an estimated \u00a3700m over\n20 years. Rumours spread of biomass boilers being run 24 hours day in hotels,\nand poultry farms with windows and doors open. The policy was allowed to run\nfor far too long, despite whistleblowers trying in vain to warn all who would\nlisten and growing evidence of its unintended and exorbitant consequences. It\nwas then thrown into reverse in a panic before being partially (and poorly)\ncovered up. In 2018 the scandal was subject to a 111 day inquiry<\/a>. The final report is due soon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sam McBride\u2019s new book\nreveals a complicated web of conspiracy, dysfunction and secrecy. The major\nconcern is how bare the official record is. Official meetings were simply not\nrecorded, with key meetings left purposely unminuted by both Sinn Fein and the DUP.\nIn March 2018, giving evidence to the RHI Inquiry, the Head of Northern\nIreland\u2019s Civil Service admitted that \u201cthe practice of taking minutes had\n\u201clapsed\u201d after devolution<\/a>\u201d.\nThe BBC quoted him as saying: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ministers liked to have a safe space where they could think the\nunthinkable and not necessarily have it all recorded [and] the DUP and Sinn\nF\u00e9in were sensitive to criticism and in that context, senior civil servants had\n\u201cgot into the habit\u201d of not recording all meetings. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said this was done\non the basis that it was sometimes \u201csafer\u201d not to have a record which might be\nreleased under Freedom of Information. Arlene Foster denied this happened<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not only were there\nfew official records, but a hidden, parallel decision-making system appeared to\nexist. Key decisions were made outside of official channels, via mobile texts\nand private or party emails (with a later refusal to give them up). Contacts with\nkey stakeholders outside of government went either unrecorded or took place in very\nodd places, with one SPAD meeting, seemingly accidentally, one businessman who\nhe spotted in a neighbouring field.  One\nadvisor to Arlene Foster \u2018had a system whereby he passed\n\u201cpolitical\u201d messages to Mrs Foster on Post-It notes which were immediately\nbinned and thus could not be released under FoI\u2019.<\/a> Because of this void where the record should\nbe, we still can\u2019t answer the central question: why were the checks and\nmonitoring cut out of the legislation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time,\nthere was also an extraordinary attitude to the circulation of what documents\nthere were. One SPAD emailed confidential documents to\ntheir relatives<\/a>. Anonymous\ntip off emails were sent to the press designed to put them off the scent<\/a>. One Minister did not know his own official email\naddress and, when asked to give it, gave one of his advisor\u2019s unofficial party accounts.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As with most scandals,\nthe cover-up then exacerbated the crime. Even when the policy was thrown into\nreverse, the internal investigation was done on the telephone, also seemingly\nto avoid a formal record. There was a long battle to release the list of RHI\nbeneficiaries, finally released as a pdf<\/a>.  A\nfull, wide ranging inquiry was also fought against.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not\nclear to what extent all of this behaviour was habit, sheer dysfunction or\nactive conspiracy, and the truth, as the book shows, lies somewhere in-between.\nThe \u2018Spadocracy\u2019<\/a>\nat Stormont had already led to advisors trying to block FOI requests<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps the\nkey question is what good did it do? From one perspective the secrecy has given\nsome politicians\u2019 a plausible deniability, or at least a very thin veneer of\nit. There\u2019s enough confusion and opacity not to be sure about exactly who did\nwhat, when and where. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If it was\nintended to provide full proof protection, it clearly hasn\u2019t. The inquiry\npainstakingly pieced together witness statements, email trails (across\ndifferent accounts) and messages. What has emerge so far has meant, as one\nanalysis put it \u2018RHI turning into a bonfire of the\nDUP\u2019s reputation to do basic government.\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nor could it be repeated under the new Stormont deal<\/a> of January 2020. Page 12 of the deal commits to a raft of changes that include publishing details of Ministers\u2019 meetings with external organisations, details of gifts and hospitality received by special advisers, and so on. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alongside\nthis, there will be a \u201crobust,\nindependent enforcement mechanism to deal with breaches of the Ministerial Code\nand related documents\u2019 and \u2018a dedicated sub-committee which will consider the\nfindings of the RHI inquiry and propose further reforms\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s more,\nthe secrecy has also been deeply counter-productive. In our 2010 study of FOI\nin the UK, we found that officials generally\nfeared the consequences of not <\/em>having\na record rather than having one<\/a>. In Northern Ireland the record \u2018void\u2019 has left room for\ndoubt and suspicion. While the lack of a record means politicians have been\ngiven some deniability, they can\u2019t clear themselves either. If they can\u2019t be\nfound with a smoking gun, neither can they be truly exonerated. <\/p>\n<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Marilyn Stathern, in her famous article on the \u2018Tyranny of transparency\u2019, asked: \u2018what does visibility conceal\u2019?  While openness can shed light on some areas, it can also create shadows and shade to hide in. One of the biggest fears for transparency campaigners is that openness will create an opposite and equal reaction. Instead of letting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":3128,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1395,1405,1396],"tags":[],"coauthors":[1497],"class_list":["post-3127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-comment","category-government","category-uk"],"amp_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/Light-and-Shadows-The-RHI-Scandal-and-the-Temptations-of-Secrecy-matthew-henry-Gyti0PhoQjY-unsplash-scaled.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3127\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3127"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=3127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}