The whole report - and nothing but

A YEAR ago today the newly-elected chief minister, Lyndon Trott, set out his vision for the island's future.

Top of the agenda - if he got his way - was to persuade the States to become a more open and honest body.

Transparency was essential, he said, if the factions which had marred the previous Assembly's four years in office were to be avoided. With greater communication, both internally and externally, would come a more united States of Deliberation and island.

Getting all States departments to embrace that palpably sensible philosophy was never going to be easy. The abridged wheelchair report, for example, showed that not everyone is wholly comfortable with the 'warts and all' approach.

Its eventual release in full was a victory for the kind of thinking the chief minister hoped to engender.

It would be an irony of the highest order then if the Wales Audit Office's report into how the States functions should not be publicly released. One of its own remits is an investigation into the openness and accountability of the governing body.

As one would expect, the man in charge, the Auditor General of Wales, is wholly in favour of its release. 'I would encourage the Public Accounts Department and the States to publish our report in some form,' he said.

In that light it seems inconceivable that the PAC will not publish a version of the findings. What will be key - and again the wheelchair report comes to mind - is how abridged is the version made available to islanders.

Paying lip service to transparency and openness by releasing the truth, but not the whole truth, is as bad as adopting a bunker mentality and refusing to communicate. The questions then focus on what has been left out, and why, rather than any recommendations.

The starting point for the PAC must therefore be a desire to publish everything. Only then, once strong arguments for some exclusions have been made, might parts be deemed too sensitive for general release.