What the Government and the Civil Service, in particular, propose to do is to vest themselves with new restrictive powers. If this Bill passes into law, the Secretary General of a Department could decide to withhold requested information if he or she decides that – this is a jewel or a peach of an expression – the "deliberative process" surrounding the issue is ongoing. The use of the term "deliberative process" is intriguing. It is so wide in its possible interpretation that one must arrive at the conclusion that the only reason it is included is as a deliberate barrier to block access to information. In other words, those in authority will be able to claim that information cannot be released because the deliberative process – I presume this means that people will still be raking over the issue in their minds or talking to others about it – is ongoing. This is deliberately being included as an excuse or a blocking instrument to stop information which the Civil Service or the Government do not want to get into the public domain. On one hand, the Bill will curtail the role of the statutorily independent information officer while, on the other, it will grant quite extraordinary additional powers to senior civil servants.