Many Departments of State in the UK hand out large lumps of cash to NGOs and other ‘community’ groupings for what are said to be noble purposes which advance taxpayers’ interests.

The problem is that once that money is handed over, it ceases to come under any Freedom of Information norms.

Why should large charities like OXFAM spend taxpayers’ money without any accountability of the usual sort?

My idea: make all such government grants dependent on an arganisation agreeing to abide by the key principles of the FOI. In other words, don’t formally extend FPOI to non-public bodies – just make it a condition of receiving taxpayers’ funding that FOI norms are accepted too.

Hey, it’s our money – our conditions!

EU Referendum is busy looking at the business and other activities of Dr R K Pachauri, a top figure in the Climate Change world. It turns out that Dr Pachauri’s TERI Europe charity has had ‘generous’ funding from the FCO, not to mention DEFRA.

So if it is not always easy to work out how TERI Europe has spent this money, why not console ourselves by asking the FCO how much has been given to this organisation? Sounds like a plan:

We have written to the FCO, formally asking for details of the amounts paid to TERI Europe for the project, and await their response with interest.

It’s never a good sign when someone starts scrubbing the record on the Internet. But the wonders of Google cache help out.