IN 1985, as parliamentary officer for the community rights project, I drafted the Local Government (Access to Information) Bill and organised the campaign to get it into law.

It was adopted as a Private Members Bill by Robin Squire MP (Conservative -- Hornchurch) and, with cross party backing, we gained the support of the Thatcher government and got the Bill enacted. The Labour Party strongly supported the Bill.

This is a crucial piece of legislation that gives rights to the public and local media to participate fully in local government.

Under this act, local people and the local media have the right to attend council, committee and sub-committee meetings and have access to reports, agendas and background papers of the council before meetings occur. The current Labour government, however, now seems to be about to do a u-turn on its previous support for open local government, and is threatening to remove public rights of access to meetings and documents and take us back to the days when local government decisions were made behind closed doors.

If the Local Government Bill, currently being debated in parliament, is not amended, it means that the cabinets, being proposed for local councils, can meet in private, only informing people of decisions after they have been made.

We must not allow the Government to take away our existing rights to local government information.

I therefore urge people to get in touch with their local MP and ask him/her to do two things. Firstly, to sign the House of Commons petition called Early Day Motion 384 which asks to see the current rights continued. And secondly, to support the amendments to the Bill that will be tabled in the House of Commons that support the continuation of open local government.

RON BAILEY, Friends of the Earth, Underwood Street, London N1.