The Conservatives have removed a decade of speeches from their website and from the main internet library – including one in which David Cameron claimed that being able to search the web would democratise politics by making more information available to more people. The party has removed the archive from its public website, erasing records of speeches and press releases from 2000 until May 2010. The effect will be to remove any speeches and articles during the Tories modernisation period, including its commitment to spend the same as a Labour government. The Labour MP Sheila Gilmore accused the party of a cynical stunt, adding: It will take more than David Cameron pressing delete to make people forget about his broken promises and failure to stand up for anyone beyond a privileged few. In a remarkable step the party has also blocked access to the Internet Archives Wayback Machine, a US-based library that captures webpages for future generations, using a software robot that directs search engines not to access the pages. The Tory plan to conceal the shifting strands of policy by previous leaders may not work. The British Library points out it has been archiving the partys website since 2004. Under a change in the copyright law, the library also downloaded 4.8m domains earlier this year – in effect, anything on the web with a .co.uk address – and says although the Conservative pages use a suffix they will be added to the store as it is firmly within scope of the material we have a duty to archive. But the British Library archive will only be accessible from terminals in its building, raising questions over the Tory commitment to transparency.
Posted on: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 00:09:53 +0000
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