WHAT'S Blackburn's MP, Home Secretary Jack Straw playing at?

He is widely regarded as an honest politician and one of the best ministers in Tony Blair's team - thanks largely to his carting his lad off to the police when he was caught selling cannabis and then letting him be named though he had the right to anonymity as a juvenile.

Yet, here we have Jack drafting a new law that would make it illegal for the media to name anyone under 18 who has anything to do with a crimimal offence - not just the defendants, but witnesses and victims of crime as well.

Just imagine, the case last month of the two little girls allegedly abducted on their way to school in Hastings could not be reported if it identified them.

The same goes for all sorts of cases - even reports of the Dunblane massacre would have been outlawed if they even named the school where the shooting occurred.

It is not just daft, it is dangerous.

Time and again, the media has proved vital in cracking cases where children have gone missing or been abducted.

How could that happen if the children could not be identified? Labour advocates open government - but is dragging its feet on a Freedom of Information Act. Now, it looks like plunging eagerly into wholesale censorship that smacks not just of the nannying instincts to which it is already a mite too prone, but of such a desire to control the press that Mr Straw, in Soviet Russia, might have earned the Order of Lenin for it.

Don't forget that a free press goes hand in hand with democracy, Jack.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.