MP for Golders Green and Finchley Mike Freer was due to meet his constituents at an event scheduled for Monday, July 28, to take place at the New North London Synagogue. The meeting was cancelled at the last minute.

The Barnet Alliance for Public Services is a campaign group of residents and union members whose purpose is to keep public services public and to reclaim those services that have been privatised (outsourced).

The campaign is relentless in its determination to reveal the truth of what is agreed behind closed doors at Barnet Borough Council by so-called ‘representatives’ of the residents of the borough but who don’t read the documents and just vote the party line, and the reality of the effects of these decisions.

The meeting was understood to be open to Mr Freer’s constituents and members of the synagogue, and people were required to register in advance. Some people who are members of the Barnet Alliance are also Mr Freer’s constituents and yet, when it was discovered (it wasn’t a secret) that they were planning to attend and ask him some questions, coincidentally the event was cancelled.

What exactly is going on here? A meeting that permits only the acceptable few to attend does not seem like democracy to me. Is Mike Freer a representative of the people? Does he believe in real democracy? Is this story frightening or is it ridiculous, or probably both?

The question the alliance wished to pose concerned another behind-closed-doors potential decision on a much larger and more undemocratic scale – the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership – and would/has Mr Freer signed up to the Early Day Motion that condemns the secrecy (from the Government as well as individuals) of the negotiations?

Ruth Kutner

Southfield, Barnet