THE Legislative Council's Public Accounts Committee performs a valuable function in scrutinising government spending, following up reports by the Director of Audit and ensuring official mismanagement of resources does not go uncensured. It is, therefore, a matter of concern when it is systematically denied access to the most basic materials because of the blanket of confidentiality in which Executive Council decisions are habitually cloaked. Worse, because certain official members (and ex-members) of Exco have considerable freedom to leak selectively those parts of the Council's proceedings which suit their own arguments, it is easy for Government to distort the picture. All through Wednesday's committee hearing on the Auditor's report on Hospital Authority pay, former officials were citing Exco papers to counter the criticisms of the Director of Audit. The Director of Audit was able to quote other Exco documents to support his own case. But the panel, which had no access to the papers and had not had prior notice of the Government's position, was not in a position to make an informed judgment. The committee has rightly decided to ask the Chief Secretary for access to the full Exco files on the subject, although it will not have the complete documentation available to it by the time hearings continue this morning. If Anson Chan Fang On-sang refuses the request, the committee will still have the option of invoking the Powers and Privileges Ordinance to try to force her hand. But legislators should not have to resort to such strong-arm tactics to get at the truth. As Chris Patten's opposition to an access to information bill has already demonstrated, his Government is not as devoted to the concepts of openness and accountability as the Governor would once have had us believe. The future sovereign will be still more secretive. It will be a long time before the Hong Kong Government pursues either openness or accountability to the point where all official papers are automatically placed in the public domain. Exco minutes may well be among the most jealously guarded secrets of all. It is time the Government agreed, as a matter of principle, to make all papers available to bodies with a watchdog function during the course of their investigations. At the very least, it should have no hesitation in releasing all the documents relating to the Hospital Authority affair, five years after the initial decisions were taken. What is at stake is not a security matter or a personal file. Much of the material which suits the Government's case has been released. The worst the small number of former officials and Executive Councillors need fear is a little loss of face.