THE Government's intention when it first looked at local government reform was noble. It wanted to stop decisions being taken in secret.

Old-fashioned Labour authorities, especially several in the North-East, were the worst offenders. Before meetings, councillors would meet privately and make their decisions which they would then present to the full council meeting as a fait accompli.

This was clearly a flawed system, but at least local people had the chance to attend the full meeting and watch their representatives in action. If they didn't like what they saw and heard, they had the opportunity to place their vote elsewhere at the next election.

The new system, where some councils are allowed to take decisions in closed cabinet meetings, is worse. The public can no longer see the decisions that affect them being taken. Although they can see agendas and papers in advance, they cannot judge whether their local councillor has bothered to speak on their behalf or whether their views have been heard.

Yesterday, the Government attempted to address these concerns by issuing new guidance which will accompany the Local Government Bill. It says "key decisions" must be made in cabinet meetings that are open to the public.

On the surface, this goes some way to addressing The Northern Echo's concerns in its CouncilWatch campaign. Yet when examined, there are huge contradictions at the heart of this guidance.

In fact, the guidance admits that there are flaws in the Government's initial reforms - but it only deals with half of them.

How can openness, for instance, be beneficial for key decisions and not for less weighty ones? Surely if it is good for one sort of decision, it is good for them all.

And how do you define what is a key decision? The guidance will talk about key decisions being budgetary ones, and, for example, a land sale to a football club clearly falls into this category. But to a couple of houses huddled around a small cul-de-sac, apparently tiny decisions about a street-light or a few hundred pounds worth of Tarmac are very important.

This, though, is something of an academic argument because any decision that involves the spending of local ratepayers' money is bound to be of importance to the local community and so deserves to be made in public.

With its woolly guidance, the Government is hoping to buy off its backbenchers who were on the point of an embarrassing rebellion. We hope it doesn't pull the wool over their eyes.