Andrew Travers and the Capita conference - we want our money back!

Insensed at the idea of Andrew Travers appearing at a recent Capita conference to talk about One Barnet privatisation, I submitted my first FoI request to Barnet council:

I would like to see any information/data that the Council holds in relation to the Capita sponsored conference, "New Models of Service Delivery - Opening Up Local Government Services to New Providers", on 29 November 2011. This includes but is not confined to anything that relates to the appearance of the Deputy Chief Executive Andrew Travers at this event.

I got the reply today, there wasn't much to report. I imagine the real business of Travers being invited to contribute, and any communication about the terms of his appearance were done by personal email, personal networking, a telephone conversation or something of that type.

IS THAT RIGHT?

We live in a democracy; don't we have a right to know this sort of thing, upfront, out in the open? How, for instance, can we find out whether Andrew Travers was paid to speak at this conference?

The only information we have that we didn't have before as a result of this FoI request is the PowerPoint presentation that Travers gave. It's poor fare, I must say, with a content familiar to anyone who follows the Barnet blogs and knows about the blah-blah-blah cant that the council spout to justify their madcap rush to privatise all our services.

Whether or not Travers was paid to speak at the Capita conference (Capita are bidding for one of the contracts to run Barnet Council services, by the way - potential conflict of interests, I would say), this PowerPoint presentation has the LB Barnet branding on it so, although it's hard to know which budget or account it came out of, we've paid for this stuff at some point.

Enjoy!?
Andrew Travers' "One Barnet Transformation Programme" presentation, 29 November 2011