Recently, I was visited by canvassers. The friendly face appearing over a clipboard asked of my voting intentions. "I am very happy to vote for your party," I told the now smiling face, "on condition that here and now you come into my home and do the Hoovering." Mindful of a "votes for cleaning scandal" erupting, I added: "We don't have to put it in writing; just come in now, while no one is looking." The offer was turned down, but I warn future canvassers that my price has gone up: next time, I want Hoovering, the toilet scrubbed and a free curry before pledging my vote.

Not that I intend to support any of the mainstream parties. Unless the Socialist Alliance or the Green Party is standing in my constituency, I shall wander down to the polling station, stop by the party tellers and then loudly mutter: "Nah, I can't be bothered." And walk away. Just to register that abstaining is a sign not of apathy, but contempt.

The real cynics of democracy are our very own elected representatives. On 11 May, as the outgoing parliament wound up business, there was a small wave of select committee reports and government decisions, but they got lost in the election coverage. You would need the naivety of a loved-up Tellytubby to think that these reports might not be critical of the government. The Commons trade and industry select committee's report into the Ilisu Dam most certainly is critical - not that anyone noticed.

"Government condemned for Ilisu Dam again" would have been the headline on a normal press day. This is the third critical report on the project. Labour, however, is masterly at concealing controversial decisions. In 1999, Stephen Byers, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, said he was "minded" to approve government backing for Ilisu. He made this statement just days before Christmas, thus ensuring that neither the public nor the press took much interest in it. I am convinced that the day the Queen Mum dies, Labour will announce every dodgy decision it has waiting in the wings. As the BBC pumps out military funeral music, every arms dealer and green-belt developer in town will be hollering in celebration. Anybody who corners the market in oysters and champagne, as well as black armbands, will be set up for life.

The plan is to build the Ilisu Dam in the Kurdish region of south-eastern Turkey, displacing and affecting up to 78,000 Kurds. And it is likely to have an adverse impact on the downstream flow of water into Syria and Iraq. Balfour Beatty, the British company in the dam-building consortium, is in line to receive £200m in government export credit guarantees to carry out the project.

Last year, the Commons select committee on international development stated that the project was "from the outset conceived and planned in contravention of international standards, and it still does not comply. For that reason cover should not be given." Balfour Beatty, according to the committee, should not receive government backing. "We are astonished," it said, "that the Foreign Office did not raise any questions about the proposed Ilisu Dam and its effect on the human rights of those living in the region."

It is rare for a select committee to be so forthright. When a report uses the word "astonished" in this context, it is the political equivalent of screaming "Outside now, you fucking bastard!" through Robin Cook's letter box at three in the morning.

The trade and industry select committee doesn't go quite that far. Its members have links to the Construction Industry Council and other business groups. The committee itself decided to please its masters by burying the report in the melee of the election. However, the Ilisu project is so stunningly wrong that the members couldn't help but attack it.

"Concerns have grown rather than diminished over the past year," the report states. With good reason, it highlights Turkey's failure to make public any viable plans to consult and resettle the people who would be displaced by the dam. Perhaps the committee was reminded of the experience of the Kurds in Birecik, 80km from Ilisu. With no warning, the people there were flooded out of their homes by Turkish dam-builders. There were no resettlement plans or consultations; people had to gather what they could of their possessions and flee.

The prospect of Britain backing such a project worries the government, which has attached conditions to the dam's financing with which Turkey has to comply. The conditions concern resettlement; preserving the historic town of Hasankeyf; creating sewage and clean water systems; and negotiating with Syria and Iraq on the downstream flow of water. None of these conditions appears to have been met. "Based on past experience," says the select committee report, "we are not confident of the capacity of the Turkish authorities to meet conditions that would satisfy EU standards."

Indeed, the committee questions whether the dam should be built at all. Given Turkey's financial situation, the money might better be spent on programmes for the "rural poor, retaining them on the land engaged in productive activity".

The most telling comment is reserved for the DTI's Export Credits Guarantee Department, whose work is notoriously untransparent, mainly to hide the arms deals it underwrites. "It is not the first time," says the select committee, "that our detailed consideration of the request for export credit for the Ilisu Dam has been bedevilled by excessive secrecy." Bedevilled? Again, the word may be conservative, but it's still shouting obscenities through the letter box.

Mark Thomas is a director of the Ilisu Dam Campaign