Blair & Murdoch - FOI v Campbell
In the few days leading up to the start of the Iraq War, Tony Blair had three phone conversations with Rupert Murdoch. One of these was 'official' and minuted by civil servants. The other two must have been either 'personal' or 'party political' or not significant enough to be minuted, if the Cabinet Office is to be believed. What they talked about at this time of extreme international tension we do not know.
We are now aware of these calls because this information has been by the Cabinet Office to the LibDem peer Lord Avebury, who had put in a freedom of information request for the dates of meetings or calls between Blair and Murdoch.
Previously the Cabinet Office had only released the date of the one 'official' call, in line with the of the Information Commissioner.
Avebury was in the process of appealing this to the , when his legal team were staggered to be told by government solicitors that the Cabinet Office would give in and disclose the information.
Funnily enough, this capitulation was communicated to them on the day after Gordon Brown became prime minister. So did revealing the dates when Blair talked to Murdoch figure prominently on day 1 of his grid for his first 100 days as PM?
It is another interesting example of the government suddenly abandoning a case rather than fight it at the Information Tribunal, which has annoyed some civil servants with decisions in favour of openness. As I noted, this also happened in the case of the official advice on pensions and dividend tax relief before the 1997 budget.
Could this become a trend? One consequence is that although this sets symbolic precedents in practice, they do not have the legal force of a Tribunal judgment.
Still, the government will find it harder in future to run the arguments they initially put forward in this case, 'that information as to the timing of discussions might allow the content of discussions to be inferred and, in addition, that disclosure might increase the pressure on the Prime Minister’s diary by increasing the expectation that he would hold discussions with others.'
The Cabinet Office have now given Avebury the dates of six contacts between Blair and Murdoch between September 2002 and April 2005. But a puzzle remains. For some reason the Cabinet Office hasn't told Avebury about the meeting between Blair and Murdoch in August 2003.
Blair felt it was a 'good meeting', and it contributed to the fact he had an enjoyable summer holiday. This is revealed in another document recently disclosed from the centre of government - Alastair Campbell's diaries.
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Whilst this is good news, in as much as something is beginning to trickle out, but still believe that the FOI Act needs to be rewritten along the lines of:
Except for such restrictions as are necessary for security or privacy purposes, all information created or held by the government will be freely available to the people.
Then we may see some light with other requests such as the one which I believe is still outstanding on the publication of the costs of the publicly funded celebrity entertainment that frequently occurred at Chequers.
Slightly off-topic, however, I was wondering how I can use the FOI act to force the 91Èȱ¬ to publish the 'Balen' report?.
If you could advise me of the correct procedure Martin that would be great.
Joseph -
I have been asked and answered this question before. The easiest procedure for seeking any document from the 91Èȱ¬ under FOI is to visit the 91Èȱ¬ corporate FOI site at /foi/foirequest.shtml and send an FOI request to the address given. If you're not happy with the 91Èȱ¬'s response, you can complain to the Information Commissioner. Of course, this doesn't necessarily 'force' the 91Èȱ¬ to publish something - that depends on the outcome of this process.
So, what this story is telling us if I have managed to read between the lines correctly, is that Blair not only had to follow the orders of George W but had to get approval from Murdoch ?
Democracy, yeah they've heard of it.