91Èȱ¬

The Information Tribunal's decision, announced today, to uphold that minutes of cabinet meetings from 2003 should be released is a highly significant development. It could even lead to the first instance of ministers using their right of veto to block an FOI disclosure. [Update: Read the decision here [2Mb pdf] and see Nick Robinson's post; also an article by Jeremy Hayes .]

The decision refers to meetings that discussed the the attorney-general's legal advice about the Iraq war. But the particular significance from an FOI point of view is in the precedents that this case may create.

Some are asking whether it is a green light for the release of other cabinet minutes. The Tribunal says not necessarily - under the FOI Act, every case has to be assessed on its own merits. But it may pave the way for a potentially more important precedent.

The government has argued that releasing such minutes would impede proper recording of free and frank discussion within cabinet. It is likely to resist the ruling, either by appealing to the High Court or by using the ministerial right to veto a Tribunal decision for the first time.

To use the veto will cause a big fuss - but the government could see this as a strong case for doing so, then making it easier to do so again on future occasions once a precedent has been established. That is why some FOI campaigners have been feeling rather uneasy about this case, fearing that this Tribunal decision in favour of greater openness could, ironically, turn out to be a setback for their cause.

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(Jane Ashley is writing for this blog while Martin is temporarily involved in other 91Èȱ¬ projects.)

Yesterday's over the proposal to change the law to block the full release of MPs' expenses under FOI means that the experience of FOI in the UK, in at least one way, contrasts with that in some other countries.

In many places, the introduction of FOI has been followed by a backlash from those in authority which has led to restrictions on access to information. In Ireland, for example, a few years after the introduction of FOI laws, the government introduced up-front fees for FOI requests .

However, in the UK there have been three attempts to cut back on the access provided by the law since FOI was introduced in 2005, and none of them has succeeded.

The first was , which would have exempted Parliament from FOI. It failed when no-one would sponsor it in the House of Lords. The second was the to make it easier to reject FOI requests as too costly. Gordon Brown dropped this proposal after he took over from Tony Blair as prime minister, . And the third was this latest attempt.

FOI was once regarded as an issue of concern to the "chattering classes", but it now seems, in the UK at least, to have acquired more populist overtones. And President Obama too is a new "era of openness".

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