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When the information commissioner that cabinet minutes from the lead up to the Iraq war should be disclosed, there were those who predicted that this could make it open season on cabinet minutes on all sorts of topics.

After the Information Tribunal backed the commissioner, Jack Straw then their release. He said this was necessary in order to protect the notion of collective responsibility in cabinet government.

Those who predicted and in some cases feared this open season may be reassured by more recent judgments from the commissioner in which he has decided that cabinet minutes should stay secret.

Last month he against revealing discussions about the Olympics (declaration of interest: that was my request).

Today he has issued a about documents relating to the controversial sinking of the Belgrano during the Falklands War - and he says that he "has concluded that the public interest narrowly favours withholding the four cabinet minutes".

The commissioner says that this is because they concern a decisive moment in an armed conflict and disclosure could have implications for future such discussions.

To many it may seem surprising that documents about military action nearly 30 years ago are thought to still require more secrecy than those about a much more recent conflict. But the commissioner is always keen to stress that under the Freedom of Information Act assessing the public interest depends on the circumstances of the individual case. Yet it is often the same factors (the prominence and currency of the issue) which may strengthen both the case for and the case against disclosure.

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There's one group of wealthy people who won't feel the full impact of the new 50% tax rate for those earning over £150,000. These are the 'non-doms', who live in Britain but have links to other countries and claim to be 'domiciled' elsewhere. They can then avoid tax on their overseas income.

The became the focus of intense political argument in October 2007 after George Osborne levying a charge for non-dom status.

On 8 October 2007 Gordon Brown that as Chancellor he had 'carried out a series of reviews' of the taxation of non-domiciles and 'all the information should be made available to people'.

Thinking that it might help illuminate the background to this controversy, I put an FOI request to the Treasury for copies of the reviews of the taxation of non-domiciles which were carried out while Mr Brown was Chancellor

Last week on the eve of the budget, over 18 months later, I finally received some very limited information from the Treasury. During the intervening period the Treasury:

• turned down my initial request on cost grounds
• after an ensuing dispute between us on some procedural points, ignored my request for an internal review for four months until I complained to the Information Commissioner
• apologised for not dealing with the review - 'we had missed it in the email box and no-one was allocated it'
• turned down a narrower request on the grounds that releasing the matirial would harm the UK's economic interests
• took nearly eight months to respond to my request for a review of that decision

Whether all the information has now been made available, as Mr Brown recommended, is open to question. The few documents I have now been sent have major redactions.

The most detailed is a survey in 2005 of the characteristics of non-doms, including their most common countries of domicile (the USA is top) and the occupations they come from (financial services most frequent).

However, the main conclusions from this survey were , as indeed is the fact that a significant number of non-doms are .

Nevertheless it would be wrong to give the impression that I learnt nothing from the material I have obtained. As far as I know, it was not previously in the public domain that the countries in which some non-doms claimed domicile included El Salvador, Azerbaijan and Greenland, nor that their occupations included underwear retailer, concert pianist, tropical fruit importer and cheese planning manager.

Whether it is the cheese planning manager who was domiciled in Greenland is not revealed. And I suspect there are other more important points that are still secret, despite the pledge to make all the information available.

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The people who have to wait longest for the to answer their freedom of information requests are MPs and peers, followed next by journalists and lawyers.

On the other hand academics, businesses, current/former civil servants, non-profit organisations and private individuals find their FOI questions to the ministry are generally answered more quickly (or at least less slowly).

That's one of the findings in a fascinating new of how the MoD handles FOI requests. The study was carried out by , an international authority on freedom of information laws based at Suffolk University in Boston.

The research is based on data which Professor Roberts obtained from the MoD's IT system for managing FOI requests, the Access to Information Toolkit. It covers over 15,000 applications received during 2005 to 2008.

The figures show that 15% of requests from MPs/peers and 10% of requests from journalists take over 60 days to process, significantly higher proportions than for other categories of applicant. As Professor Roberts notes, this may be because "legislators and journalists may make more complex requests" or it might be because there is "more rigorous internal scrutiny of requests from such sources".

Other interesting points revealed in this research include the following:

• The flow of FOI applications to the MoD is declining gently, but this overall pattern masks major variations between different categories of requester.


• The number of requests from private individuals is in "distinct long-term decline", while there is no significant drop-off in those from academics or businesses.


• The only category of requester with a clear seasonal pattern were academics, who seem to favour the turn of the year for their peak FOI activity.


• The proportion of applications answered in full by the MoD - 60% - is high compared to the US and Canadian defence departments.

But the strangest revelations come from the categorisation employed by the MoD for different kinds of FOI applicants. According to the research, the following terms have all been used by the MoD as a category under the heading "Applicant Type"

• American-styled seducer
• Arabian horse show trainer
• Brazilian army
• Dustman in Chiswick
• Estonian military cadet
• Foreign and Commonwealth Office
• Housewife
• Jamaica Defence Force
• Mother
• Nigerian merchant navy
• Nun
• Paranormal investigator
• Pakistan navy
• Postman
• Royal Canadian military police

Sadly, however, I suspect the data may be insufficient to reach soundly-based conclusions on the MoD's comparative treatment of freedom of information requests from some of these groups.

Are requests from nuns generally processed more quickly than those from dustmen in Chiswick, Arabian horse show trainers or the Nigerian merchant navy? We may never know the truth.

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Apologies for the break (and thanks to those of you who noticed and complained!), but I'm now back to work on freedom of information and Open Secrets.

I should mention two other interesting FOI blogs that have started in the meantime.

is about information law and is mainly written by Timothy Pitt-Payne and Anya Proops, two barristers who have successfully built up a specialism in FOI and related cases.

is run by the journalist Matthew Davis, who's also made FOI into a successful specialism. If you've been following newspaper stories based on revelations under FOI over the past few years, you will probably have been reading his work - but because he was from an agency selling the stories to the papers you wouldn't have seen his byline. .

Meanwhile as the House of Commons expenses saga continues, I've remembered a document I obtained under FOI some time back, which seems to demonstrate Gordon Brown's determination to obtain information about expenses and allowances to ensure public finances are seen to be properly managed.

It's from 1975 when he had been elected as a student to the post of Rector of Edinburgh University and engaged in a series of battles with the univerity authorities.

In one of these he demanded information on the cost of renovations to the homes of staff which had been carried out by the university's works department. And he wanted "a full list of expenses and entertainment allowances paid to members of the University administration".

All this was requested on the grounds that "in this time of economy I believe it is vital that the University's finances must not obly be properly managed but be seen to be so".

The details he sought included the cost of plumbing work but it's not known whether this extended .

Incidentally looking back now at the I wrote before Mr Brown became prime minister about the material I'd got under FOI from Edinburgh University about his rectorship, I see that none of the propositions I raised about his possible premiership seem to have come true - yet, anyway.

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