The Spectator’s Notes | 11 February 2012

Last week, I went to a party in No. 10 Downing Street to relaunch its official website. In his speech of welcome, the Prime Minister said something quite bold. Because of Freedom of Information (FoI), he explained, officials and ministers are increasingly reluctant to put on paper what they actually think. He is right. If you know that your views may suddenly be released early to the wider world, your confidence, in both senses of that word, is undermined. So you express your views orally (which means that they can never be part of wider, formal discussion within government), or not at all. As with so many efforts at open government, the effect is perverse. Toiling away at the Thatcher papers in the government archives, I am often struck by the frankness of internal communication in the 1980s. Policy disagreement is strong and  clear, which proves that some trust existed.