The Spectator’s Notes | 17 November 2007

Politicians find it impossible to say they are against Freedom of Information because it sounds as though they must be hiding something if they do so. But the way FOI is now being used means that government will become more and more secretive. When David Cameron suggested in Parliament last week that Gordon Brown had not been contemplating changing the rules on inheritance tax until the Conservatives proposed doing so, the government used FOI to try to refute this, publishing document-based accounts of what had happened. This was opposed, I gather, by Treasury officials who could see that if recent government documents get dragged into party political games no one will commit his honest advice to paper. Confidence (meaning confidentiality) is closely allied to confidence in the broader sense of the word. In Washington, where Freedom of Information also causes trouble, a circumvention has been found. Post-it notes, apparently, do not have to be released.