FREEDOM OF INFORMATION and George Orwell

The historian Timothy Garton Ash talks about the keeping back of Orwell's list and the current Iraq dossier affair in terms of the general issue of freedom of information. The Freedom of Information Act will come into effect in the area of historical records in 2005 and people will be able to appeal to the information commissioner if the government refuses to give up particular pieces of information. However, the whole of Britain's secret state has a blanket exemption from releasing their records for public scrutiny and the FOI Act cannot do anything to touch this.

Source: Timothy Garton Ash, The Guardian 10 July 2003