Leading article: The retreat from open government

Delivering the Lord Williams of Mostyn memorial lecture last night, Lord Falconer declared that the Freedom of Information Act introduced by his Government has "opened up Whitehall and beyond in ways unimagined, unattempted and unrealised by any previous government in the UK". But it soon became clear that the Lord Chancellor had come not to praise the Freedom of Information Act, but to water it down.

The Lord Chancellor went on to accuse newspapers of "self interest" in their utilisation of the Act and asserted that "people, not the press, must be the priority." This demonstrates a weak understanding of the role of the free press in a democracy. The fact is that most people do not have the time to ask public bodies for detailed information on, for instance, school admission policies, or hospital inspection results. The press does. We publish what we find and bring it to the public's attention. That is how newspapers work in the public interest. What the Lord Chancellor dismisses as "fishing expeditions" is actually evidence of journalists doing their job.

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The Lord Chancellor's argument is weak all round. "There is a right to know, not a right to tell," he asserts. What on earth does this mean? Is he suggesting that information is only released by officialdom on the understanding that the recipients keep it to themselves? He asks, rhetorically, if people would be happy to have their medical records or employment history made widely available. But no one is suggesting they should be. This is scaremongering.

The truth is that what we are seeing is an attempt by the Government to find some philosophical justification for its recent retreat on the principles of freedom of information. This is covering fire for New Labour's frantic scramble away from the consequences of its own legislation. The Government is looking at limiting the number of requests that organisations like newspapers can make. It is also considering imposing a cap on the amount of official time a request may take up. All this is quite clearly designed to frustrate the efforts of reporters.

When the Freedom of Information legislation came into force 1 January 2005, Lord Falconer wrote: "It is essential that all public authorities finally embrace openness." It seems he has changed his mind. Yesterday he declared: "Openness is a means to an end - openness must be for a purpose: the benefit of the public." No; open government is the end. It is not for the temporary custodians of power such as Lord Falconer to decide what it is in our interests to know, nor how we access that information.