John Macdonald, Ross Crail and Clive Jones, THE LAW OF FREEDOM OF INFORMATION Oxford: Oxford University Press (www.oup.com ), 2nd edn, 2009. lxxxviii + 1,212 pp. ISBN 9780199544356. £235.
| Date | 01 May 2011 |
| Pages | 325-326 |
| Author | Daniel J Carr |
| Published date | 01 May 2011 |
| DOI | 10.3366/elr.2011.0044 |
A substantive law of freedom of information is something of a newcomer in the United Kingdom. The Freedom of Information Act 2000 and the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 created new rights of access to information held by public bodies. Although it has taken a few years for these respective statutes to generate interpretative case law there is now a significant corpus of case law prompting analysis. In addition to the tangible legal development of freedom of information law, political attitudes to freedom of information law in the last year or so suggest a dilution of political commitment. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair's recent memoir contained the following colourful reflection upon his decision to introduce freedom of information laws: “You idiot. You naive, foolish, irresponsible nincompoop. There is really no description of stupidity, no matter how vivid, that is adequate. I quake at the imbecility of it.” In addition, there have been two ministerial vetoes under section 53 of the 2000 Act barring disclosure of Cabinet Minutes relating to Devolution, and the Iraq War. It is against this backdrop of increased legal development and political retrenchment that the appearance of a second edition of
The new edition, like the first, is very much a child of New Square Chambers – all the contributors are members, or former members, of the set (a characteristic shared by its main, and considerably cheaper, competitor: P Coppel,
Understandably, there is less historical narration concerning the agitation for freedom of information laws within the United Kingdom at the outset of the text – that they are now a clear and present reality diminishes the importance of that story. Helpfully, a historical narrative is retained later in the text as a useful contextualisation of the ideals underpinning the legislation. However, the...
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