Justice secretary claims decision was made to avoid harming the ability of historians in the future to discover how governments had reached decisions in the past The government's unprecedented decision to use the veto allowed under the Freedom of Information Act to block publication of cabinet minutes when the legality of the invasion of Iraq was discussed is entirely unsurprising. However, Jack Straw's justification was full of unacknowledged irony. Straw said publication would cause serious damage to cabinet government, an essential principle of accountable democracy. Moreover, the release of the papers would "drive collective discussions into informal channels", he said. That would harm the ability of historians in the future to discover how governments had reached decisions in the past. The irony was not lost on Dominic Grieve, the shadow justice minister. Not surprisingly, since the Conservative frontbench hopes to form a cabinet in the not too distant future, he told Straw he agreed with the government's decision. But Grieve then made the point that the issue went to the heart of the disquiet about the way the decision to invade Iraq was taken by Tony Blair's government. That was "sofa" government. The Butler report into the run-up to the invasion pointed to the way Blair and his ministers took decisions, even on such a vital matter. Official papers were not discussed, or even seen, by ministers. Ministers spoke to each other, but their views and deliberations were not put down in writing. And this was one of the main reasons why an insistence that the cabinet minutes should be disclosed was made by the Information Tribunal last month and by Richard Thomas, the information commissioner, even earlier. Thomas, the tribunal observed, had stressed "the fact that the decision to go to war was controversial at the time, and remains so, because it was not one that was based on self defence or a united international response to aggression. "It had been opposed by a mass public demonstration. It had been based on ... a strategy that was not supported by many other nations and is now perceived as having been based on incorrect intelligence." Criticism had been made, the tribunal added, that it was not until "the last minute" that the full cabinet was able to see the then attorney general's revised opinion that invasion without a fresh UN resolution was legal. There had been criticism that his previous legal opinion of 7 March, which contained serious caveats, was not disclosed to the cabinet. Concern remained that the stated reasons for invading were "not genuine". Straw told MPs today that the decision to go to war had been "examined with a fine-toothed comb". We still do not know enough, precisely because the Blair administration ignored the principles of collective cabinet government - precisely those principles praised by Straw, the foreign secretary at the time.Oh the irony of Jack Straw's stand
Wednesday, 25 February 2009
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