Open ministerial diaries to public scrutiny? Horrors, no! Disclose the attorney-general's advice to the government on the legality of the Iraq war? You must be joking! Reveal the financial assessments on which Treasury economic forecasts are based? Far too sensitive! Six weeks after the Freedom of Information Act came into force, squeals of pain can be heard rising from Whitehall as—in Lord Falconer's own words-the act's shoe begins to pinch. And this, the Lord Chancellor has suggested, might be "no bad thing". Many of his colleagues beg to differ.
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