Official information law in the United Kingdom

Government Publications Review, Vol. 10, pp. 61-70, 1983 Primed in the USA. All rights reserved.

0177-9390/83/010061-10$3.00/O Copyright 0 1983 Pergamon Press Ltd

OFFICIAL INFORMATION LAW IN THE UNITED KINGDOM

JAMES MICHAEL* Room lOF, School of Law, Polytechnic of Central London, Red Lion Square, London WC 1, England

Abst~et- Although some reform efforts have been made to establish public access to government records, the United Kingdom is far away from legislating a freedom of information law on the American, Canadian, or Australian model under its present political leadership. Moreover, proponents of such policy must overcome a vari- ety of legal and entrenched customary obstacles. In addition to the sweeping Official Secrets Act, some 89 other statutes proscribe the unauthorized disclosure of official information. Other constraints requiring varying kinds of accommodation include collective and individual ministerial responsibility, civil servant anonymity, the law of confidence, public interest immunity, and leaking-briefing practices, among others. In spite of these hindrances, access to information legislation has been developed and brought to Parliament for consideration. However, it has taken a decade for the freedom of information concept to progress from a fringe idea to a respectable proposal for reform in the United Kingdom.

Many people outside the United Kingdom with an interest in information law and practice have two general impressions about the British way in such matters: the first is that official records are made public after 30 years, and the second that the Official Secrets Act is a widely-drawn law against spying. Like many general impressions, both are only partly right, and are seriously misleading: the “30-year rule” is more a statement of intent than a rule, and the Official Secrets Act goes far beyond any connection with national security.

It is a common criticism of lawyers who attempt to write on politics and public administration that they mistake the formal rules for the reality, and this is particularly true of government information law in the United Kingdom. When taxed with criticism of the Official Secrets Act, ministers and civil servants point instead to the archives of the past in the Public Record Office and the steady flow of information in response to Parliamentary Questions. This is quite understandable. Law is only one factor in the provision of information by governments to their publics, and arguably not the most important one. The Franks Com- mittee on the Official Secrets Act said as much in its 1972 report [I], and so did the Civil Ser- vice Department (since dissolved) in its 1979 report on disclosure of official information in other countries [2]. Many other factors, constitutional, political, historical, and cultural are very important in influencing the discretionary provision of information [3]. Law is mostly concerned with the harder cases, though, and British law can be pretty hard both on those who carry discretionary leaking too far and on those who seek to discover information government would rather keep confidential.

Laws relating to information generally do one of three things: they restrict disclosure by

*James Michael is an American who has been living in England for the past ten years. He is a Lecturer in law at the Polytechnic School of Central London. He has written widely on the subject of official secrecy and open government, most recently authoring The Pofitics of Secrecy.

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62 .iAMES MICHAEL

imposing criminal or civil sanctions; they are neutral; or they compel disclosure. Of course, information is peculiarly evanescent for legal control, and nothing is ever completely secret or completely known: the real questions are not only who should know what, but also when and how. Nevertheless, the tripartite division is a useful way of considering legal rules on the subject, and the rules provide at least a structure for examining how people actually behave.

RIXSTRICTIONS

Most of the law relating to government information in the United Kingdom is restrictive. There are, at the latest count, some 89 statutes imposing criminal penalties for the unauthorized disclosure of official information, and these are in addition to the sweeping Official Secrets Act. Critics and defenders of the Act now generally agree on two things: the simple repeal of the Act would not appreciably affect the provision of government information to the public, and the original 1911 Act, although passed by Parliament in haste and ignorance of its true effect, was carefully designed to protect all central government information from unauthorized disclosure.

There is now a fair body of literature on the Act, and its history need not be repeated here [4]. Several specific points do need to be kept in mind, however. The first is that the Act itself is no barrier to greater discretionary disclosure of information, as it only punishes “unauthorized” disclosures by Crown servants (excluding employees of local authorities). A related point is that the Act nowhere attempts to define “authorization,” and the Franks Committee, after two years of study and three volumes of published evidence, came to no particular conclusion except that those higher up the administrative ladder were more likely to have such authority.

Xt is commonly thought that while section 2 of the Act is sweeping in its scope, section 1 is limited to espionage. This is less than accurate, and although the marginal heading (which is not a part of the statute for interpretation) is “penalties for spying,” it goes rather further than spying as it is usually defined. There is no requirement that disclosures punished under section 1 be made, or be intended to be made, to any foreign power, and the Act effectively puts the burden on the defendant to disprove any intent to endanger national security. Both section 1 and section 2 are, in the words of the Franks Committee, “saved from absurdity” by the requirement that any prosecutions must be authorized by the Attorney-General. This raises basic questions about the defensibility of a law which criminalizes much everyday conduct, leaving punishment to the discretion of an elected official. There also is still uncer- tainty as to such basic questions as whether section 2 of the Act requires criminal intent or is an offence of strict liability. It was for this, rather than for the policy of the Act, that the Franks Committee pronounced it “a mess” [.5].

The description of the Attorney-General in the preceding paragraph as “an elected official” would be disputed by most of those who have held the office, and it might even be considered evidence of fundamental misunderstanding of the British Constitution. When such prosecutions are authorized the Attorney (as he is referred to in barristerspeak) is not acting as a minister of the government of the day, but rather is wearing his hat (or wig) as a Law Officer of the Crown. It is a subject for constitutional dispute, and perhaps this is the appropriate place to consider the British Constitution, and the particular effect that it has on the provision of official information to the public. There is, of course, no single document called the British Constitution. Instead, it is a mixture of statutes, convention, and Royal prerogative, and the conventions are probably the most important. Chief among these are the related conventions of ministerial responsibility and collective responsibility. The main effect of these on disclosure of information is that a decision to disclose or to keep secret is nearly always to be taken by an individual minister or by the Cabinet.

Official information law in the United Kingdom 63

The theory is that accountability of the central government to the general public is through the medium of Parliament. Civil servants up to the highest level are supposed to be apolitical and anonymous. Ministers are accountable to Parliament individually for the conduct of their departments, with the ultimate sanction that they may be forced to resign if something goes badly wrong. A common criticism of proposals to make disclosure of information anything other than a purely discretionary ministerial decision is that it would weaken ministerial responsibility and politicize civil servants. (It is also commonly said that the judiciary would be politicized if they became involved, about which more will be said later.) It has recently been argued that the development of secrecy laws, culminating in the 1911 statute, was an important part of the developing control by ministers over civil servants in the 19th century, which in turn involved the widening franchise and democratic accountability of government [6].

The Northcote-Trevelyan reforms of 1855 effectively replaced a civil service as riddled with patronage as the spoils system in America was with one of recruitment and promotion by merit. Although there have been recent criticisms of what such merit is, mostly directed to the preference for Oxbridge arts graduates, the system is intact, modified only by the suf- ferance of a few political advisers to ministers.

The constitutional convention of ministerial responsibility often merges into the more functional argument that disclosure inhibits candour, which is almost always made in any dispute over disclosure. Only slightly oversimplified, the constitutional theory is that the minister speaks for the department to the public through Parliament, and the civil servants are anonymous functionaries. The functional argument is that there must be complete candour between ministers and civil servants when considering policy alternatives. If this were to be breached, the constitutional responsibility of the minister would be diminished, as would the functional efficiency of the more cautious advice given to him.

One consequence of these related arguments is that incoming ministers do not have access to the policy papers of their predecessors of another party. This was illustrated, in slightly confused form, in the establishment of an inquiry into the Falklands affair by the Prime Minister. When Mrs. Thatcher announced that the inquiry would have access to papers of previous administrations, there were objections that this would breach the convention. (The fact that the objection came from Mrs. Thatcher’s Conservative predecessor, Mr. Heath, shows the depth of political and personal differences between them.) For a while the Prime Minister persisted with an argument which was almost certainly right in law, but convention- ally wrong: the papers were Crown property, to be disclosed at the discretion of the government of the day. But in the end she bowed to convention. The consent of all former Prime Ministers was obtained, and disclosure of papers would only be to the Privy Councillors (sometimes spelled Counsellors) rather than to the present government or the general public. There remains only a possibility that the Privy Councillors may in their report refer to papers of previous administrations, and that the present government may or may not include such references in the report published.

The choice of Privy Councillors rather than another form of inquiry is particularly relevant to official information. The Privy Council hardly exists as a body now (except when a bare quorum assembles formally to approve Orders in Council), and membership is an honour conferred for life (or until disgrace) on Cabinet ministers and other notables. The most important feature of the appointment is the oath of secrecy taken, which is particularly relied upon when the Prime Minister meets Opposition leaders on “Privy Council terms.”

The convention of collective responsibility is different from that of ministerial responsibility, although closely related. The relationship is that the government as a whole may choose to gather round an individual minister in trouble and declare their collective responsibility. The question then becomes the fate of the entire government rather than that of the individ-

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ual. It is a highly political process, depending as much on the standing of the minister with his colleagues as anything else.

More directly, the convention of collective responsibility is taken to mean that all members of the Cabinet (and sometimes all members of the government, including the unpaid Parlia- mentary Private Secretaries) are equally responsible for all government decisions. This does not just mean that minutes of Cabinet meetings remain secret (usually for 30 years), but also that the system of Cabinet Committees officially does not exist. A leaked memorandum from Prime Minister James Callaghan in 1978 restated the rule, and concluded the constitutional arguments by saying that any disclosure would only “whet their appetites for more.” But official references to particular committees are occasionally made, and the more assiduous political correspondents sometimes publish lists of the committees of which they have heard.

Both conventions came before the courts in the 1975 Crossman Diaries case [7]. Although the principal characteristic of conventions is that they are not judicially enforceable, accord- ing to A.V. Dicey, the Attorney-General asked the Lord Chief Justice to enjoin publication of the diaries kept by Richard Crossman when he was a Cabinet Minister. The general argument was that the courts had power to stop any publication thought to be against the public interest, with the particular interests said to be harmed by publication being those of collective and ministerial responsibility. The Privy Councillors’ oath was relied on only lightly, the civil law of confidence rather more, and the Official Secrets Act hardly at all. It was only after the case that the reason for the neglect of the Official Secrets Act became clear: the At- torney-General thought that it did not apply because Richard Crossman had died, an argument that had not even occurred to the defence.

The injunction was refused, but the judiciary emerged as the only clear winner, having ac- quired a power previously thought to be entirely political. The Lord Chief Justice agreed that he could forbid publication, but declined to exercise the power because he concluded that the publication of accounts of events ten years in the past was not sufficiently harmful to any public interest.

The ruling had important implications for the law of confidence which were hardly appre- ciated at the time. Briefly, the law of confidence is an equitable doctrine which protects information which is (1) of a confidential nature (i.e. not generally known); (2) communicated under an express or implied obligation of confidence; and (3) communicated, or about to be communicated, in breach of that obligation. This is subject to a defence that the breach is justified in the public interest, usually to disclose “iniquity,” which is largely limited to crime. The Lord Chief Justice had made the important change of moving the public interest from a possible defence to an element of the action. This has not been followed much (perhaps because the case was not decided entirely on the law of confidence), but it was taken up by the Law Commission in its 1981 report recommending a statutory law of confidence [8].

The Crossman Diaries case is the only instance thus far in which the law of confidence has been applied to official information. But it is an important legal weapon, particularly because it does not rest on contractual obligations. The most important effect of this is that there is no requirement of privity: the doctrine binds not only those who accept a com- munication in confidence, but also third parties who receive a breach of confidence.

LEAKING AND BRIEFING

So far, I have concentrated on the rules punishing disclosure of official information: the Official Secrets Act, the 89 other statutes, the law of confidence, and the Privy Councillors’ oath. It is important to remember that nearly all of these rules punish only the unauthorized


disclosure of information, and the source of authorization is very difficult to determine. In nearly all cases, disclosure is legally at the discretion of the government of the day, although the dispute over the Falklands papers illustrates how such discretion may be powerfully in- fluenced by convention. Thus, most information which seems to be protected by law is actually disclosable by government discretion. As James Callaghan said to the Franks Com- mittee on the Official Secrets Act: “You know the difference between leaking and briefing: leaking is what you do and briefing is what I do.”

Much of the “briefing” in the United Kingdom is carried out through the relatively formal “lobby” system, so-called because only members of the organization have access to the Members’ Lobby of the House of Commons. They also have weekly unattributable briefings by the Prime Minister’s press secretary. The written rules of the Lobby were themselves confidential until published by a sociologist, and include a ban on actually writing anything in the Lobby, and on reporting “incidents, pleasant or otherwise” that they see there [9]. The system has spawned smaller specialist versions around the various government departments.

Civil service discipline is probably more effective than criminal penalties in restraining unauthorized disclosures by civil servants. One of the rules of the “Esta. Codes” governing their behaviour (themselves also long confidential) is that they are not to disclose information likely to embarrass the department. Breaches of confidentiality by civil servants are considered to be among the most serious of offences. In 1873, the Permanent Secretary of the Treasury wrote: “The unauthorized use of official information is the worst fault a civil servant can commit. It is on the same footing as cowardice by a soldier.” This was repeated by a modern permanent secretary to a 1978 conference on government information held by the Anglo-American Ditchley Foundation, with the comment that it “still has a great deal of force today.”

There is no equivalent of the U.S. Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, protecting civil servants who disclose “wrongdoing, waste, or inefficiency,” and there is little pressure for one. However, a case now before the European Commission of Human Rights could eventually lead to some recognition of the rights of civil servants to freedom of expression without bureaucratic sanctions. It perhaps should be explained that the European Convention on Human Rights is the closest thing in the United Kingdom to a U.S.-style Bill of Rights. It is binding in international (although not domestic) law, and Article 25 allows for individual complaints to be made to the Commission, which sits in Strasbourg. Trevor Brown, a radia- tion safety officer at the Aldermaston nuclear centre, was also an elected local councillor, and commented on safety standards at the centre in a television interview. All of the information in his interview was already public, but the severe reprimand upheld on appeal effectively ended his career. His complaint to the Commission is that such civil service discipline is an unjustifiable restriction of his “right . . . to impart information” guaranteed under Arti- cle 10 of the Convention.

DISCLOSURE LAWS

Turning to laws actually requiring the public disclosure of official information, the statutes are few and weak. The Local Government Act of 1972 requires local authorities to make certain financial documents available to local electors, and it is backed up by financial penalties. It has been little used, but in 1976 a group of rate (property tax) payers in the Borough of Hillingdon brought a private prosecution after the local authority refused to let them see records about construction contracts, and the local authority lost its appeal against the conviction.

The Local Government Act also contains a related provision requiring local authority

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meetings to be open to the press and the public, much like many of the U.S. state and local laws surveyed in Harold Cross’s 1953 book, The Public Right to Know [lo]. As if to illustrate how such laws are outsiders’ issues, and how getting power can change attitudes, the measure was introduced by Margaret Thatcher as a backbencher’s Private Member’s bill when she was first elected to the House of Commons. It has its faults, though. Restrictions on public access can be imposed by a simple vote, with no requirement of specific statutory reasons, and there is neither a system for appeals nor any penalties for unjustified secrecy.

Several statutes passed during the 1970s attempted to require disclosure of information, but nearly all of them were seriously defective in their exemptions and in procedures for appeals. Probably the most effective was an amendment to the 1975 Industry Act requiring previously confidential Treasury economic models and forecasts to be made available on re- quest. Pushed by a Labour backbencher, the amendment includes a public right to use the computer on which they are maintained, on payment of a fee.

The main defect of the Public Records Act is that the “30-year rule,” which the 1967 amendment substituted for the “50-year rule” of the 1958 Act, is entirely discretionary. Sec- tion 5(l) of the Act makes it possible for records to be made public after periods “either longer or shorter” than 30 years, but the decision is entirely up to the Lord Chancellor, at least formally. He can order records to be withheld longer on a number of grounds, including protecting information received in confidence. In practice, such decisions are taken by the departments themselves. It is even possible to retrieve records inadvertently made public. In 1977, the Home Office hastily recalled documents about the 1930s “hunger march- ers” which were inaccurate and highly defamatory of people who were still alive. Although it has never been tested in court, it would seem that the discretionary authority to withhold records is almost certainly not subject to judicial review. In 1982, the Wilson Committee on Public Records criticized the existing system for its haphazard system of keeping and dis- carding records, and urged that earlier disclosures be made [ 111.

A discussion of disclosure statutes would not be complete without some mention of the Freedom of Information bill that failed, but only just. The starting point probably was the suggestion made by Professor H.W.R. Wade, Q.C., of Oxford, to the Franks Committee that they consider such legislation along U.S. or Swedish lines. The Committee rejected the idea as being beyond its terms of reference, but it was taken up by a number of pressure groups during the 1970s. By the time Clement Freud, a Liberal M.P., drew first place in the ballot for Private Members’ bills in 1978, there were several draft bills around for him to choose from.

For non-British readers it should perhaps be explained that the ballot only allows a few lucky back-benchers a limited amount of Parliamentary time for their bills to be debated. Voting is still likely to be on strict party lines, and it is relatively easy for a determined government with a majority to dispose of unwanted bills (as the Thatcher government did with a bill similar to Freud’s introduced by Frank Hooley, a Labour M.P., in February 1981).

By the spring of 1979, the Labour government had lost its overall majority, and had ended the arrangement by which it stayed in power with Liberal votes. In Committee, the Freud bill was supported by a coalition of Labour, Conservative, and Liberal back-benchers, and opposed in almost identical terms by Labour ministers and Conservative shadow ministers. The bill survived relatively unscathed (albeit with appeals to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration, or “ombudsman,” substituted for review by the courts), and was set for report and third reading on the floor of the House of Commons, when a motion of no- confidence in the government was tabled.

A message from the government whips was passed to Clement Freud that he could have his


bill if he managed to miss the confidence vote. He declined, partly out of opposition and partly out of a reasonable suspicion that the government would still have insisted on amend- ments to wreck the bill. So the bill lapsed, along with nearly all other legislation, when the government lost the vote and dissolved Parliament for a general election.

The Conservatives won resoundingly, and without even a token reference to open government in their election manifesto. But the government did move quickly to introduce a “reform” of the Official Secrets Act called the Protection of Official Information Bill. It was less sweeping than section 2 in many ways, but it also went further in others. Almost anything written about the security services would have been punished, and it was pointed out that the book The Climate of Treason, which had just been published and lead to the disclosure that the Keeper of the Queen’s Pictures had been a Soviet spy, could have been prosecuted [12]. The bill had been heavily criticized in the House of Lords when it was introduced there, and the affair of Sir Anthony Blunt at least provided a convenient excuse for withdrawing it.

The emphasis on official information legislation has now largely shifted to data protection. The United Kingdom signed the Council of Europe Convention on the subject in the spring of 1981, largely in order to protect British data processors from the use of other national statutes as non-tariff trade barriers. When a bill is introduced, possibly in the 1982-83 session of Parliament, it will establish some restrictions on the handling of personal information by automatic means in both the public and private sectors. The only provision compel- ling disclosure of official information is likely to be a limited “subject access” right, giving some “data subjects” rights to see and correct information on themselves.

Pressures for greater disclosure of official information generally have moved to the new (since 1979) system of select committees to monitor each government department. These are very roughly similar to U.S. congressional oversight committees, although much more restricted in staff and resources. As predicted when they were established, many of their skir- mishes with the executive have been over disclosure of information. Ministers and civil servants have frequently testified before these committees, with civil servants carefully follow- ing guidelines over what they should and should not say. The most recent significant clash came when the Chief Inspector of Education refused to tell the Select Committee on Educa- tion the names of local education authorities with disturbingly low levels of expenditure. That was, she said, confidential between her and the authorities, and her refusal was supported by the Secretary of State for Education, who also appeared. (The names were quickly leaked.)

The chief difficulty with this system lies in the nature of the Westminster system of parliamentary government. A select committee’s ultimate sanction is to refer a refusal to the whole House as a contempt of Parliament (or breach of parliamentary privilege). Once before the House (after intermediate stages) this would almost certainly be treated as a matter of confidence in the government, which any government with a solid majority would win. Thus far, the select committee activists have not made such an attempt. They have tried, without suc- cess, to get refusals to disclose information referred to the House as a matter of priority business.

The dispute is somewhat similar to the long-standing debate in the United States about the “executive privilege” not to testify before congressional committees. In British courts, another doctrine, formerly known as “Crown privilege” and now more commonly called “public interest immunity,” has undergone interesting developments in recent years. This resembles somewhat the U.S. doctrine of “military and state secrets privilege,” although it is much wider [13].

Until 1968, the privilege was absolute, and a ministerial certificate that evidence should

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not be produced was not subject to judicial review. Then the House of Lords asserted the judicial power to review such certificates (in the first decision which also asserted their power to depart from previous rulings) [ 141.

Since then, the courts have slowly extended their power to order discovery of documents relevant to litigation over government objections [15]. Considerable deference is still paid, however, to arguments that documents containing policy advice to ministers and discussions between them should not be disclosed. Such documents are still often exempt from disclosure as a class, as distinguished from those exempt after judicial consideration of the contents of other documents.

Anyone seeking such discovery must show that the records sought are relevant to a legal claim, rather like the requirement of the 1946 U.S. Administrative Procedure Act’s limita- tion of disclosure to “persons properly and directly,concerned” (fundamentally changed by the 1966 Freedom of Information Act) [16]. But there have been cases in which the courts have ordered disclosure of information in government possession relevant to claims against third parties from whom the information was obtained. Chief among these was the 1973 case of Crompton Amusement Machines in which the Commissioners of Customs and Excise were ordered to disclose the names of importers thought to be infringing a patent [17]. Burmah Oil failed in 1979 to convince the House of Lords to order disclosure of records relating to an earlier government bail-out of the company, but this was largely on the grounds of relevance to the company’s claim. Most of the Law Lords actually examined the documents, and Lord Scarman asked what “was so important about secret government that it must be protected even at the price of injustice in our courts” [18]?

It should be remembered not only that such documents must be relevant to a legal claim, but that they are discovered only for purposes of that claim. This was established in Distiller Co. (Biochemicals) Ltd. v. Times Newspapers Ltd., in which a newspaper was stopped from using documents about thalidomide obtained on discovery by the children’s parents [19]. (This should not be confused with the contempt of court case involving the same parties suc- cessfully taken to the European Court of Human Rights.) It was underlined with a vengeance in the 1982 House of Lords decision in Home Office v. Harman [20]. A solicitor for a prisoner had obtained discovery of Home Office documents over a public interest immunity claim [21] and, after the documents had been read out in open court, showed them to a jour- nalist who then wrote a critical feature article. She was held in contempt of court for this use of the discovered documents for a purpose ulterior to the action. Her application to the European Commission of Human Rights is now under consideration.

CONCLUSION

The law on public disclosure of official information in the United Kingdom is still far more restrictive than that in most other western democracies. Professor Galnoor’s 1977 survey placed Britain and France together at the end of a continuum where the government’s privilege to conceal was valued more than the public right to know [22]. France has since changed dramatically, with the 1978 law on access to official documents; British law remains unchanged.

Measuring the information actually disclosed to the public rather than the bare rules is more difficult, but it is true that British researchers and journalists can often find specifically British information in the United States (and sometimes in Sweden) more easily than they can in their own country [23]. The argument that disclosure laws are fundamentally incom- patible with the Westminster system is less formidable now than it was before Australia and


Canada passed such statutes (whatever their shortcomings). Both countries are, of course, modetled on the British system, with most of their rnod~~~t~ons in the direction of federalism.

The fact that the prospects for tegislation are now less bright than towards the end of the 1970s is largely because of two factors: the first is a strong Conservative government firmly opposed to the idea; the second is the alternative offered to back-bench MPs by the new select committees. The first will have to await a change in government, and there have been tactical victories in the committees. The Social Democratic and Liberal Alliance, if it regains its initial popularity, could lead to legislation, with policy committees using the Freud bill as a model. The Ieft wing of the Labour Party is also sympathetic to legislation, although tradi- tional antipathy to the judiciary leads them to enforcement measures other than judicial review.

Left to the& own devices, British courts may make slow progress towards disclosure under the doctrine of “public interest immunity.” At the time of writing, the Court of Appeal is hearing just such a case, in which a number of international airlines are seeking discovery in order to challenge British landing charges. And the influence of the European Convention on Human Rights, and perhaps even that of the EEC, could affect the rights of civil servants to disclose information and the publicity of the judicial process.

Professor Wade’s commendation of U.S. and Swedish-style legislation to the Franks Com- mittee was published in 1972 [24]. Since then it has progressed from a fringe idea to a respectable proposal for reform. An end of decade report would be something like: some progress; can do better.

t.

2.

3. 4.

5.

6. 7. 8. 9.

IO. Il.

12.

13.

14. 15.

I& 17. I8

See Deparrmental Committee on Section 2 of the Official Secrets Act I91 I, &port of the Comm~ftee, Vol. I, London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1972, (Cmnd. 5104). a. 36. See Civil Service Department, LXsclosure ofOff&ai InformatidniA Report on Overseas Practice, London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1979, pp. 49-54. See f&id., p. 1. See David Williams. Not in the Public Interest. London: Hutchinson, 1965; Jonathan Aitken. OfficiaNy Secret, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971; Departmental Committee on Section 2 of the Official Secrets Act 1911. Report ofthe Committee. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1972. (Cmnd. 5104) 4 ~01s.; Ronald Wraith. Open Governmen!: The British Interpretation. London: Royal Institute of Public Administration, 1977; David Leigh. TheFrontiers qf Secrecy. London: Junction Books, 1980; K.G. Robertson. PubiicSecrets. London: MacMiIIan, 1982. ~partmental Committee on Section 2 of the Official Secrets Act 191 f . &part ofthe Committee. Vol. 1. Lon- don: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, I972 (Cmnd. SlO4), p. 37. See Robertson, op. cir. A~ornqv Generai V. Joaufkan Cape* 3 Ah E.R. 484 (1975). See Law Commission. Breach of ~o~~~e~c~. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1981. See Jeremy Tunstaii. The Westminster Lobby Correspondents. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970. Harold Cross. The People’s Right to Know. New York: Columbia University Press, 1953. See Modern Public Records: Selection and Access. Report qf a Committee Appointed by the Lord Chancellor. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1981. (Cmnd. 8204). Andrew Boyle. The Climate of Treason. London: Hutchins&, 1979; the American edition is entitled The Fourth Man. New York: Dial Press, 1980. See Note. “The Military and State Secrets Privilege: Protection for the National Security or Immunity for the Executive?” Yale Law Journal 91 (January 1982) 570-589. Conwqv v. Rimmer, 1 All E.R. 874 (1968). Most of the cases until 1976 are considered by Joseph Jacob in *‘Discovery and the Public Interest.” Pub&Law 1976 (Summer 1976) i34-152. see 5 U.S.C. 1002(c) (1964 ed.). 2 All E.R. 943 (1973). Burmah Uif V. Bank of England, 2 AtI E&R, 461 (1979),

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19. 3 W.L.R. 728 (1974). 20. 2 W.L.R. 338 (1982). 21. See Williams v. Home Office, 1 All E.R. 1151 (1981). 22. See Itzhak Galnoor. “What Do We Know about Government Secrecy ?” In Itzhak Galnoor, ed. Government

Secrecy in Democracies. New York: New York University Press, 1977, pp. 275-313. 23. See James Michael. The Po/ifics of Secrecy. Hammondsworth: Penguin Books, 1982, chapter 1. 24. See Departmental Committee on Section 2 of the Official Secrets Act 1911. Written Evidence Submitted to the

Committee. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1979. (Cmnd. 5104), pp. 41 l-422.

Official information law in the United Kingdom

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