Background
The information was sought under the Freedom of Information Act introduced by the Government. In October 2003 Lord Avebury, the Liberal Peer, asked in a Parliamentary question for the dates of meetings or telephone conversations between Tony Blair and Rupert Murdoch. He wrote on April 8, 2004 to the Leader of the House, the Rt Hon Baroness Amos, asking under what provision of the Code of Practice on access to Government Information she had declined to give the information, and on June 24, 2004 she replied that the information was exempt from disclosure under Exemption 7 (Effective Management and Operation of the Public Service) and Exemption 12 (Privacy of an Individual).
On April 15, 2005 Lord Avebury wrote to Baroness Amos, formally submitting a complaint under the Freedom of Information Act, and she passed the matter to the Private Secretary at 10 Downing Street, who said that the information requested was indeed held, but was exempt under Sections 36(2)(b)(i), (ii and 36(2)(c ) of the Act (Prejudice to the effective conduct of public affairs). He acknowledged that there were public interest factors in favour of disclosure, but these were outweighed by the need for the Prime Minister to be able to undertake free and frank discussions without the timing of these being disclosable.
On July 27 Lord Avebury wrote to the Information Commissioner, asking him to overrule the decision to withhold the information. On August 17 the Assistant Commissioner Mr Phil Boyd wrote to say that he had put the complaint to the Freedom of Information Officer at the Cabinet Office, and on September 30, 2005, the Managing Director of the Cabinet Office, Colin Balmer CB wrote to Lord Avebury saying that he had conducted a review, and was satisfied that the release of the information requested would be prejudicial to the effective conduct of public affairs, and that disclosure of the timing of exchanges with stakeholders could reveal the content of the discussion.
On October 3 Lord Avebury wrote to the Deputy Information Commissioner, asking him to overrule the Prime Minister’s office and the Cabinet Office, and cause the information to be released. Again the Assistant commissioner wrote to the Cabinet Office, and the Permanent Secretary Mr Howell James CB replied on March 29, 2006 saying that the ‘qualified person’ who had given them his opinion on the exemption was David Miliband MP, then Minister for the Cabinet Office, but observing that some of the Prime Minister’s contacts were in his capacity as Leader of the Labour Party, and those would not be covered by the Freedom of Information Act. But it made sense for him to cover official and political matters in the same conversation.
In the Decision Notice finally issued by the Information Commissioner on July 3, 2006, it was ruled that contacts of an official nature between Mr Blair and Rupert Murdoch or Richard Desmond as the case may be were disclosable, but other meetings were not. The distinction was to be made according to whether any minute had been taken of the meeting or telephone call. Notice of appeal to the Information Tribunal was lodged on August 3, 2006, asking for a ruling that dates of all the contacts should be released, on the grounds that it was not possible to draw a distinction between different categories of meetings or telephone calls.
