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27 July 2017 / Nicholas Dobson
Issue: 7756 / Categories: Features , Public
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Whose diary is it anyway?

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Are the contents of a minister’s diary disclosable under the Freedom of Information Act? Nicholas Dobson reports

  • A ministerial diary was found on balance to be disclosable under FOIA.

On 24 May 2017 a notable piece was added to the grand jigsaw of English legal history. For it was then that the Court of Appeal agreed that a ministerial diary in the Department of Health (DOH) should be disclosed.

This followed a request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA 2000) by a journalist (Simon Lewis) for disclosure of the diary of Andrew Lansley (former Conservative health secretary) from 12 May 2010 to 30 April 2011. As The Daily Telegraph reported: ‘Transparency campaigners say the case is of importance because the diary covers the time Mr Lansley was working on the Health and Social Care Act and allegedly subjected to extensive lobbying by private healthcare interests.’

The issue has certainly been through the legal wringer. For, after DOH had initially disclosed a redacted version of the diary, the Information Commissioner (IC) required

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