Release of Prince Charles's letters shows the point of freedom of information
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Version 0 of 1. The publication of letters Prince Charles sent to government ministers is a triumph – of sorts – for the Freedom of Information Act. The point of the act is to enable the public to understand better how those in authority are governing us. The release of the letters allows us a limited peek behind the curtains to see how the heir to the throne has been seeking to influence government policies. But boy, what a struggle. The government has fought very hard for a decade to prevent the disclosure of 27 pieces of correspondence between the prince and ministers in Tony Blair’s government. Ministers have hired expensive lawyers to try to prevent the disclosure of the letters. The total legal bill is so far unknown but the latest available figure is £274,000. The Guardian was only able to win this battle because it could hire barristers to match – and defeat – the government’s lawyers. The paper’s barristers deployed their legal ingenuity to overcome the government as the battle progressed from a freedom of information tribunal, through the high court and appeal court, to the supreme court. As it was, the government, as the losers, will have to pay the Guardian’s legal bill. Clearly, a member of the public without access to large funds would not have been able to fight this legal battle. Many may see this as one of the weaknesses of the act. The strength of the act, however, is that it has allowed the public to see into one of the most secret areas of British life. The prince is reputed to have been sending his so-called “black spider” letters to ministers for many years, but only a tiny number have leaked, and only rarely the whole of the letters. Later on Wednesday, the public will be able to read the prince’s correspondence with ministers, albeit only from September 2004 to April 2005, and make their own judgment on whether the prince has been behaving properly. Three years ago, three judges in the freedom of information tribunal ruled in favour of the Guardian and ordered the publication of the letters, so that the public could see how the prince had been promoting his own views. “The essential reason is that it will generally be in the overall public interest for there to be transparency as to how and when Prince Charles seeks to influence government,” they had said. With unimpeachable logic, the judges had captured what this long battle has been about. |