There was an interesting attempt to use FOI to overturn a previous use of the government FOI veto yesterday. In 2009 the first veto was issued to prevent the release of the Iraq war cabinet meetings. Yesterday, Attorney General Dominic Greeve turned down a request that sought to try again to access the papers and overturn this decision.

One interesting feature of the veto, as outlined by the recent Justice Committee inquiry, is that it is only issued ‘per request’. This means you can (and in this case someone did) ask again. And got it got blocked again.

At the same time, a long running attempt to access accounts of telephone conversations between Blair and Murdoch in the run up to the war has been refused.

This is unlikely to be the end of the matter. This is tied up with the Chilcot inquiry into the invasion, which has reportedly been denied access to particular key documents by ‘senior mandarins’. It’s likely to cause even more fear among senior officials and politicians about the effects of FOI ‘exposing’ policy (one I don’t give much credit to). It may also support the view of Iraq war critics that there is something to hide.