Cabinet Office v Information Commissioner and Dr Lamb (EA/2008/0024 and 29)
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION – COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY – CONVENTION
Facts
The Cabinet Office sought to resist disclosure of the minutes of two meetings at which Ministers had determined to commit forces to the conflict in Iraq. The basis relied upon was that the minutes fell within the qualified exemption created in section 35(1) of the Freedom of Information Act, which provides exceptions for information relating to the development of government policy and to ministerial communication. Under the terms of the Act, the information was therefore not required to be disclosed unless the interest in withholding it outweighed the public interest in disclosure.
The Information Commissioner directed the Cabinet Office to disclose the minutes. The Office argued that it was necessary to maintain privilege in order to preserve the convention of collective ministerial responsibility and appealed the Commissioner’s decision.
Issues
The issue was whether the interest in preserving the convention of collective responsibility outweighed the public interest in disclosing the minutes.
Decision/Outcome
The Tribunal held, by a majority, that the minutes should be disclosed with certain redactions. Though important, the convention of collective responsibility is not absolute and is an evolving principle which is capable of conceding to other interests in appropriate circumstances. On the facts of this specific case, the public interest in having the minutes disclosed and debated was:
“…of crucial significance to an understanding of a hugely important step in the nation’s recent history and the accountability of those [responsible]” (p. 3).
In this context, the public interest in disclosure outweighed that in preserving privilege and collective responsibility.
Updated 19 March 2026
This case summary remains accurate as a statement of the First-tier Tribunal (Information Rights) decision in Cabinet Office v Information Commissioner and Dr Lamb (EA/2008/0024 and EA/2008/0029). The legal framework described — the qualified exemption under section 35(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and the public interest balancing test — continues to represent the law as it stands. Readers should be aware, however, of two subsequent developments. First, following this decision the then Lord Chancellor issued a ministerial veto under section 53 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, preventing disclosure of the minutes. That veto was itself the subject of further litigation: the Supreme Court in R (Evans) v Attorney General [2015] UKSC 21 addressed the scope of the section 53 veto in a related but distinct context (the Prince of Wales correspondence), holding that the veto could not be used simply because a minister disagreed with a tribunal’s conclusion. The Iraq Cabinet minutes veto was not directly before the Supreme Court in that case, but the Evans decision is now the leading authority on the limits of the section 53 power and is relevant to any full understanding of this area. Second, the article does not mention the ministerial veto outcome, which is a significant omission for readers seeking to understand the practical result of the litigation. The article is accurate so far as it goes but should be read alongside R (Evans) v Attorney General [2015] UKSC 21 for a complete picture of how the public interest test and the section 53 veto interact.
