Date published: 2008/11/28
The BBC says:
Releasing records of the cabinet's Iraq war meetings would do "serious harm" to war planning, says a government lawyer.
Cabinet Office counsel Jonathan Swift told a tribunal that minutes from March 2003 should be kept secret or ministers may become "more cautious" in cabinet.
But the Information Commissioner argued in favour of the minutes' release.
He said they were "highly material" to whether legal advice on the eve of war had been properly considered. A decision is expected in January.
Addressing the final day of a three-day Information Tribunal hearing in south London, the Cabinet Office's counsel Jonathan Swift appealed for minutes from cabinet meetings on 13 March and 17 March 2003 not to be disclosed to the public.
The two meetings were the only two full cabinet discussions on the then Attorney-General Lord Goldsmith's advice that it was legal to go to war in Iraq.
The cabinet took the decision to go to war at the 17 March meeting, a day before the parliamentary debate took place and three days before British troops were in action in Iraq.
Mr Swift told the hearing that the issue of disclosure was one of "substance" and referred to "knowledge of who said what and who said how much about what on what occasion".
He believed more than adequate public scrutiny had been afforded to the issue and outlined the damage he thought disclosure would bring.
On the one hand it is a bit ridiculous releasing these records so quickly. Thatcher's decisions about the Falklands have received no such airing. On the other hand, Blair was clearly up to no good and was going to go to war whether or not anyone deemed it to be illegal. So this decision in particular needs some scrutiny, if only because it might deter future cabinets from making such blatantly dishonest decisions against the public interest.
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