The Right to Know: The Unfolding of the Public Records

Abstract

IN NOVEMBER 1979 THE GOVERNMENT ABANDONED ITS PROtection of Official Information Bill within a fortnight of its second reading in the Lords. That it should have failed to survive its first encounter outside the departmental world in which it was conceived, came as no surprise to those familiar with what Dick Crossman, in reference to excessive secrecy, once described as the real English disease.