Public Law for Everyone
Professor Mark Elliott
In an earlier post, I drew attention to the Attorney-General’s decision to use the power under the Freedom of Information Act to overrule a decision by the Information Commissioner. The Commissioner […]
In an earlier post, I drew attention to the Attorney-General’s decision to use the power under the Freedom of Information Act to overrule a decision by the Information Commissioner. The Commissioner had decided that minutes of Cabinet meetings that took place on the eve of war in Iraq should be released; the government, by using its veto power, blocked this.
The Information Commissioner, Christopher Graham, has now responded on his blog. He is critical of the the government’s routine use of the veto power in respect of decisions concerning Cabinet minutes, arguing that
if the veto continues to be routinely exercised whenever the [Information Commissioner’s Office] does order the disclosure of Cabinet minutes, particularly when significant time has passed since the decision was made, then it is hard to imagine how freedom of information can ever be used to secure the release of even the most significant proceedings of the Cabinet. And that would be thoroughly unsatisfactory …
The full text of the Commissioner’s blog post can be found here.
Aimed at students taking a range of public law modules, Public Law combines comprehensive coverage of the subject with depth of analysis. Written in an accessible style, it is the UK’s best-selling textbook in the field. The third edition of the book, written by Mark Elliott and Robert Thomas, was published by Oxford University Press in 2017.
This collection of essays, edited by Mark Elliott and Kirsty Hughes, examines the extent to which the common law protects, and is capable of protecting, constitutional rights, taking recent UK Supreme Court jurisprudence on this matter as a point of departure. Common Law Constitutional Rights was published by Hart Publishing in 2020.
Administrative Law is a leading text on English administrative law. The fifth edition, written by Mark Elliott and Jason Varuhas, was published by Oxford University Press in 2017. The book combines carefully selected excerpts from key cases and other materials with detailed commentary and analysis.
