The duplicity of Gordon Brown's constitutional reform programme can be seen in plans to strongly restrict access to Cabinet papers in a new 20-year publication rule amidst heavily-spun propaganda for extending freedom of information law.

Most likely, the Government will repeal the qualified exemption status and public interest test currently covering Cabinet papers under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

If this occurs, it will be a very retrograde step. It will remove the capacity for freedom of information law to enhance, in a timely way, public accountability over highly controversial Cabinet policies and decisions and the potential for Cabinet to be required to publicly verify that it acted lawfully over such decisions.

My freedom of information request for two sets of Cabinet minutes authorising the military invasion of Iraq in March 2003 raised both these key issues. As the Information Commissioner argued in his Decision Notice, disclosure was necessary to educate the public in how these decisions were reached and to enhance the public accountability of Cabinet.

The request also addressed questions of whether Cabinet had complied with international law on a number of fronts – not least, satisfying international humanitarian law in protecting and minimising civilian deaths before sanctioning war. No Cabinet should claim the omnipotence to be immune from international law.

The Cabinet Office, during the long appeal for this case, clearly exuded a regret that a qualified, rather than absolute, exemption had been written into law over its papers. Having lost the public interest argument, the Government was forced into the public relations disaster of a refusal to mount an appeal and the imposition of the veto.

Repealing the law now to cut out the public interest test and impose an absolute exemption on its papers will mean that no future Cabinet will have to be transparent over controversial decisions until long after its members have departed the political scene.

Dr Chris Lamb ,

4 Robin Close,

Bristol.