Ministers should retain the right to veto sensitive freedom of information requests, the attorney-general has said.
Jeremy Wright, QC, said that MPs had “intended that the exercise of the veto should be an executive function with democratic accountability for its use through parliament”.
A commission on freedom of information is looking at whether the current legislation strikes the right balance between transparency and accountability and the need to protect sensitive information.
The review was set up after the Supreme Court ruled that the attorney-general wrongly exercised his veto to prevent the publication of a series of letters by the Prince of Wales to ministers.
Mr Wright told the law faculty at University College London that the veto constituted a rare but not unprecedented recognition that