Inside the Department for Constitutional Affairs is a team of about 12 civil servants who now exercise extraordinary control over government secrets. They are the “clearing house” that decides whether to grant requests for information from key government departments under the new Freedom of Information Act.

Each day these civil servants, with advice from the Cabinet Office, have the power to make or break reputations — and some politicians fear that the government and its spin doctors have found a powerful new political weapon.

The suspicion is that ministers can influence the unit to block the release of information embarrassing to Labour individuals or the government. Worse, there are signs that ministers might be using the law to release information that is damaging to opposition MPs.

“It is gutter politics of the lowest stripe,” said Julian Lewis, the Conservative shadow minister for the Cabinet Office. “They are being very restrictive with what we are asking for, but when it comes to digging out material about the last Conservative government, they are rushing to put it out.”

Last week a leaked document revealed that Labour was now trying to dig up damaging information on Michael Howard, the Conservative leader. The Sunday Times has learnt that the government might also be seeking to use the new law to pin the blame for the 2001 foot and mouth crisis on the Tories.

Officials are said to be seeking documents which could show that the relaxation of red tape for farmers under the last Tory government created the environment in which the highly infectious disease thrived.

The government is also preparing to release information on Black Wednesday, when Britain left the European exchange-rate mechanism on September 16, 1992 — one of the most damaging episodes in John Major’s government.

Yet at the same time many requests for information about the present government are getting nowhere. The Conservative party has submitted 120 requests and has received only a handful of responses.

For the public it is a disappointment too. The sort of material being released has ranged from mind-numbing committee meeting minutes of smaller quangos to vacuous details of UFO sightings.

The decision-making processes at the highest levels of government remain as opaque as ever.

“The history of this government on freedom of information is to talk big and deliver little,” said Matthew Taylor, the Liberal Democrat MP and chairman of its parliamentary party. “Anything they do deliver is done kicking and screaming.

“It still seems virtually standard practice to turn down requests. But they do seem to be willing to release information which is damaging to their opponents. It says a lot about the control freaks that are running this government.”

IT WAS not meant to be like this. On March 25, 1996, at an awards ceremony, Tony Blair set out his vision of a freedom of information law, promising a new era of openness.

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