The Information Tribunal has upheld a decision of the Information Commissioner in which he concluded that minutes of meetings of the Department for Education and Skills (DFES) fell within the qualified exemption in section 35(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 for information relating to the formulation or development of government policy, but that the public interest in maintaining the exemption did not outweigh the public interest in disclosure. The DFES has therefore been ordered to comply with the request for information made by the Evening Standard under section 1 of the Act. The government has been waiting for decisions of the Information Commissioner, and subsequently the Information Tribunal, as to how high the bar for disclosure under section 35(1) of the Act would be set, and in upholding the Commissioner's decision on this appeal, the Tribunal has set the bar considerably lower than was expected.

Case: The Department for Education and Skills v Information Commissioner and the Evening Standard, 19 February 2007.