Jack Straw calls for FOI act to be rewritten Tony Blair, whose first Labour administration brought in the legislation, wrote in his memoirs: "I quake at the imbecility of it." Lord O'Donnell, the former Cabinet Secretary, claimed that giving the public and press the right to ask for official documents was having a "very negative impact" on policy discussions while David Cameron has claimed that it "furs up" the arteries of government. In a case still being argued over, the Department of Health has sought to keep secret a "risk register" on NHS reforms, claiming its publication would have a "chilling effect." Labour has led calls for the document to be made public but Mr Straw told the Commons Justice Committee on Tuesday: "That sort of information must be, in my view, protected." He said when the law was being drafted, ministers believed their internal discussions would be exempted from disclosure but "rather extraordinary" and "crazy" decisions by the FOI Tribunal have removed that protection. Mr Straw admitted his government had not thought through all the implications of the Act and that sections 35 and 36 should be "clarified" to exempt information about the development of government policy and legal advice. Without this protection, he warned "you are going to get a lot of quasi decision-making through text and Blackberry message" in order to avoid documents being disclosed. Mr Straw said the Act has "at some levels of government - particularly at high levels - led to a reluctance to commit the process of decisions to records, so in one sense it has made it more difficult to secure accountability, rather than less." I know there were people in other government departments who went in for unminuted meetings because they were anxious that there wouldn't be a trail of accountability... I perceived that private secretaries were quite anxious about what is going to happen to their notebooks, where the personalities and stream of consciousness of their ministers were displayed in horrific detail.