Freedom of Information laws currently discussed in Parliament will not shed any light on the most important decisions taken at Cabinet, thanks to a wide-ranging list of exemptions that will keep government documents secret.
Cabinet documents remain among the most highly guarded secrets, kept under lock and key even decades after they are filed and despite their public and historical interest.
In fact, Cabinet minutes remain filed and classified in the Cabinet office, away from public scrutiny, without any timeframes for their release nor any distinction between what could be sensitive information and information in the public interest.
Only last year, the Civil Court turned down a request filed by 12 Enemalta employees requesting Cabinet documents to be produced to prove that a 1969 decision entitled them to a full civil service pension as opposed to the reduced pension they were getting.
The court had rejected the request on the grounds that Cabinet minutes were protected and could not be made public, even though the documents in question are more than three decades old.
Coupled with the Freedom of Information Act exemptions, Cabinet documents remain subjected to an indefinite ban on their release, meaning that information of public interest remains out of bounds for citizens as historical insight into some of the most important government decisions remain obscured.
According to the code of civil procedure, Cabinet documents cannot be produced in Court, and there is no provision to make them public after an amount of years anyway.
Nor are the Cabinet documents kept at the National Archives, which is in any case struggling with an enormous backlog of material from government departments and is putting the preservation of historical documents as its main priority.
“We have never had any discussion about archiving and releasing Cabinet papers,” a spokesman at the National Archives said. “Anyone wishing to access such documents would have to make a request to the Cabinet office.”
But why are Cabinet documents classified in the first place? Government officials say it is because they contain sensitive information, but that is not the only kind of information held in Cabinet minutes, and that would not exclude making public non-sensitive information, particularly after long lapses of time.
Although in principle in favour of releasing as much information as possible, the Ombudsman is also sympathetic to what he calls “the space to think”, that is the private place where ideas can be discussed freely before they are decided upon and announced in public.
“Of course Cabinet needs the space to think and discuss things, so not everything can be made public, otherwise you would end up with nobody daring saying anything,” Ombudsman Joseph Said Pullicino said in the wake of the court’s ruling. “On the other hand there are issues of public interest that have to be taken into account.”