The Act implements a manifesto commitment of the Labour Party in the 1997 general election, developed by David Clark as a 1997 White Paper.

The final version of the Act was criticised by freedom of information campaigners as a diluted form of what had been proposed in the White Paper.

Before its introduction, there had been no right of access to government by the general public, merely a limited voluntary framework for sharing information.

The White paper was met with widespread enthusiasm,[8] and was described at the time as being "almost too good to be true" by one advocate of freedom of information legislation.

This gave the public the ability to access more recent records without sacrificing national security or personal privacy.

This office oversees the upholding of information rights in the public interest, as well as making sure the FOIA is adhered to properly.

This is an ongoing process that started with the advent of the digital age of the 21st century and is today a common practice for all UK public records.

In principle, the freedom of information act applies to all "public authorities" within the United Kingdom.

Government departments, the Houses of Parliament, the Northern Ireland Assembly, the Welsh Assembly, the armed forces, local government bodies, National Health Service bodies, schools, colleges and universities, police authorities and Chief Officers of Police are included within this list, which ranges from the Farm Animal Welfare Council to the Youth Council for Northern Ireland.

For example, the BBC is subject to the act only for information which is not held for the purposes of journalism, art or literature, to prevent its journalistic activities from possible compromise.

The appellants in that case argued that the document had been produced for both operational and journalistic reasons, and so should not be covered by the partial exemption provided in the act.

The High Court rejected this argument; Mr Justice Irwin considered that the meaning of journalism within the act meant that any information held for such purposes was covered by the exemption: My conclusion is that the words in the Schedule mean the BBC has no obligation to disclose information which they hold to any significant extent for the purposes of journalism, art or literature, whether or not the information is also held for other purposes.

[14] The first order under section 5 (in November 2011) extended the list of public authorities to also include the Association of Chief Police Officers, the Financial Ombudsman Service and UCAS.

[15] The act creates a general right of access, on request, to information held by public authorities.

Three aspects of the UK's Freedom of Information Act differ from the position in many other countries: At the time of the passing of the Act, advocates of freedom of information legislation were critical of the bill for its complexity, limited scope and the inclusion of a ministerial veto.

[19] By contrast, Tony Blair, the prime minister responsible for passing the Act regards it as "One of the biggest mistakes of his career".

"[20] Labour peer Lord Falconer has criticised the use of the act by journalists for "fishing expeditions" into salacious stories, arguing that "FoI is not for press[,] it is for the people.

Rodney Austin offers the following criticisms of the substance of the Act: The legislation has also been criticised for "loopholes" that allow authorities to avoid disclosing information in certain situations.

Conservative MP David Maclean introduced the bill to ensure that MPs' correspondence was exempt from freedom of information laws.

Further to this, Lord Falconer made comments suggesting that time spent deciding whether or not information fell under an exemption clause should be included in the £600 cost limit.