Last year the chance of someone born in October becoming an Oxbridge undergraduate was more than 30% higher than for someone born in July.

In seasonal terms, compared to the summer-born applicants, autumn births were 25% more likely to get an Oxbridge place, while for winter and spring births the figures were 17% and 15% more likely respectively.

This is according to data obtained from both universities under freedom of information and analysed by the BBC.

It raises the issue of whether universities should start to consider applicants' dates of birth when deciding who to give places to.

It is a well established fact in educational research that children who are younger in their year group at school tend on average to do significantly worse in terms of educational attainment. Known sometimes as the "birthdate effect" or "relative age effect", this generally diminishes as children get older but does not vanish.

Less research has been done on the implications for later life, but what these Oxbridge admissions statistics now demonstrate is that the impact on life outcomes can persist beyond school.

The birthdate effect is also a recognised phenomenon in sport.

We obtained figures from both universities for the months of birth of undergraduate applicants for places in 2012. This data only refers to applicants resident in the UK, not international students. The statistics for both universities reveal a similar monthly pattern for those accepted.

Oxbridge undergraduates admitted 2012

Month of birth

Oxford

Cambridge

TOTAL

Births (1993/4)

Effect

Sep

233

237

470

66,776

1.12

Oct

256

259

515

64,167

1.28

Nov

235

235

470

59,603

1.26

Dec

238

219

457

62,877

1.16

Jan

259

214

473

62,543

1.20

Feb

208

173

381

57,597

1.05

Mar

227

239

466

65,319

1.14

Apr

215

242

457

62,651

1.16

May

208

229

437

65,454

1.06

Jun

214

182

396

64,429

0.98

Jul

190

194

384

64,612

0.95

Aug

212

182

394

62,738

1.00

Sources: Oxford and Cambridge Universities; births data from ONS, General Register Office for Scotland and NISRA; analysis by BBC

This fits with the birthdate effect. The vast majority of UK applicants to Oxbridge are from England and Wales, where school year groups are formed on a September-August basis. Thus those who have been older within their year groups are more likely to reach Oxbridge than their younger classmates.

(In Scotland, school year groups are formed on a March-February basis, and in Northern Ireland on a July-June basis. But only about 3 to 4% of UK-domiciled Oxbridge students are from Scotland or Northern Ireland, so the general picture is still valid.)

Of course the number of people actually born in each month also varies, but this does not explain the variation in Oxbridge admissions. For comparison I have included in the table above the numbers of births by month in the UK in 1993/94, which is the year of birth for more than 80% of the students accepted in 2012.

The final column measures the relative impact for Oxbridge entrance of being born in that month compared to August.

This means that on this basis for someone born in September, say, the likelihood of an Oxbridge place in 2012 was 1.12 times (or 12% higher than) for someone born in August.

It takes into account the overall numbers born in that month 18 years previously. This is a simplified and quick analysis, which ignores various details. But none of these factors should alter the broad overall picture of the strong presence of a birthdate effect.

However, in all this it is very important to note that for both universities a similar pattern - weighted towards birthdays earlier in the September-August academic year - applies to all applicants, not just those who were accepted.

This suggests the birthdate effect (like some other inequalities) is already present in influencing which pupils are doing well enough at school to apply to Oxbridge.

In other words, the Oxbridge admissions process is probably reflecting a pre-established pattern of educational disadvantage, not creating it.

Both Oxford and Cambridge routinely issue a broad collection of statistics relating to admissions, such as gender, ethnicity, disability, region and school type of candidates. However neither proactively publishes the data on month of birth, which we therefore obtained through requests under the Freedom of Information Act.

Both universities state they do not take an applicant's month of birth into account in the admissions process. A Cambridge spokesperson said that an analysis of admissions statistics should examine a range of variables over several years. Neither university wanted to issue any further reaction.

The impact of month of birth on a wide range of child and adult outcomes is currently the subject of a major research project conducted by the Institute of Fiscal Studies, which is expected to report in May.

Ellen Greaves, one of the IFS researchers, commented: "The data obtained by the BBC show that universities, including Oxford and Cambridge, may be missing out on some of the brightest students by accepting disproportionate numbers of pupils born earlier in the academic year."

"Although much could and should be done to address these inequalities earlier in the education system, it is in each university's interest to make sure that they consider a pupil's month of birth in their admissions process."

Figures obtained by the BBC show that there have been more than 300 disciplinary incidents in the past three years on the navy's 13 submarines, including 42 cases of misconduct or unfitness through alcohol or drugs.

The list of disciplinary offences, provided following a freedom of information request, itemises 13 instances of misconduct or unfitness due to alcohol or drugs on the four Trident submarines, which carry nuclear weapons as the nation's nuclear deterrent.

It also details eight drink or drug related incidents on HMS Astute, the submarine on which a junior rating shot dead an officer in April 2011 after binge drinking while on shore leave. All eight cases occurred after this shooting.

An inquest last month into the death of Lt Cdr Ian Molyneux focused attention on what was described as a culture of excessive drinking among the submarine's personnel.

The inquest was told that Able Seaman Ryan Donovan had drunk more than 20 pints of cider and lager over two days before the attack, in which he also shot and injured another officer while the submarine was docked in Southampton.

Police investigating the murder were so alarmed about heavy drinking by the crew while ashore that the senior officer wrote to Hampshire's Chief Constable to highlight the issue and the warning was passed to military authorities.

The coroner Keith Wiseman said a culture of drinking to excess had to stop, and recommended that a system of random alcohol testing for crew should be introduced.

The Royal Navy has tightened its rules on alcohol consumption before duty. "We take all disciplinary offences seriously," a navy spokesman said.

"Although alcohol is available on board Royal Navy ships and submarines, its consumption is extremely limited and the RN's promotion of healthy living, coupled with the professionalism of modern sailors, means that fewer sailors drink at sea than ever before," he added.

"This is particularly true of the submarine service due to the demands of operating the boat and the restrictions of working a continuous six-hour watch routine."

Submarines: numbers of offences

2010

2011

2012

HMS Astute

11

14

26

HMS Ambush

0

3

3

HMS Talent

2

5

3

HMS Tireless

10

4

6

HMS Torbay

3

2

7

HMS Trafalgar

3

0

0

HMS Trenchant

4

22

11

HMS Triumph

7

4

2

HMS Turbulent

16

13

4

HMS Vanguard

14

9

9

HMS Vengeance

22

7

2

HMS Victorious

3

13

23

HMS Vigilant

3

11

10

Total

98

107

106

Total offences 2010-12

311

Figures based on incidents involving service personnel on submarines

The most common form of misconduct within the submarine service is going absent without leave, which accounts for about half the incidents.

Alcohol and drug related misbehaviour is the next most frequent issue. According to the Ministry of Defence, these cases mainly involve alcohol rather than drugs.

Those involved are generally punished by a mixture of fines, restriction of privileges and stopping of shore leave.

The navy provided the BBC with details of 311 disciplinary incidents since January 2010 involving service personnel serving on submarines. This covers the 13 submarines in the service, but it can be difficult to contrast the disciplinary records of the various vessels without knowing their schedules and extent of times at sea.

The four Trident submarines are the V-class ones, Vanguard, Victorious, Vigilant and Vengeance.

These figures are collected by police forces in England and Wales for reporting to the Home Office. But the Home Office doesn't include them in the police statistics that it routinely publishes. The BBC obtained them by a request under the Freedom of Information Act.

They reveal that the number of officers over 40 has stayed roughly unchanged from 2010 to 2012, while the number under 26 has plummeted by nearly half in this brief period.

It raises questions about how representative the police force is, especially given the issues about relations between the police and young people in some areas. And it also can't help with the concerns about the level of physical fitness among the police.

This position was in defiance of the clear stance adopted by the Information Commissioner Christopher Graham, who had already ruled that all emails sent on government business could fall under FOI, whether an official or private account was used.

The Department's arguments had been widely derided by those with knowledge of information law, and presumably it dropped its appeal after realising that it was hopeless to pursue this long-standing dispute any further.

The DfE's difficulties with implementing the FOI Act were re-emphasized last week, when the latest statistics on the performance of government departments were released.

In the latest quarter it had the worst record out of all departments in England for responding to FOI requests within the legal time limit, managing this in only 74% of cases. Some other departments such as Health had a 100% score.

So it's not surprising that the Department for Education has today been put under special monitoring by the Information Commissioner's Office because of its inadequate record on FOI. This is a bit like the ICO's equivalent of schools being placed in special measures following a critical inspection by Ofsted. The ICO increases its checks on poorly performing authorities until it is satisfied that their procedures have improved.

Three other public authorities have also been targeted today by the ICO for close monitoring due to their unsatisfactory handling of FOI applications. They are the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP), the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister in Northern Ireland (OFMDPM), and Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council.

The DWP was another department which ranked badly in the latest central government statistics, only meeting the legal deadline for 83% of requests.

The OFMDPM has also suffered a recent reversal in a high-profile FOI legal battle, eventually being forced to disclose details behind the decision to exempt Roman Catholic schools in Northern Ireland from fair employment legislation.

The Office has been severely criticised for its recent performance on FOI.

The DfE, DWP and Wirral Council have been subject to special monitoring from the ICO in the past.

The Information Commissioner Chris Graham says: "It is particularly disappointing to see that the advances previously made by the Department for Education, the Department for Work and Pensions, and Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council - which were introduced following concerns after previous rounds of monitoring - have not been continued.

"This is not good enough and we expect these authorities to take the necessary measures to ensure that they are meeting their obligations under the Freedom of Information Act."

Judging by the statistics that each force gives to the Home Office, the answers would appear to be somewhat surprising.

In Cleveland there's just one. In Greater Manchester, however, there are 376.

In Avon & Somerset the number jumped from five to 72 last year. In Nottinghamshire it more than doubled in one year, and then the next year it fell back by more than half, to about the original number.

These statistics are reported annually by police forces in England and Wales to the Home Office. The government does not publish them, but the BBC has obtained them through a freedom of information request.

The examples quoted are only a few of numerous dramatic discrepancies and rapid fluctuations exhibited by the data. Can they truly reflect real and sudden changes in the demographic composition of the various police forces? It seems unlikely.

The statistics are based on officers declaring themselves as disabled or not. Under the law a disability is considered to be a physical or mental impairment which would substantially affect the ability to carry out normal daily activities for at least a year.

The fluctuating figures are more likely to be explained by inconsistencies in these self-declarations.

And this suggests that, although these statistics are collated by forces under instruction from the Home Office and then submitted to central government, they have to be treated as somewhat unreliable.

Whether staff members in any workforce would want to declare themselves as disabled clearly depends on a variety of factors. This would include the internal culture of the organisation, the attitude of management, and the pattern of incentives as perceived by the staff. The police data certainly raises doubts about the accuracy of such workforce statistics.

A spokesperson for the Association of Chief Police Officers acknowledges the problem: "Self-declaration of disability can cause fluctuations between years.

"The police service will continue to encourage officers to declare their disability where it applies, not for the purpose of keeping the numbers up or consistency for its own sake, but because we can better support disabled officers if we know about and understand their disability."

"This picture clearly isn't representative of the demographics of each force," says Rob Gurney of the Disabled Police Association.

He argues that there is under-reporting by officers who are scared to notify a disability, especially at a time when posts are being cut: "With the worry of ill-health retirements, financial cuts etc, it's not a surprise to find forces having a low declaration rate."

The Home Office says that the issue will be tackled by the College of Policing, the new professional body for the police which is being created. It insists that forces must monitor and record the number of disabled officers.

Some forces have figures which are more stable and more plausible. For the sake of completeness the figures we obtained - such as they are - are given in the table below.

Avon & Somerset Police says it has been encouraging its officers to enter more details about themselves on the staff database and that could explain the rapid jump in its number.

Cambridgeshire Police has told the BBC that its figure for 2009/10 is incorrect and probably includes officers who preferred not to state whether they were disabled. This error may be because the force gave the wrong information to the Home Office.

The figures, which the Home Office describes as provisional and unverified, are compiled on a full-time equivalent basis.

Disabled police officers, England & Wales

Police force

2009/10

2010/11

2011/12

Avon & Somerset

5

5

72

Bedfordshire

43

37

34

Cambridgeshire

133

69

67

Cheshire

28

23

24

Cleveland

1

1

1

Cumbria

50

58

54

Derbyshire

48

47

41

Devon & Cornwall

41

47

41

Dorset

18

18

15

Durham

23

20

17

Dyfed-Powys

47

48

41

Essex

50

53

46

Gloucestershire

51

54

47

Greater Manchester

303

348

376

Gwent

0

47

46

Hampshire

3

8

8

Hertfordshire

46

39

34

Humberside

46

41

38

Kent

54

75

84

Lancashire

6

6

7

Leicestershire

29

32

32

Lincolnshire

24

18

17

London, City of

0

0

0

Merseyside

32

27

17

Metropolitan Police

184

181

177

Norfolk

2

8

21

Northamptonshire

42

39

47

Northumbria

22

20

28

North Wales

13

13

24

North Yorkshire

42

42

28

Nottinghamshire *

40

97

42

South Wales

74

71

53

South Yorkshire

30

70

60

Staffordshire

24

25

16

Suffolk

34

39

43

Surrey

22

22

21

Sussex

42

77

78

Thames Valley

21

14

11

Warwickshire

30

18

47

West Mercia

12

10

51

West Midlands

71

65

57

West Yorkshire

18

23

27

Wiltshire

3

6

9

TOTAL

1807

1960

1998

Nottinghamshire Police have got in touch to say that they misreported their figure for 2010/11 which should actually be 43. (The BBC contacted them about the fluctuation in their data two days prior to the publication of this blog entry, but the force did not respond to us pointing out their error during this period).

Yet the organisation seems to have a surprising gap in its own knowledge - it has told the Information Commissioner that it doesn't hold any information on what its chief executive is paid.

As a group of schools including 20 publicly-funded academies, along with 11 independent schools, United Learning receives public money and is a public authority for the purposes of FOI (freedom of information). The organisation is one of England's largest providers of academy schools.

Its chief executive is Jon Coles, who was previously a senior civil servant in the Department for Education.

Academies were brought under the Freedom of Information Act in 2010. The number of academies (now more than 2,000) has been increasing rapidly, and this puts them in line with other state-funded schools.

But this case shows there are limits to the openness that FOI can bring to some organisations involved in providing academies.

Earlier this year United Learning received an FOI request asking for details of the pay and employment packages for its chief executive and other senior management. When it did not supply the information, the requester complained to the Information Commissioner's Office.

United Learning told the Commissioner that its senior management were actually employed and paid by a charity, the United Church Schools Trust. This is a separate but linked charity which is not publicly funded and does not come under FOI.

In a decision released today the Commissioner upheld United Learning's stance that it did not hold the requested information on how much its chief executive and senior management are remunerated. The Commissioner was told that they were not paid out of public funds.

I had hoped to ask United Learning to explain this unusual state of affairs, but the organisation's spokesman told me: "United Learning Trust has no view to express on the case".

That's the view of the Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude, who in a speech to the Institute for Government last month complained that "there are cases where permanent secretaries have blocked agreed government policy from going ahead or advised other officials not to implement ministerial decisions".

It's not happening all the time, he says, but there are too many occasions on which this "utterly unacceptable" behaviour has occurred. He's keen to stress that Labour ministers in the previous government also protested about the same difficulty.

In an interview in August Maude outlined one example where he said a permanent secretary's behaviour was "designed to give a signal to all the officials in the room that they needn't bother about what Francis Maude wanted".

It's one reason why he's introducing a plan for civil service reform, including greater accountability for the top officials in government departments.

But how often have senior officials actually been behaving in this unconstitutional and obstructive way to intentionally thwart the wishes of ministers? I made a freedom of information request to the Cabinet Office for examples of the problem Maude is angry about.

I was surprised to get the reply that they couldn't tell me about any - because they haven't got any relevant recorded information.

So what is the explanation for this? "Francis Maude was referring to verbal communications rather any recorded information", a Cabinet Office spokesperson told me. (FOI requests only cover information which is recorded in some form).

But why are none of the examples recorded? "There is no list of examples, because we haven't held a meeting to collate the examples," says a source close to Maude. "We didn't think it would be fruitful to do so".

So if that's the explanation, I suppose at least it means it wasn't because the minister asked officials to draw up a list of examples of civil servant obstructiveness and they refused to do so.

The material belonged to some of the world's leading climate scientists and caused them difficulty just before the major United Nations Copenhagen summit on climate change.

Called Climategate Revisited, the programme examined the impact of the ensuing controversy about the conduct of climate science on public opinion, media reporting and the scientific community. It was produced by me.

Making a radio documentary is always an exercise in trying to squeeze a quart into a pint pot. Your researches invariably collect more information and recordings than it is possible to fit into the allocated slot.

Since in this case some unbroadcast material comes from a freedom of information request, I thought I should write about it here. So this contains some additional information about the police inquiry beyond what was in the programme.

Norfolk police investigated the possible criminal hacking of the university's computer system, until they announced in July they were abandoning the operation. Proceedings under the relevant part of the Computer Misuse Act have to be brought within three years. Since they had not yet identified a suspect, they said there was no prospect of a prosecution within the time limit.

I submitted an FOI request for some of the files compiled during their inquiry, called Operation Cabin. The first point I should make about their response is that they released much more information than in any previous case in my experience where the police have been asked about such a recent investigation. I did not get all the material I requested, but they did send a number of interesting documents.

During the operation some people queried whether the Norfolk force had sufficient expertise to run a specialist technical cybercrime inquiry. This concern is reinforced by the files released.

The operation was reviewed by a senior counter-terrorism officer who concluded that "there are national units both in policing and with partner agencies that have specialist knowledge and skills that would have added value to the inquiry."

He did praise the Norfolk investigators for their "impressive" commitment, adding that most UK police forces have little specialist capability in this arena.

The Norfolk investigation was led by Detective Superintendent Julian Gregory, who has since retired. He told us: "We sought assistance from a number of quarters and we probably didn't get everything we wanted."

"If you look at national assets, they've all got their own workloads," he said. "We got the technical support we needed from counter-terrorist command, but other units had their own priorities."

Another document shows that the police decided not to make a media appeal for information to assist the investigation during the Copenhagen climate summit (known as COP15), because "with COP15 still underway in Copenhagen raising awareness still further may have an negative impact on the conference".

Some may be surprised that the police would allow these apparently political considerations to affect their conduct of an investigation.

Former Det Supt Gregory explained that "we didn't want to create even more speculation around that conference". But he also stated that more significant was a practical consideration, a feeling that the police infrastructure might not be able to cope with the deluge of calls which could result.

Other files released show that the University of East Anglia was represented on the Gold Group which oversaw the strategy of the investigation. Meetings were attended by Brian Summers, the UEA Registrar.

I was initially surprised to discover this, since one hypothesis the police had to investigate was whether it could have been an "inside job" in which a UEA employee had leaked the material, acting as a kind of whistleblower. But I gather from other police sources I have talked to since that this is not necessarily unusual.

"We'd often engage the people we think need to be involved in a Gold Group," former Det Supt Gregory told us. "Presence at the meeting doesn't give any undue influence or anything untoward like that. It was appropriate that they were engaged and we understood their perspective as we undertook our work."

But he added there were constraints on what he said at the Gold meetings. "Where appropriate I would not enlarge on certain lines of enquiry. I would deal with those in a more private context. I never felt compromised as the senior investigator."

The disclosures also reveal how the police worked their way through certain websites on which Climategate had been discussed, printing off and filing away, for example, a list of staff at the Taxpayers' Alliance.

And they also contain a list of operational tasks actioned, plans for forensic examination of UEA computing equipment, and questionnaires for police interviews, which included asking people for their stance on climate change.

However, there was other information which the Norfolk police refused to release, such as the identity of those countries from which they sought help with the investigation. They argued that this could damage future international cooperation.

These are some of the documents released by the police:

I was pondering on these questions when I read a document released earlier this month by the energy department in response to an information request.

It featured in a collection of departmental files relating to "Climategate", the incident in 2009 when large quantities of emails belonging to climate scientists at the University of East Anglia were hacked and published on the internet.

The major controversy that followed focused on concerns about how some scientists were operating. In the aftermath, officials involved in government energy policy were worried about how it would affect public opinion on policies to tackle climate change.

In June 2010, DECC's then head of science Dr Nafees Meah gave an internal presentation to colleagues about communicating climate science.

In it, he noted that Monbiot had called for the resignation of Professor Phil Jones, head of the university's Climatic Research Unit, who featured prominently in the hacked emails.

Monbiot later regretted this, when an inquiry cleared Prof Jones and his colleagues of manipulating data, while stating that they should have been more open about their work. But at the time, many considered it striking that a leading environmentalist had criticised Prof Jones to such an extent.

Dr Meah's reference to Monbiot (who he called "Mombiot") was preceded by some description of him, which was removed from the disclosed text of the speech:

What could he have said that demanded such secrecy, amidst the release of a large collection of government documents which contained much revealing material?

DECC has now told me that the missing words are "the saintly".

"The decision to redact the wording was made on the basis that, in printed form, the comment could have been misconstrued in the absence of the speaker's intonation," the department said.

"On reflection, however, it is considered that this approach was erring on the side of caution."

So now we know that Monbiot was described as "saintly", even if we still don't know the intonation with which this epithet would have been uttered.

And perhaps we have learnt something else - that when government departments respond to information requests, sometimes extracts are redacted for unnecessary and rather peculiar reasons.

This wasn't a traditional public inquiry aimed at analysing causes, interrogating the views and counter-views of those involved, attaching blame and devising recommendations for the future.

It was simply an attempt to collate all the available evidence and to publish it. I was struck by how, at their press conference, the panel members stressed that this was their role and that they did not seek to make value judgements.

Yet it is clear from the reaction to the panel's report that this did nothing to reduce its impact. Facts, not comment, have caused shock and outrage, headlines and apologies.

The panel and its research and archiving staff have certainly done an impressive job of organising, cataloguing, presenting, contextualising and summarising a huge amount of paperwork. The excellent Guardian Datablog has an interesting overview of the material released.

Of course documents by themselves can never provide the full truth about a complex set of events. That would always need to take in individual recollections, the direct accounts of those involved, and the chance for those criticised to provide their version of events.

But when there are well-founded suspicions of a cover-up by the authorities, the pure disclosure of the raw information can be the crucial remedy. This is the key point appreciated by Andy Burnham when, as a cabinet minister, he persuaded the Labour government to establish the panel in 2009.

And as regular readers of this blog will know, the BBC pursued a freedom of information request about the tragedy from the time before the panel was established.

Perhaps this is a model that may be adapted to other controversies. It suits an era where we have the technology of the internet and the political force of the notion of transparency.

Driven by their distress over cover-ups and misinformation, the bereaved families have long demanded complete disclosure of all relevant documents. Has this total disclosure been achieved?

As conscientiously recorded by the panel, it decided not to publish - despite the wishes of most of the bereaved families - some "very sensitive personal data". This was "out of respect for those who died" and is of course entirely understandable.

It redacted some personal information about others where disclosure would not "add to public understanding".

The panel also encountered insuperable legal obstacles to obtaining some material held by Liverpool Law Society on behalf of local solicitors who had represented the bereaved and survivors in various proceedings.

But there is no evidence that any part of the state has held anything back from the panel.

Although papers revealing the views of government ministers were originally excluded from the panel's terms of reference, this constraint was abandoned and they do feature in the files released.

In fact, the thoroughness of disclosure is such that they even include extracts from the cabinet secretary's notebook recording discussions at cabinet meetings. Unlike the official minutes, this notes the different views of individual ministers. In the past, the notebooks have been kept secret - as noted by the National Archives - for longer than the standard 30-year rule which applies to the official record of the meetings.

It is possible to compare the handwritten notes taken by the cabinet secretary Sir Robin Butler at the cabinet meeting in the wake of the Hillsborough tragedy with the official minutes.

The one organisation criticised by the panel for not fully co-operating and supplying all the information it could is a private - not public - body.

This is the Royal Sun Alliance insurance company, which at the time of the disaster in 1989 insured Sheffield Wednesday, the club that owns the Hillsborough ground. The panel report draws attention to numerous safety defects at the venue.

The insurance company refused to give the panel confidential access to its legally privileged information, despite the panel's "strenuous efforts" to persuade the company to comply.

A company spokesperson told me: "The panel's terms of reference related to the disclosure of documents held by public bodies and did not apply to any of the private bodies involved. However, we willingly co-operated with the panel, disclosing all relevant materials in our possession. It is not our practice to release legally privileged materials."

Under the Freedom of Information Act, public authorities can be forced to disclose legal advice and other legally privileged documents when this would be in the public interest.

There is no similar legal provision for the private sector.

This expression of relief came in an email from a civil servant at the business department discussing government matters - but sent from his personal email account to colleagues at their private email addresses.

I have just been provided with a copy of this email and others about internet policy sent through personal accounts. Although written back in October 2008, the issue they illustrate - of the relationship between FOI, official business and private email accounts - is still very much a continuing one.

The message was sent by Geoff Smith, an official at what was then called the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (Berr), now the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

It dealt with departmental policy towards Nominet, the private company that controls the .uk internet domain and is thus a crucial part of the UK's online operations.

In 2008 the organisation was trapped in a bitter internal dispute. Some involved felt this threatened its ability to fulfil its nationally important responsibilities and could require government intervention.

According to emails seen by the BBC, Mr Smith was one of a group of Berr and Nominet staff who corresponded about Nominet's problems and Berr's position via their personal email accounts.

Some seem to have been worried that earlier official exchanges on these topics could be publicly revealed through freedom of information requests.

In another email obtained by the BBC, Nominet's senior policy adviser Martin Boyle - who had himself only recently worked at Berr - encouraged his former colleagues still at the government department to delete emails because he suspected "a FOI is just around the corner".

Allegations that business department officials used private email addresses to seek to circumvent FOI surfaced in an employment tribunal case involving Nominet, which was first reported last month after legal restrictions were lifted.

BIS and Nominet both declined to comment on the specific content of these emails.

A Nominet spokesperson explained: "It is not our policy to comment on individual emails."

Similarly, a spokesman for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) said: "We won't comment on individual cases, or on leaked documents."

He added: "However, our longstanding IT security policy is clear: All official correspondence from BIS must be undertaken from a BIS email account and all breaches of our IT policy are thoroughly investigated. Additionally, the department is fully committed to the Freedom of Information regime, including the latest guidance from the Information Commissioner's Office regarding the use of personal accounts."

Government policy on internet governance is now handled by the culture department rather than BIS.

In November the Information Rights Tribunal will hear a case concerning the use of private emails by the Education Secretary Michael Gove and his advisers. The Department for Education is appealing against a decision by the information commissioner, who ruled that private email accounts are subject to FOI requests when used for official business.

Last year Chris Graham, the commissioner, made clear his view that, whatever any officials and ministers think, they can't evade the FOI law by using private email.

In other words, if the tribunal upholds his stance, officials and ministers will find that using personal email accounts does not guarantee that they are operating "free from fear of FOI".

That is the likely reaction to the new report by the Commons Justice Committee, which has assessed how FOI is working in practice and concludes that the UK's Freedom of Information Act "is serving the nation well".

The two controversial topics it has focused on most are the cost of FOI and its impact on the frankness of internal policy debate. In both areas the MPs on the committee are not convinced by many of the challenges from those who think the FOI system is too expensive or damaging to good government or both.

Thus, on the starkest, most high-profile issues, the committee does not recommend giving cabinet records or other policy documents any increased legal protection from FOI requests; nor does it back the introduction of up-front fees for making freedom of information applications.

But it is clear from the cautious and nuanced report - and from their lines of questioning at the committee hearings - that the MPs do have some significant worries.

The Ministry of Justice will now have to consider how to respond to the committee's review of the workings of the Act and whether to bring forward any changes.

Much of the evidence to the committee from public authorities concerned the administrative burden of FOI. While the report stresses that FOI disclosures can prompt savings as well as costing money, it suggests a number of smaller measures to address the expense issue.

Currently most public authorities can reject FOI requests where it would take them more than 18 hours to retrieve the information. The MPs propose cutting this to 16 hours. But they reject as unfeasible the more drastic option of allowing authorities also to count towards the limit the time spent thinking about whether to release material.

It is interesting to see that the committee strongly maintains that well-run public authorities can cut the cost of FOI considerably.

As to whether FOI has in fact introduced a "chilling effect" on honest records of policy discussion, the MPs are clearly concerned and summarise the evidence on both sides while eventually remaining agnostic. However they argue that if this is the case, the solution is not to curtail FOI. Instead senior government figures should proclaim that FOI does leave a "safe space" for internal debate and use their ministerial right of veto over the Information Commissioner if necessary.

Yet there is one category of critic of the FOI system who will be pleased - university researchers. Many academics had argued that the UK-wide FOI Act should have an exemption for academic research intended for later publication, as is the case in Scotland. This is the only restriction on the scope of FOI that the committee back.

In terms of the main complaints coming from those who want greater openness, the MPs were clearly influenced by the argument that there is too much delay in the current system.

The committee recommends that the law should lay down statutory time limits on how long public authorities can take to assess whether releasing material is in the public interest and to decide on reviews of their previous decisions. Currently the time limits are only advisory.

The report is unanimous and some of the conclusions have a balanced "on the one hand, on the other" tone which hints at compromises and some differences beneath the surface.

The MPs are clearly very cross with Tony Blair because of his failure to give evidence to them in person, despite his well-publicised self-condemnation of himself as a "nincompoop" for introducing FOI.

But for me the most striking feature of his letter to the committee is the fact that it states one purpose of the legislation was "to permit people to access information about themselves held by government".

This is simply wrong, since personal information of this kind is specifically excluded from the FOI Act and is instead covered by the Data Protection Act.

I have also heard this same inaccurate and peculiar claim made by Jonathan Powell, Blair's former chief of staff and fellow FOI critic.

I don't know what to make of this error, but since Mr Blair did not appear in front of the committee, the MPs did not have a chance to ask him about it.

Finally, as a declaration of interest, I should state that I gave evidence to the committee from a journalistic perspective for BBC News.

Yesterday it was the subject of a scathing report from the Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence (CHRE), which condemned the NMC for - amongst other failings - its longstanding record of confusion of purpose, lack of clear strategic direction, inconsistent governance, unbalanced working relationships, deficient leadership, weak business planning, internal cultural problems, poor financial stewardship, unreliable management information, risky IT systems, and insufficiently transparent decision-making.

The CHRE report refers seven times to what it describes as the backlog of cases faced by the NMC (if you're inclined to check for yourself, one of these is spelt as "back log").

The NMC accepts that there have been "substantial failings" in its work, and its interim chief executive Jackie Smith apologised yesterday. She says they have started to tackle the organisation's many defects.

But what the NMC will not apparently accept is that its problems amount to having a "backlog" of complaints to adjudicate on.

When one of my colleagues make a freedom of information request three months ago for documents using the term "backlog", she was told that "the information requested is not held" - because "the NMC does not have a backlog of cases."

Today an NMC spokesperson admitted: "We recognise that not all of our cases are being progressed as quickly as we would want or expect."

But she justified the FOI reply: "We absolutely stand by the response that was given in the FOI request. There are a number of cases which are actively being progressed. Backlog is not a word we choose to use. There is no backlog - we have a caseload."

Instead what the NMC does have apparently is a large number of what it prefers to call "historic" cases.

In April the chancellor told the Daily Telegraph that he was "shocked to see that some of the very wealthiest people in the country have organised their tax affairs... so that they were regularly paying virtually no income tax."

He explained that he was talking about people with multi-million pound annual incomes and added: "I'm not allowed to be shown the names of the individuals but I've sat with the most senior people at the Inland Revenue, the people who run some of the high net worth units there. They have given me examples, anonymised examples, and so we are taking action."

Mr Osborne was justifying his controversial plan in the Budget in March to limit all tax reliefs, including for charitable donations, to an annual maximum of £50,000 or 25% of an individual's income, whichever was greater.

Following a freedom of information request from the BBC for a copy of the "anonymised examples" shown to the chancellor, the Treasury has now disclosed one sheet setting out three "illustrative" cases provided to him.

This shows:

It is not completely clear on what basis these cases were derived. The Treasury describes them as "stylised examples based on an analysis of the tax records of those individuals most affected by the change" and "not actual taxpayers' details". HM Revenue and Customs is legally prohibited from revealing the tax details of an identifiable individual.

Of course Mr Osborne may have been given further evidence in meetings of the tax avoidance problem he was seeking to tackle, but this is the only written documentation that the Treasury was able to provide.

The proposed limit provoked outrage from many charities, and two weeks ago the chancellor announced he was dropping plans to cap tax relief for gifts to charity, although he plans to press ahead with the restriction on other tax reliefs next year.

However, what is clear from this disclosure is that it is indeed charitable donations rather than other allowable reliefs which was the focus of the Treasury's concern to extract more tax from some of the country's richest individuals.

While in this case there is something in common with the UK - in that some British public authorities would like the same policy to be adopted - often the most striking aspect of international comparison is the very wide discrepancies between the laws and attitudes that are accepted in different countries.

In the Netherlands, for example, people making FOI applications can sometimes end up being financially better off rather than worse off.

If a public authority fails to reply to an FOI request by the legal time limit, then it may be penalised by having to pay a fine for every day it is late, with the money involved going to the requester, at a rate of 30 euros a day up to a maximum of 1260 euros. I know one Dutch journalist who has received such a payment more than once.

The idea is that it should deter public authorities from excessive delays in dealing with FOI applications. If such a law existed in the UK then there are some public authorities who would have found it very expensive - and some frequent FOI requesters who would have found it a highly lucrative activity.

I'm not aware of anyone who is suggesting the introduction of such a scheme in the UK, even if the notion might be tempting to those of us who have had to put up with long delays. However, as with the Irish and British FOI laws, Dutch FOI legislation is also currently under review, and this provision may not stay in place.

While in some respects the UK's freedom of information system is far-reaching and transparent compared to many countries - for example, in the wide range of public bodies covered - there are other aspects where it is comparatively limited.

In Norway the process of applying for copies of documents under FOI is greatly facilitated by a government internet portal which lists state records. You don't have to be Norwegian to use it, and there is even a version in English.

You can easily browse and search for documents, select the ones you want for your order basket, and submit an application for them. It helps requesters who might otherwise not know what records are actually held by the public authority.

Earlier this year the Chancellor, George Osborne, said in an interview with the Daily Telegraph that he was happy to consider making the personal tax returns of senior ministers publicly available.

There's a big gap between considering something and implementing it. But there are countries in which summary tax data of all citizens, whether politicians or not, is publicly available.

And in Sweden there was a website at the large general election which included such data in its profiles of candidates, making it easy for electors to see the income of those they might vote for.

Could such information be found useful by the electorate in the UK?

A YouGov poll in the wake of Mr Osborne's remarks suggested that in fact there are many voters whose preference between candidates would be affected by knowing how rich they are - wealth and easy popularity do not always go together.

But while some UK politicians may be thinking of following suit, the Irish government could soon be heading back in the opposite direction.

The idea is favoured by those who think it would inhibit time-wasters posing trivial questions, but opposed by others who fear it would deter legitimate requesters, especially of course those with more limited resources.

However the Committee was given some confusing evidence on the longer-term impact of this measure in Ireland. It was told that the number of FOI requests, which dropped dramatically when this charge was introduced in 2003, has now risen back to the previous level.

But this is not correct. Its impact was clearly to deter many FOI requesters, and this deterrent effect has persisted, halving the number of applications from about 8,000 annually to about 4,000. The fee is 15 euros, with a lower rate for benefit claimants.

The recent position is clear from the latest annual report of Office of the Information Commissioner (OIC) in Ireland, which was released this week with the statistics for 2011.

The data are complicated by the fact that Ireland's FOI law - and the country's Information Commissioner - covers requests both for personal and non-personal information. However the up-front fee is only charged for applications for non-personal information and for mixed requests which involve both kinds - a point which is sometimes forgotten by those who simply examine the total number of requests.

I have extracted the figures for non-personal and mixed requests from the OIC annual reports, and this shows the following pattern:

1999

6,505

2000

7,347

2001

8,285

2002

8,346

2003

7,601

2004

3,460

2005

3,454

2006

3,583

2007

3,146

2008

4,443

2009

4,905

2010

4,561

2011

3,936

1999 was the first full year of freedom of information in Ireland. Up-front fees were introduced in July 2003. There are some caveats needed. This doesn't take account of changes in the range of public authorities covered by FOI, nor in the nature of the documents which can be sought. It's also possible that requesters might have responded to fees by grouping several requests into one - this behaviour was reported by some public authorities.

Ireland's FOI law is under review currently, just as the UK's one is. In its programme for government, the Fine Gael / Labour coalition formed last year promised to extend FOI and stated: "We will legislate to restore the Freedom of Information Act to what it was before it was undermined by the outgoing Government."

It was the outgoing government led by Fianna Fail which brought in the up-front fee amongst other changes. The current Irish government is now considering internally how to put its pledge into practice.

In other words, if this promise is implemented, it seems possible that the Irish government may reverse the introduction of FOI fees just at the same time that some UK politicians are thinking of bringing them in.

For the last financial year, the government and Vodafone agreed that the state could save £5.3m on its payments to the mobile phone company.

This was one of a number of renegotiations with large suppliers pursued by the coalition after it came to power.

In October 2010 the Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude told the Conservative party conference that the new government had saved "several hundred million pounds" in one year by modifying contracts with its biggest suppliers.

He said this was based on "dealing with them as a single customer instead of letting them play one part of government off against another".

But the Cabinet Office refused to provide a breakdown of this figure by supplier, in response to a freedom of information request from the BBC.

It did provide a departmental breakdown, which showed that the Ministry of Defence and the Department for Work and Pensions accounted for over half the total of the overall government savings target of £671m.

The Cabinet Office argued that releasing company-by-company details of savings would damage relationships with suppliers and jeopardise negotiations with them.

The BBC appealed to the Information Commissioner, who last month upheld the government's refusal, except where suppliers themselves consented to the release of the figures.

The only company to agree was Vodafone.

"We believe in being as transparent as possible in our dealings with the Government," said a Vodafone UK spokesperson.

The company denies that the savings agreed indicate that government departments were previously being overcharged.

"Our dealings with central government are now far more about helping government find a better way of working," the spokesperson said.

"We strongly believe that using our technology and expertise will save many hundreds of millions of pounds in areas such as property, energy and fixed-line communications. We are prepared to make an investment in providing services to the public sector to help the government secure the much bigger gains that can be made by working smarter."

Vodafone's financial relations with government have recently been highly controversial because of the company's tax affairs - and the sums involved in this dispute are much greater than the £5m savings - but in the context of these contract renegotiations, Vodafone has been more willing to be transparent than any other large Whitehall supplier.

It illustrates how private companies that do business with the state will increasingly have to face up to questions of openness and freedom of information.

The willingness of public sector suppliers to accept greater scrutiny of their contracts is going to grow in importance as an issue, in line with the pressure for transparency in value for money in public spending.

The Cabinet Office has got in touch to say that since the Information Commissioner's decision, another government supplier has agreed to the release of details of savings - the IT services group Capgemini. In its case, the savings agreed through contract renegotiation total more than £200m, although this figure is over several years until 2017.

The savings agreed with another supplier are expected to be announced later this week. This new policy of disclosing such savings represents a change in approach from the Cabinet Office since the commissioner's ruling.

The Cabinet Office argued that the BBC's FOI request should be rejected even when the companies themselves were happy for the information to be released, because by a process of elimination it could lead to other companies who were not so willing being identified. Now the government does seem keen to publicise some of the company-by-company savings it has agreed.

Last July the commissioner ruled that it was in the public interest for documents about the Hillsborough tragedy to be released, since it would "add to the public knowledge and understanding about the reaction of various parties to that event, including the government of the day".

This followed a freedom of information request from the BBC that had been rejected by the Cabinet Office. That FOI case was dropped after a government pledge to publish its files on Hillsborough via an independent panel later this year.

The BBC has seen now some of this material and on Thursday is reporting details from these documents.

Due to these disclosures, we now know that a few days after the tragedy in April 1989 Margaret Thatcher was informed about the views of senior officers from Merseyside Police. She was told that one of them blamed drunken Liverpool supporters for the terrible incident which led to the deaths of 96 of the club's fans as a result of horrific overcrowding.

The briefing she received also reported the assessment of the then Merseyside Chief Constable Sir Kenneth Oxford. He thought that a key factor was the presence of Liverpool fans without tickets and this was being ignored while the authorities were being blamed.

Sir Kenneth was a controversial chief constable who had often clashed with local politicians over his tough policing strategy, and was at this point close to retirement.

We already knew that private briefings accusing the Liverpool fans had been coming from South Yorkshire Police - this was the force responsible for the Hillsborough ground in Sheffield. It was later criticised for the poor crowd control that had actually been the main factor in causing the loss of life.

What the papers show

Lady Thatcher's then press secretary Sir Bernard Ingham has already revealed that when he accompanied her on a visit to the stadium the day after the tragedy, they were told the incident was the fault of a "tanked-up mob" of Liverpool supporters.

What we now know is that a similar message was coming to her, not only from the force which had made catastrophic errors in policing the FA Cup semi-final, but also from the top ranks of the police force covering the locality of most of the victims - the bereaved families and the anguished survivors.

Of course this document only reveals what was said in the period soon afterwards, and those involved may have changed their minds as further evidence came to light.

But it is interesting to note that the position of the senior Merseyside officers conflicted with that taken at the same time by some junior ranks in the same force.

In newspaper reports at the time, the Merseyside Police Federation was quoted as saying that the accusations against Liverpool fans were "ill-informed comments" which were "based on hearsay rather than evidence". The local federation secretary said that his phone had been "red hot" with calls from Merseyside officers demanding he speak out to "redress the balance".

In due course it was the view of the federation, rather than the chief constable, which was found to be correct by the official inquiry into the disaster by Lord Justice Taylor. He attributed the main cause of the incident to police failures in crowd control that led to a fatal crush in the Liverpool fans' section of the ground.

The BBC's report today also contains another interesting revelation: that there was unease within the government about what a senior Downing Street official considered to be Lord Taylor's "distinctly unhelpful" response to an approach to align his inquiry schedule with the government's political timetable.

In the wake of Hillsborough, Margaret Thatcher's policy priority was to press ahead with introducing a compulsory identity card scheme for football supporters. The government had already been planning this to tackle the hooliganism that badly affected the game in the 1980s (although the idea was never eventually implemented).

The Home Secretary Douglas Hurd met Lord Justice Taylor soon after the judge was appointed to carry out the inquiry. Lord Hurd tried to persuade him to consider the membership scheme in time to fit in with the government's schedule for pushing forward with it. The judge couldn't guarantee this, insisting his timings would be determined by the process of establishing the facts of what happened.

The current government has promised that official records relating to the disaster will be released through the Hillsborough Independent Panel. This was set up in December 2009 by Labour to work towards publishing these files, although cabinet papers were initially excluded from its terms of reference.

The panel has said it will complete its work by the end of June, although there are reports today that this deadline will be postponed. It is expected to release a very large quantity of documentation. The papers being covered today by the BBC are only a small proportion of the undisclosed material.

Today's revelations do not constitute a "smoking gun" or lend support to any kind of conspiracy theory, but they have added valuably to the state of public knowledge about the political reaction to the terrible events at Hillsborough in April 1989.

In brief, we have learnt that the top ranks of Merseyside Police helped to misinform Margaret Thatcher by wrongly blaming Liverpool fans. And we have learnt that there was dissatisfaction within the government at Lord Justice Taylor's refusal to adapt his inquiry to their political timetable for pressing ahead with an identity card scheme for football fans.

That's the view of David Cameron, which he expressed yesterday at the end of his evidence session in front of a House of Commons committee.

He distinguished between the increased transparency that derives from the publication of data (such as crime maps, local government spending and public sector contracts), which he is enthusiastic about, and what he called "the endless discovery process" of responding to FOI requests, which clearly doesn't appeal to him quite so much.

Perhaps this opinion is not surprising, given that the government has this week been fighting a tribunal case to avoid being forced to release its risk register for the current NHS legislation. The top civil servant at the Department of Health told the tribunal that publishing the register could lead to similar documents being toned down in future.

It's not the first indication that Prime Minister Cameron is becoming "the heir to Blair" in his attitude to freedom of information. We've already had reports of remarks in which he's said that due to FOI, "officials and ministers are increasingly reluctant to put on paper what they actually think".

Some advocates of openness will undoubtedly see Mr Cameron's distinction as really a dividing line between what the government wants to tell you and what you want to know, but it does raise a fundamental question about the purpose of greater state transparency. Is it about greater accountability in the delivery of public services, or it is about opening up the decision-making process?

I was one of a number of journalists who gave oral evidence last week to the Commons Justice Committee, which is currently conducting an inquiry into the workings of FOI (so far only the uncorrected transcript is available). We were asked why the law had not had more impact on the quality of public debate.

My answer was that while FOI has made it much easier to obtain facts and figures about the performance of public services, it has had nothing like the same reach into the policy-making process and internal discussions. This is the area where ministers and officials have much deeper concerns about the impact of disclosure and requests have met greater resistance.

Mr Cameron's stance can be seen as an illustration of what one international academic authority on FOI, Professor Al Roberts, has called "executive pushback" - attempts by political leaders to counter or undermine FOI laws.

The starkest example of this has been in Ireland, where the government introduced up-front fees for making freedom of information requests. In the US successive presidents have fought battles over the scope of FOI. And in India currently there are efforts to constrain the extent of the right to information law which has featured in numerous controversial disputes between citizens and officials.

On the other hand, another expert David Banisar argues that many countries with FOI laws have not experienced the same kind of political backlash.

The Commons Justice Committee is continuing with its inquiry, and the outcome should influence where the future of FOI in the UK will lie.

This is a controversial topic given recent allegations about ministers and political advisers using private email to seek to avoid FOI. These claims are currently under investigation by the Information Commissioner.

The department has apologised for missing the legal deadline by so long, stating that the delay is because the DfE "is experiencing a higher than usual volume of FOI requests".

Under the Freedom of Information Act, this is not a valid reason for failing to meet the law's time limits, and it is unusual for a government department well aware of this to respond in this way.

The DfE's information rights adviser Andrew Partridge has told the BBC in an email:

"I very much regret the delay that you are experiencing in relation to your FOI request which we received on 3 October and which should have been answered by 31 October.

"At the moment the Department is experiencing a higher than usual volume of FOI requests, and this is leading to delay in some cases. But I fully accept that the Department has failed to meet the statutory deadline in this case. I can only apologise for the delay, and assure you, as the officer responsible for preparing the reply to your request that I am working to take it forward as quickly as possible."

In October the BBC asked the department for any guidance it held about the use of personal email accounts in relation to freedom of information.

This followed reports that the Education Secretary Michael Gove and his advisers had used their private email rather than departmental systems for some sensitive messages on the basis that this would fall outside the FOI Act.

Last week Mr Gove insisted to the House of Commons Education Select Committee that he has followed Cabinet Office advice that "anything that was held on private email accounts was not subject to freedom of information requests".

However this stance conflicts with the policy of the information commissioner Chris Graham, who in December made clear his view that personal email accounts are not excluded from freedom of information searches when they have been used for official business.

The Information Commissioner's Office is still considering a number of complaints, including from the Financial Times, about the Education Department's apparent failure when responding to FOI requests to supply relevant emails sent from personal accounts.

The position adopted by Mr Gove and the Cabinet Office also contrasts starkly with an earlier assessment made by the DfE's own information rights adviser, Mr Partridge (the author of the recent reply to the BBC).

It has been reported that last year Mr Partridge told the department's permanent secretary that the requesters' right of access to material under FOI was not limited to the contents of the departmental email system if "information held in personal accounts may relate to the business of the department".

Mr Gove made it clear to the MPs on the education select committee that he preferred to abide by the advice the DfE had then obtained from the Cabinet Office rather than that from his own departmental FOI official.

The BBC also asked the Cabinet Office in October for a copy of any guidance it held on the subject of personal email accounts and FOI. The Cabinet Office replied last month stating that it does not hold any such information.

Is this compatible with the fact that it has clearly offered advice on this topic to the Department for Education? Possibly, if for some reason the advice was kept purely oral and not committed to writing. The BBC is asking the Cabinet Office to review its FOI response.

When the Labour MP and education select committee member Lisa Nandy put down a parliamentary question a few days ago asking for a copy of the advice, she got the reply that "information relating to internal discussion and advice is not normally disclosed".

Mr Gove says he is now waiting for the Cabinet Office to provide updated guidance. The Financial Times is waiting for the information commissioner to rule on its complaints. The BBC is waiting for the Department for Education to answer our FOI request.

When all this happens, the development of the government's policy on whether ministers and officials can use private email to protect messages they want to keep secret may become clearer. Meanwhile, the wait continues.