Hello and welcome to rock and roll politics, the twice weekly podcast with me, Steve Richards.

Thanks so much for tuning in wherever you are in the UK and indeed the rest of the world.

And today we are going to delve deep on an area which in some parts of the

media is under-explored, but it is fascinating on so many different levels. And that is how much

access we should have to government behind the scenes, how we get it, what the constraints are, whether the

constraints are valid, whether the access is valid. We've had the raging row recently about

WhatsApp between ministers and whether the government should be obliged to make those available to the COVID inquiry, but there have been

equivalent controversies, maybe not quite so noisy, ever since the passing of the Freedom of

Information Act, and it raises so many fascinating questions. Now, the person who probably is the world expert on that

Freedom of Information Act is Martin Rosenbaum, who's just written a book called The Freedom of

Information, a practical guidebook. It is a practical guidebook if you want to access information.

This is the book, but it's much more than that.

It is a vivid evocation of this whole period and the ambiguities around it and the

controversies and so on. And I'm thrilled to have this conversation with Martin because I've

worked with him for many years. If you, and I know many of you have, listened to various political series on Radio 4,

Martin was almost certainly the editor.

We worked together for many years at the BBC.

And Martin, I think it's the first time I'm interviewing you, and I'm thrilled.

Yeah, I think that's right, Steve.

So...

You could have the tables turned like this for once. Yes, yeah. Yeah, I think that's right, Steve, yes. We're going to have the tables turned like this for once.

Yes, yeah.

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