The former cabinet minister Jack Straw, who has been tasked with considering how to tighten up the Freedom of Information Act, led two of the Whitehall departments most likely to reject public requests for information.

Straw’s ministries never ranked higher than 15 out of 21 government departments in terms of releasing information in full, according to a Guardian analysis of government-wide figures.

In 2010, his final year as lord chancellor, the Ministry of Justice was the worst ranked government department, providing none of the information requested more often than any other ministry.

In the six years he was a secretary of state under the act, his departments ranked 16th, 17th, 15th, 20th, 21st and 21st out of between 21 and 23 ministries. Straw was foreign secretary until 2006, and then justice secretary until 2010.

… Straw now sits on an independent five-person panel set up to review FoI legislation. The panel is expected later this month to propose making some information harder to access for members of the public, journalists and campaigners. …

… Last month it emerged that before he stood down as an MP last May, Straw had given a corporation for which he was working as a £60,000-a-year paid adviser guidance on how to block the release of documents from the Foreign Office by citing an FoI exemption that allows information affecting commercial interests to be withheld.”