A CAMPAIGN to stop the Government from blocking the flow of potentially damaging information is now raging.

All-party MPs, the media and organisations including Friends of the Earth are angry at Tony Blair's plans to effectively censor what you and I want to know about.

The Prime Minister says requests for information - made by journalists and individuals under the Freedom of Information Act - are costing too much time and money.

If he gets his way, it will make it much easier for local authorities, such as Cheshire County Council, Vale Royal Borough Council and Congleton Borough Council, to refuse Freedom of Information requests on costs grounds.

Tatton MP George Osborne said he objected to the Government's plans to limit the Act.

"As it is we don't have enough information," he said.

"The idea that we should restrict that even more is obviously totally wrong."

The Shadow Chancellor said he would have to study a national campaign to force a Government u-turn, but supported it in principle.

Congleton MP Ann Winterton said she was worried about the potential costs of requests for information.

She said: "It's freedom of information if you pay and I think that's a problem because people should be able to access information.

"What the Government is proposing is virtually a stealth tax and another charge on the general public.

"Individuals will have to group together in order for an enquiry to be made and there will be a charge.

"It flies in the face of what was originally proposed and I think it will put a lot of people off pursuing what they seek to find."

But Weaver Vale MP Mike Hall was quick to defend the Government's plans.

He said: "The only thing that we're talking about is the costs of providing the information and the Government is looking at what should be included.

"Some of this information takes a lot of reading time and man power to get together and, quite rightly, the Government is looking at the cost of providing that.

"I don't think for a minute it's going to have an adverse effect."

As the Guardian went to press neither Mr Osborne or Lady Winterton had signed up to the campaign.

Their names did not appear among the 99 MPs who are worried by Blair's plans to stop people from asking legitimate questions about matters of public interest.

To make matters worse Penrith and Border Conservative MP David Maclean is seeking to exempt MPs from Freedom of Information inquiries.

Mr Osborne said he did not support Maclean's Private Member's Bill to stop the public from prying into the affairs of MPs.

The Tatton MP said he had used the Act himself several times to discover more about Chancellor Gordon Brown's activities.

"I've asked about all sorts of things like what work the Treasury had done looking at flat taxes and tax reform," he said.

So far the bill has passed through Parliament with little debate. But opposition is growing.

The Guardian contacted Eddisbury MP Stephen O'Brien several times to ask his views, but at the time of going to press he had made no comment.

Maurice Frankel, director of The Campaign for Freedom of Information, says Parliament should not be exempt from rules that apply to other public bodies.

If passed, the bill would stop the public from scrutinising MPs' expenses and also accessing letters written on behalf of constituents to public bodies.

"Any correspondence written on behalf of individual constituents is already covered by the Act's privacy exemption," said Mr Frankel.

"The bill proposes that other letters, opposing hospital closures or pressing for local investment, would automatically be exempt. Why should MPs need this?"

Mr Frankel said the changes - due to be imposed on March 19 - struck at the very heart of the Freedom of Information Act, which the Government itself had heralded two years ago as an exciting new era in which journalists and the public would be able to hold councils and Whitehall departments to account.

"The Government is taking a scythe to its own Act," said Mr Frankel "Under the proposals, the more substantial the public interest issue raised by someone's request, the more likely it will be to be refused, because the time authorities spend considering the issues will count against it.

"But the benefit of disclosure will be ignored. Requests could be refused once their costs exceeded a set threshold even if disclosure would reveal that public safety was being endangered, public money was being squandered or an authority was acting unlawfully."

Local authorities can currently refuse requests that would cost more than £600 in the case of government departments and £450 for other public bodies.

Only the cost of finding and extracting the information can currently be taken into account.

The Government wants to allow authorities to include the time spent consulting' about the request and considering whether the information must be disclosed.