Mr Blundell, chairman of the B&B Action Group, said the group was not satisfied with the ICO decision last year, when it ruled the Cabinet Office did not have to disclose documentation made under Freedom of Information requests by former Bradford & Bingley shareholders in the bank they owned until its nationalisation in 2008.
He said he would argue at the First-Tier Tribunal in London that the nationalisation of B&B - with almost 1m shareholders - was a “flawed decision” and “made in haste” for political reasons.
A hearing at the First-Tier Tribunal has been scheduled for 16 to 17 April.
The Information Commissioner’s notice of decision made last November upheld the refusal of the Cabinet Office to provide information requested in what it described as “by a narrow margin in a finely balanced decision”.
This means the Cabinet Office does not have to reveal documents sought by former shareholders under the FOI process over a period spanning almost five years.
Mr Blundell added: “One sensed that the ultimate decision to the B&B nationalisation by the then Prime Minister Gordon Brown was made in blind panic.
“How else can one explain why he made this decision from the ante room of the White House’s Oval Office during a telephone call with then Chancellor Alistair Darling. Now is that any way to nationalise a bank?”
At the time, the Cabinet Office argued that such information was “not in the public interest”. However, the ICO did accept The B&B Action Group’s original argument that it was in the public interest as B&B was a “first-class example” of what went wrong in the banking crisis. Robin Callender Smith, an information rights judge and barrister, will preside at the appeal.
Adviser response
This quest for information has been ongoing since 2010. One adviser, commenting on a story on the FTAdviser website under the moniker ‘Old Dog’, said: “This sort of nonsense is more reminiscent of an Argentinian junta obfuscating about ‘the disappeared’ than a theoretically accountable government and regulator in a democratic country. Although I only held 250 shares, I was pretty angry when I was effectively robbed of them.”
In November 2010, Colin Parkin said he had lost £50,000 of his own money in B&B.
