Alan Milburn, the health secretary, has reneged on a government pledge to allow NHS patients the right to correct inaccurate facts or opinions held on their medical records.
The Department of Health is also discussing in secret plans to increase charges, originally set at a maximum of £10, to £50 or more for people to see their records. A plan to allow people "fast track" access to their records in 21 rather than 40 days has also been dropped.
The department's action - which flies in the face of the government's commitment to open government - is to be raised today at a meeting of the advisory committee on implementing the freedom of information act, set up by Lord Irvine, the lord chancellor, to monitor developments in Whitehall.
Details of the u-turn in policy have emerged after the Campaign for Freedom of Information pressure group obtained new Department of Health guidance advising health authorities and GP practices what information should be available to patients under the Data Protection Act.
The advice ignores pledges by Home Office ministers to allow patients to be able to add notes to their records, correcting false facts or opinions, and for a fast track service.
The former Home Office minister, Lord Bassam, told parliament that the new guidance "will make clear that data controllers should allow individuals to include a statement of their views on the relevant records if they disagree with the content of those records".
The Department of Health guidance has set up an advisory committee - the health records and data protection review group - to discuss in secret whether to increase charges that can levied by doctors.
But when Maurice Frankel, director of the Campaign for Freedom of Information, asked for papers on the discussions he was refused by Raj Kaur, the civil servant chairing the group, because "this would harm the frankness and candour of internal discussion".
Mr Frankel said yesterday: "It seems an astonishing collapse of accountability for all these commitments - made in a consultation document, in correspondence with us, in correspondence with a peer and in ministerial undertakings to parliament - to be broken.
"I believe the public interest in disclosing the present discussions must now substantially outweigh any argument to the contrary. If the issue is the need for 'frankness and candour' this too would now be best served by openness."
The Department of Health yesterday initially defended its decision to keep secret discussions on charging and patients' rights until the committee reports later this year. But facing potential criticism from the lord chancellor's department, which does publish the minutes of advisory committees on freedom of information, a ministry spokesman later indicated that "some information may now be made public."
