LONDON, Dec 23: Whitehall officials have stepped up the shredding of documents before January when a law giving Britons access to more information takes effect, the opposition Conservative Party said on Thursday.

Conservative parliamentarian Julian Lewis said he had discovered records were destroyed at a faster rate this year than in previous years. The government denied any link between the deletion of records and the Freedom of Information Act which comes into force on Jan. 1.

The law will give the public access to government records previously kept secret for 30 years. But Lewis was "very worried" by the steep rise in shredding.

"It's typical of Mr Blair's shameless government to have trumpeted a piece of legislation as opening up the workings of government to the people, when we can see that in reality they intend to conceal it so thoroughly that even future historians won't be able to work out what happened," said the lawmaker. Lewis said the Department of Trade and Industry had destroyed 97,000 documents in 2003-2004. -Reuters