Even some of Gordon Brown’s fiercest critics may have felt a twinge of sympathy in recent days for the battering the chancellor of the exchequer has taken over the release of the Treasury’s 1997 papers on the ending of dividend tax credits for pension funds.

On the back of a freedom of information release, Mr Brown has unjustly been accused of single-handedly destroying final-salary pension schemes. He has been charged, in addition, with ignoring or defying so-called “time bomb warnings” and even of “forcing” the change on civil servants.

The Treasury and the chancellor did themselves no favours by fighting the release of the papers almost every possible inch of the way. Nor did the timing of their release late on a Friday afternoon help. As so often, clever handling proved none too clever, leaving media organisations next to no time to digest and assess before reporting.

But we should be clear what happened here. Back in 1997, the chancellor wanted to raise £4bn to £5bn in tax. A favoured option was the tax credit removal. The Treasury was asked to advise on the likely effects.

The papers are impressive – exactly what one might hope for from the elite of Britain’s civil servants. They set out the arguments. The analysis evolves as more information becomes available. The uncertainties are spelt out. And there is debate within the papers and between them – that the measure would create “a big hole” in pension surpluses; that the less well off were the likeliest losers; and that pension funds “should be able to cope”, but that “this is a judgment and there are risks”, some of which, including a big stock market fall, did not in fact materialise. The chancellor decided to go ahead. That is the way government works. Civil servants advise, ministers decide – and then live with the consequences politically.

As for the argument that the chancellor should have stayed his hand because there were risks: that is outlandish. Ministers have never taken a decision worth the name that did not involve risks, from Aneurin Bevan’s nationalisation of the hospitals to Margaret Thatcher’s decision to take on the miners or privatise British Gas.

The longer term question is what these events mean for the Freedom of Information Act. Ministers are currently considering curbs that would eviscerate it – limiting the number of requests that can be put in and changing the way time spent examining them is calculated.

After last week’s pasting, Mr Brown must be tempted to support them. But the chancellor, who has a stronger in­stinct for constitutional reform than Tony Blair, prime minister, would be wrong to do so – just as Kenneth Clarke, one of his predecessors, was wrong to argue last week that the act should be curbed as it would lead to an end to frank advice and proper note-taking.

That was the charge made when Mr Clarke himself, in a notable act of open government, began publishing the potentially highly sensitive minutes of his meetings with the governor of the Bank of England in 1994. In practice, the minutes were neither stilted nor filleted. The advice and arguments were clearly displayed. Indeed, in the shape of the deliberations of the Bank’s monetary policy committee, which is what those meetings have become, they are now minutely analysed monthly, to the benefit of a broader understanding of likely interest rate movements.

The difference between last week’s events and the disclosure of deliberations at the Bank is that the latter is a mature, in effect 13-year-old, process, to which the world has adjusted.

The two-year-old Freedom of Information Act remains an immature, squalling infant. Already, however, it has revealed how Iraqi exiles have been paid for bogus intelligence; how government has been complicit in bribery in the arms trade; how the army colluded with loyalist paramilitaries in Northern Ireland; as well as more about how ministers and civil servants balance risks and make policy across a range of issues: pensions included.

All that has been good. Good for public accountability. Good for a greater understanding of the process of government. Ministers, Mr Brown included, should put balm on their bruises and leave the act alone to mature.