The Guardian, Chris Ames, 2/5/2008

Friends of the Earth has claimed a significant legal victory in their campaign to expose the influence of business leaders on government, the group says.

In a decision published this week, the information tribunal has ruled that ministers and officials cannot expect to keep their discussions with lobbyists secret. The tribunal has ordered the business secretary, John Hutton, to disclose details of meetings with industry representatives.

The tribunal ruling largely upholds an earlier decision by the information commissioner, Richard Thomas. The documents requested by Friends of the Earth (FoE) included records of meetings in 2005 between Alan Johnson, then secretary of state at the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), and Digby Jones of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI).

Discussions covered a range of environmental issues, including climate change, planning reform, nuclear power and energy policy. The documents also include the notes of an "away day" involving senior DTI and CBI officials.

In a 2005 report, the House of Commons environmental audit committee expressed scepticism over CBI claims that environmental regulations damaged competitiveness and accused the CBI of "scaremongering".

Jones is now himself a minister at the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR), which replaced the DTI last year and brought the appeal against Thomas's decision.

BERR had claimed that the documents were not "environmental information" and therefore did fall under environmental information regulations. The tribunal rejected this.

The case also fell under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). BERR also argued that the discussions should remain confidential because their disclosure could damage policymaking within government. The FOIA provides general right to information but exemptions allow ministers and officials a "private thinking space" when formulating policy.

But, in a landmark decision that is likely to have implications for other areas of government, the tribunal found that there is a strong public interest in scrutiny of the influence that lobbyists have on government. It noted that "this is one of the first cases where the tribunal has been called upon to consider whether a similar private space can be extended to a third party, who is a lobbyist, outside government."

Phil Michaels, the head of legal at FoE, called on the government to respond to the ruling by showing greater openness. He said: "The tribunal has recognised that transparency is particularly important where a group like the CBI has privileged access to government to push their views. It is crucial that the government now changes its outmoded culture of secrecy and recognises the importance of transparency in its dealings with lobby groups."

The tribunal ordered BERR to disclose the documents within four weeks while allowing it to remove some details.

BERR could appeal to the high court and told the Guardian that it is considering the judgement carefully. A spokesman added: "We believe that there are circumstances where it is in the public interest to protect the 'thinking space' necessary for good public policy formulation and to enable the department to have a private discourse with external organisations."