“As Energy Secretary, he was a target for journalists wielding the Freedom of Information Act.
Now, after being ousted from Parliament in the May 2015 general election, Sir Ed Davey has been forced to resort to using the transparency legislation himself – in an attempt to read a report he commissioned.
But, in a dark twist, civil servants, who just 18 months ago worked with him, have rejected his FOI request asking them to publish a study on the true costs of different electricity sources.
The former Lib Dem cabinet member has accused the Government of “an abuse of power” after it rejected his FOI request to publish the Frontier Economics study into the true costs of different electricity sources, which was submitted to ministers by the consultancy at the start of this year.
Responding to Sir Ed’s requests, the Government acknowledged a public interest in publishing the report but said it would do so “in due course” when it could provide “sufficient context”.
“The excuse for this delay is clearly self-serving nonsense,” Sir Ed said. “It’s an independent report that can stand alone without any spin from Conservative ministers.”…
East Devon Watch 
I am not sure that withholding it is actually legal. Let us hope that Sir Ed will ask the ICO to step in and make a ruling.
Or are we then likely to see the government take a leaf from the EDDC Cabinet FoI Guidelines and pursue an appeal and FTT court case in order to prevaricate long enough that the information (which of course is highly relevant to the Hinkley decision) becomes worthless, wasting a lot of taxpayers’ money in the process.
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P.S. Sir Ed Davey made his FoI request via the WhatDoTheyKnow web site, so we can all see both his request and the DoE response:
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/a_copy_of_the_study_conducted_fo
It seems to me that the government has almost certainly misapplied the public interest test in refusing to disclose this information. See my annotations to the WhatDoTheyKnow entry.
I hope that Sir Ed presses on with his FoI request, if necessary making a formal complaint to the Information Commissioner because a lot of us here in the SW would like to see whether this report supports the building of new Nuclear Power plants like Hinkley C or whether it recommends green energy instead.
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