Revealed: Tory government spent almost £1 million on lawyers to fight transparency

Court battles to maintain secrecy “a great waste of taxpayer money”, MP says.

Errol Graham starved to death after the DWP wrongly stopped his out-of-work disability benefits. Source: Handout.

Errol Graham weighed just four and a half stone when his body was discovered in his Nottingham flat by bailiffs attempting to evict him in June 2018.

Graham, who was disabled, starved to death after his benefits were wrongly stopped eight months earlier. He was 57.

What followed is a stark example of how government used public money to resist scrutiny over this shocking case - and much more.

After Graham’s death, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) conducted a safeguarding review of vulnerable benefit claimants. A campaigner from the Child Poverty Action Group submitted a Freedom of Information (FOI) request for a copy of the review. The DWP refused.

The campaigner appealed to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), which oversees the FOI regime. The ICO found the DWP mishandled the request, but the department persisted in withholding the review, launching a costly legal appeal at the Information Tribunal.

The DWP eventually racked up over £50,000 in legal costs fighting to keep its review secret. Three years after the original FOI request, the tribunal dismissed the appeal, forcing the government to release the information.

This was not an isolated incident.

Democracy for Sale has spent months uncovering the scale of public money spent by Whitehall on fighting FOI cases. We found that the last Conservative government spent at least £937,000 on lawyers for cases listed at the Information Tribunal in 2023 alone.

Many of these efforts to withhold information failed, with judges often ruling that transparency served the public interest.

The Treasury was the largest spender, paying £220,000 on government lawyers and external barristers to fight 12 FOI cases. The Home Office spent £190,000 on 15 cases, including almost £30,000 blocking a request by the Guardian asking for the total cost to the taxpayer of protecting the Royal Family.

The DWP spent £120,000 on six cases, including £36,600 and £15,400 on a barrister to fight Child Poverty Action Group’s request for the safeguarding review.

The full total is likely much higher, as major departments did not comply with our requests. What we do know is the Ministry of Defence spent £105,000 on seven cases, including £47,000 to defend withholding information about intelligence sharing that posed a "serious and unmitigable risk” of “detainees being tortured”.

The Department for Business and Trade and the Ministry of Justice spent £98,000 and £79,000 respectively, while the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero spent £65,000.

The Cabinet Office, which is responsible for FOI policy, admitted spending £45,000 on four cases but refused to disclose costs for nine ongoing cases.

Labour MP Phil Brickell told Democracy for Sale: “Given the intense pressure on public finances, it’s paramount that the Government ensures value for money. The previous administration wasted taxpayers’ money fighting losing battles against FOI requests. Transparency is vital for restoring trust in politics and should be embraced rather than resisted.”

Conservative MP and former cabinet minister David Davis agreed, saying the current approach demonstrates a “great waste of taxpayer money.” He added, “If the Labour Government truly intends to impose a duty of candour on public authorities, it must overhaul the entrenched culture of secrecy in Whitehall.”

The Freedom of Information Act came into force 20 years ago - on New Year’s Day 2005. It allows anyone to request information from public bodies.

Tony Blair, the prime minister who oversaw the FOI Act’s introduction, later chastised himself as a “naive, foolish, irresponsible nincompoop” for passing the legislation. But parliamentary inquiries have hailed FOI as a significant enhancement of our democracy,” which has “enhanced openness and transparency”.

But FOI’s effectiveness has been steadily eroded. Compliance with requests across Whitehall hit an all-time low under Rishi Sunak in 2023, with just 34% of requests fully answered compared to 57% in 2010 under David Cameron’s government.

As leader of the opposition, Keir Starmer promised to make it easier to hold governments accountable, pledging to end the “outrageous” refusals of FOI requests. However, the Labour government has yet to announce changes to FOI policy.

Maurice Frankel, director of the Campaign for FOI, criticised government appeals of FOI requests, suggesting many are designed to avoid or delay bad publicity without legitimate cause. “Departments would do better to release information when the ICO calls for it, avoiding costs and reputational damage,” he said.

A government spokesperson told Democracy for Sale that “organisations have a duty to balance transparency with protecting sensitive information and ensuring value for money” and claimed that most FOI requests are handled on time. A DWP spokesperson defended the £50,000 spent on the Errol Graham case, saying legal costs were “justified” to ensure compliance with the law.

It’s even a battle just to find out how much the government has spent fighting the release of information under FOI.

We sent FOI requests about legal fees to every department that had a case listed at the tribunal in 2023 - but information was obtained on just 58 of the 118 listed.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office took 101 working days to refuse our request, despite the legal 20-day deadline. The Cabinet Office delayed its response by a month four times, claiming disclosure “would prejudice the effective conduct of public affairs.”

Individual FOI requesters often face a David-and-Goliath battle, defending themselves against public bodies backed by expensive legal teams. Many lack legal representation, raising serious access-to-justice concerns.

This needs to change. That’s why Democracy for Sale is working with pro-transparency lawyers to challenge government secrecy at the Information Tribunal, helping to rebalance the scales.

We’ve already started. Last year, we teamed up with our lawyers to launch a case against the government over documents related to Michael Gove’s decision to grant planning permission to the UK’s first new deep coal mine in 30 years, at Whitehaven in Cumbria.

Many more cases are in progress. We have important battles ahead of us on everything from information about dark money and political donations to lobbying and hidden influence.

Your support is critical. If you can afford to, please become a paid subscriber to Democracy for Sale: you’re not just funding our investigations — you’re fuelling a movement to hold power to account. Together, we can push back against government secrecy, ensure transparency, and restore public trust.