Victory! We’ve won major legal battle exposing car industry lobbying
After two years we can finally reveal “backdoor channels where corporate money hijacks our democracy.”
We all know big business spends a fortune on lobbying. More than 5,000 fossil fuel lobbyists secured access to the COP climate summit that closed in Brazil this week.
Here in the UK, government transparency data shows oil and gas lobbyists met ministers 500 times during Labour’s first year in office.
What’s far harder to uncover is what those lobbyists are pushing for — and how they do it.
That’s why, for almost two years, Democracy for Sale has fought a major legal battle to force the government to reveal how some of the world’s biggest carmakers secretly lobbied ministers to weaken climate policy.
And now, we’ve won.
The newly released documents show how Toyota and Aston Martin successfully courted a climate-sceptic Conservative cabinet minister as they pushed to delay the 2030 phase-out of petrol engines.
Soon after these meetings, ministers announced the petrol phase-out would be pushed back to 2035, and small carmakers would be exempt — changes that benefited Toyota and Aston Martin respectively.
We first requested records of meetings between then-Welsh Secretary David TC Davies and carmakers in December 2023 under FOI laws. After repeated refusals, we took the case to the Information Tribunal — and finally won.
In a strongly worded ruling, Judge Marks highlighted the “overwhelming public interest in tackling the existential threat of climate change” and stressed the importance of scrutinising potential “greenwashing.”
She also reaffirmed a core democratic principle: government “can be held to account for its words and promises behind closed doors.”
This marks Democracy for Sale’s fourth consecutive victory at the information tribunal this year. The released documents appear at the end of this piece.
Greenpeace UK’s Chief Scientist, Dr Doug Parr, said our case exposed “the backdoor channels where corporate money hijacks our democracy. The best antidote to it is transparency.”
David TC Davies was once among the most climate sceptical voices on the Tory benches. An amateur boxer known as the Tory Tornado, he railed against the “so-called scientific consensus on climate change”, picking fights with the BBC, the Met Office and even the rock band The 1975.
By 2023, Davies’s stance had shifted. He publicly supported net zero and visited low carbon projects in Wales, where he was the Secretary of State.
But he remained receptive to industry concerns. In May 2023, Davies met Toyota to discuss the Conservatives’ proposed ban on new petrol-engine cars from 2030. The policy, originally set by Boris Johnson’s government, threatened the Japanese giant’s lucrative hybrid range, including the Prius.
Toyota asked Davies to “extend hybrid until 2035,” according to the meeting note. Davies said he would support them “in whatever way he can,” including writing to other ministers.
A month later, Aston Martin asked for an exemption for “small volume manufacturers.” Davies “agreed with Aston Martin” that carmakers producing fewer than 2,500 vehicles per year should be excluded and promised to raise the issue with the Department for Transport.
In September 2023 — just months after these meetings — the Conservative government announced hybrids could be sold until 2035, and small carmakers would be exempt. The new Labour government has since gone even further, explicitly name-checking the ‘Toyota Prius’ in its policy announcement.
Toyota has been labelled an “aggressive lobbyist” and has been rated among the most “negatively influential global companies” on climate policy.
Greenpeace’s Doug Parr said the documents show lobbyists “manipulating government decisions crucial to people’s health and well-being for private gain.”
Davies told us that “talking to major employers in Wales, including Aston Martin and Toyota, was one of my responsibilities”.
The former Welsh secretary who lost his seat last year and now runs a political consultancy added that he was “glad the government ultimately recognised that supporting Welsh manufacturing jobs was more important than pandering to radical anti-motorist campaigners.”
Toyota and Aston Martin did not respond to requests for comment.
At the time of our initial request — almost two years ago — climate action enjoyed broad political support. Today, Labour has ditched its £28 billion green investment pledge, Reform UK is promising to “drill, baby, drill,” and Conservatives want to scrap net-zero targets they once championed.
But British courts still recognise the stakes.
Judge Marks noted that many of the companies involved “can reasonably be considered to have contributed to climate change through their emitting activities.” It is, she said, “of strong public interest” to know whether ministers were privately urged to change policy in ways that favoured them.
The Tribunal also ordered the release of documents from Davies’ meetings with oil major Shell and a controversial carbon-capture scheme backed by Ineos, Eni and Essar Oil UK.
Our case was brought under Environmental Information Regulations, part of FOI law. Democracy for Sale was represented by Julia Eriksen, Rowan Smith and Lily Hartley Matthews of Leigh Day, with counsel Alex Goodman KC and Alex Shattock of Landmark Chambers.
Leigh Day’s Eriksen welcomed the ruling but said “it should not have taken a Tribunal judge” for the Wales Office to respond adequately to a request about such a major public-interest issue. “We hope this ruling will send a message that such requests should not be brushed aside.”
This is the fourth tribunal in a row which Democracy for Sale has won this year, following successful verdicts on the Covid VIP lane, an allegedly ‘net zero’ coal mine, and lobbying by the controversial power company Drax.
Our legal victories show that transparency can be successfully fought for, and important documents put in the public domain — but it takes time, resources and persistence.
We are already working on more investigations to fight government secrecy and expose hidden lobbying.
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