At the start of the general election campaign, just days after the Tories announced they would stop all fracking in England, they quietly issued a document which contradicted that promise. (See Yorkshire Post story).

We now hear that the Conservative Government has breached a judge’s order on releasing secret fracking report, which gave them until 5pm last Monday to publish parts of a 2016 report on the state of the UK’s fracking industry, following a freedom of information (FOI) request from Greenpeace.

They still have not provided the report to the individual that submitted the FOI request.

The Cabinet Office had rejected Greenpeace’s FOI in January 2018, saying the release of that information “could call into question the [fracking] industry’s viability” and was an internal government document exempt from the Environmental Information Regulations.

The ICO ruling was given on November 11, 2019.

Jon Trickett, Labour’s Shadow Minister for the Cabinet Office, said:

“The Tories’ failure to publish this crucial report on fracking shows contempt for democracy and serves as a stark warning for what lies ahead if Boris Johnson is re-elected.

“Whether denying talks to sell-off our NHS or suppressing a report on foreign interference in our politics, this Tory Government repeatedly operates in secret and against the public interest.

“Labour will ban fracking, expand the Freedom of Information Act and introduce tough new transparency rules so government works for the many, and not the few.”