Rishi Sunak is accused of creating a “culture of concealment” at the Treasury as figures show it gave out less information under his watch.
Labour research shows the number of freedom of information requests it responded to dropped to the worst level in Whitehall during his time as Chancellor.
The party said the now PM had tried to “cover up the evidence of his incompetent management of the economy and his flagrant waste of public money” during the pandemic.
Over Mr Sunak’s tenure, the Treasury granted just 21% of all FOI requests in full in 2021 and just 17% in 2022 - a drop from 36% in 2019 before he was Chancellor.
One refusal was to a request from Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner last July when she asked for details of questions used in focus groups and polls that cost the taxpayer a whopping £287,280.
The Treasury has fully withheld the information requested - a decision that is currently under internal review.
To compare, the Department for Transport granted four times as many FOI requests as the Treasury in percentage terms in 2022 (69 per cent), despite having 3.5 times as many resolvable requests to deal with.
It meant the Treasury ranked last out of 20 central departments in 2022, dropping from near the middle of the rankings in 2019.
Overall, just 39% of FOI requests were granted in full across all monitored bodies in 2022, the lowest figure since they first began publishing records in 2005, according to the Cabinet Office’s latest report.
Under the FOI Act 2000, public authorities are obliged to publish certain information as people have a right to know about their activities.
Mrs Rayner said: “I know first-hand how difficult it is trying to get answers out of the Treasury about Sunak’s time in office.
“For nine months, they’ve refused my requests just to see the list of questions that were asked in his taxpayer-funded focus groups at the start of the pandemic.
“If they won’t come clean on something as simple and uncontroversial as that, we have to wonder what else are they hiding?”
She added: “Access to government information is a crucial pillar of any democracy, but instead of setting an example to the rest of government, Rishi Sunak seems to have something to hide.
“We’ve seen it with his refusal to disclose his personal financial interests, and now we see evidence that the same culture of concealment was imposed on a whole department during his time at the Treasury.
“There is no plausible explanation for the Treasury plunging to the bottom of the table on transparency in recent years other than the fact that the man in charge wanted to cover up the evidence of his incompetent management of the economy and his flagrant waste of public money.”
A HMT spokesman said: “We are committed to transparency and we aim to respond to FOIs quickly and accurately wherever possible. The Freedom of Information Act 2000 sets out statutory exemptions, and all FOI requests are considered in line with that legal framework.
“Out of the more than 1,100 FOI requests the Treasury responded to in 2022 only one complaint to the ICO about our handling was upheld."
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