Details of how Prince Charles secretly lobbies Ministers on environmental issues have been covered up by the Government – despite the Freedom of Information watchdog ruling they should be made public

Details of how Prince Charles secretly lobbies Ministers on environmental issues have been covered up by the Government – despite the Freedom of Information watchdog ruling they should be made public.

Civil servants have mounted a desperate legal challenge to prevent The Mail on Sunday obtaining details of the Prince's private meetings with at least two Ministers.

After a year-long battle, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has ruled that the Department for Transport should reveal what occurred when Charles received John Hayes, then a Transport Minister, and Brandon Lewis, the then Housing Minister, at Clarence House on September 10, 2014.

But just hours before a deadline to provide the information expired last week, the Department said it would be spending taxpayers' money to challenge the ruling rather than reveal the details.

The DfT claimed the gag should be imposed because the Prince's dealings with Government are exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.

But in a rebuke, the ICO insisted:

- The MoS should be granted the information under EU laws, which require public bodies to disclose information about policies and decisions that could have an impact on the environment;

- It was likely the meeting was 'convened for the Prince to promote his views on certain issues', and would reveal his 'areas of interest';

- There was overwhelming public interest in revealing details because 'the Prince of Wales' contact with government Ministers raises legitimate questions about [his role] in a parliamentary democracy';

- The meeting could not be considered private, as the DfT argued, because Charles has 'not in the past avoided controversy with his public statements' and previously revealed details of his advocacy work in an authorised biography.

It's likely that Prince Charles wanted to promote his views

The Government's decision to appeal will leave the Prince – who is due tomorrow to give a landmark speech to the Paris Climate Summit – vulnerable to accusations of hypocrisy.

Only last week, he gave a TV interview in which he suggested that the ongoing civil war in Syria was partly the product of climate change and drought.

This newspaper had asked for details about the discussion under EU right of access laws known as the Environmental Information Regulations (EIRs), designed to ensure public bodies are transparent when policies have implications for the environment.

The Department of Transport initially argued that the meeting had not been about green issues and, as a result, the request should be treated as a traditional Freedom of Information request.

By reclassifying the application, it was able to evoke a change in the law that states the Prince's communications are exempt from FoI requests. But the MoS insisted it was an EIR issue and complained to the ICO.

In a decision notice dated October 20, 2015, the ICO found that much of the information about the meeting was environmental and should have been released under EIRs.

The Department for Transport should have given details of Charles's meeting with John Hayes, the then Transport Minister (pictured) and Brandon Lewis, the then Housing Minister

The ICO stated: 'Having studied the information in question, the Commissioner is satisfied that much of it does relate to both measures and activities likely to affect both the state of the environment directly and factors which in turn affect those elements.'

The ICO also revealed that the meeting was attended by a third individual who is a senior figure within an organisation of which the Prince is president. Charles is president of 14 charities and the ICO does not name any of them. However, it does say the identity of the individual should be made public.

The ruling could have far-reaching implications for the Prince as he attempts to make his personal views known to those in power.

The ICO said while Charles was within his rights to write to Ministers, he should also expect those comments to be made public. 'The Prince himself had previously permitted some details of his advocacy work to be revealed in his authorised biography,' it noted.

'Although the information itself is unremarkable the fact that the information reveals the areas of discussion between the Prince of Wales and Ministers means that it cannot be considered trivial.'

This is not the first time the Government has tried to block details of the Prince's contacts with Government Ministers.

It reportedly spent £400,000 trying to stop The Guardian getting access to a series of so-called 'black spider memos' sent to Ministers between 2004 and 2005.

Earlier this year, the Supreme Court found in favour of the newspaper and ordered the release of the letters, which showed the Prince had been lobbying on subjects as diverse as troop supplies in Iraq and the Patagonian toothfish.

A spokesman for Buckingham Palace declined to comment and referred the matter to the DfT.

A spokesman for the department said that it would be inappropriate to comment further in the light of its appeal.

In Paris, climate chiefs posture. And here? Our suicidal green taxes throw families on the slag heap...by David Rose

From 1864, when Scunthorpe's first foundry opened, it grew swiftly to become a major centre of iron and steel production, driven largely by the Sheffield family, the residents of a stately home at nearby Normanby Hall. Sir Reginald Sheffield, the current head of the family, is Samantha Cameron's father

What do Samantha Cameron's titled ancestors, an Indian steel manufacturer, green taxes, a UN summit on climate change and the imminent threat to the future of one of our great Northern towns have in common? The workers of Scunthorpe and their families know the answer.

In The Open Hearth pub, near the 2,000-acre complex of gigantic mills and high-tech chimneys that is the Tata steelworks, the mood is as bleak as the weather. 'In the plant, the atmosphere is terrible,' says John, a steelman. 'Everyone is terrified we're about to lose our jobs. They bailed out the banks. Why can't they bail out steel?'

John's friend, Alan Glenworth, chips in: 'It's not just the people who work there, but the thousands who depend on it. If the works closed, this would be a ghost town.'

Like thousands of others employed in British heavy industry, these workers are reeling from the punitive levies imposed by the Government on manufacturers' energy bills. More than half of these levies go to subsidise renewable energy.

Most developed countries have signed up to emissions reductions and renewable energy subsidies. But in 2011, George Osborne introduced a further, unilateral burden, making it even harder for energy-intensive industries such as steel to compete with cheap foreign imports – the 'carbon price floor' tax, which is set to rise indefinitely. No other country has taken such a step. The UK's' green levies have already destroyed one major industry – aluminium smelting.

It might seem a long way from Scunthorpe to UN summits on climate change. But with the next global conference – the 21st – set to start in Paris tomorrow, it is clear their fates are linked. And it's why Scunthorpe faces ruin.

Until the late 19th Century, this was a tiny village, one of five in the area now covered by the town. From 1864, when its first foundry opened, it grew swiftly to become a major centre of iron and steel production, driven largely by the Sheffield family, the residents of a stately home at nearby Normanby Hall. Sir Reginald Sheffield, the current head of the family, is Samantha Cameron's father.

The number of workers directly employed by Scunthorpe steelworks has fallen from 25,000 in the 1970s to just 4,500 now. Tata recently announced a further 900 redundancies and warns that unless it can find a buyer for the plant by the end of March, the remaining jobs may go – and with them, the jobs of a further 15,000 people in contracting and other local companies.

Tony Gosling, a Tata plant union leader, Labour councillor and keen local history buff, says: 'Without the steelworks, you'd have to question whether Scunthorpe would even exist.'

This month, Gosling and his union colleagues organised a 1,000-strong demonstration through the town, under the campaign slogan Save Our Steel. Families turned out in force, joined by church leaders, retired people and schoolchildren.

'The steelworks is the heartbeat of the town,' says marcher Canon Moira Astin, vicar of St Lawrence's church.

Taxi driver Abul Sardar tells me: 'I saw the impact of the last round of redundancies in 2012. People stopped going out, stopped spending money.

'I used to work eight or ten hours a day, five days a week and made a living, paid my mortgage. Now, forget about ten hours. It's 18, seven days a week.'

David Aunin, manager of the Foundry shopping centre, fears the impact of redundancies may already be starting. This month, an advert for 12 vacancies at a toy shop attracted 500 applicants.

The number of workers directly employed by Scunthorpe steelworks has fallen from 25,000 in the 1970s to just 4,500 now. Tata recently announced a further 900 redundancies

In Scunthorpe, and in other towns and cities across Britain that depend on energy-intensive industries, electricity prices paid by British industrial users are already double those in Germany, and at least 30 per cent higher than in the rest of Europe – let alone in countries such as China.

Now, an eye-watering one-third of industrial electricity bills is accounted for by green levies and subsidies for renewable energy. To put it another way: steel, a 'foundation' industry critical to construction and all other manufacturing, is being crippled to pay for wind farms and solar panels.

Thousands more steel jobs – not only at plants owned by Tata – are also at risk in Sheffield, the North East, Scotland and South Wales. All this gives the developing world an enormous competitive advantage, despite the fact that its industries are dirtier, and produce much higher emissions.

While Tata is cutting jobs in Scunthorpe, it is opening a new plant in eastern India, close to the coalmines and coal-fired power plants that will be its energy source. Scunthorpe's Labour MP, Nic Dakin, says: 'It's not a level playing field. The irony is that, if Britain ends up using Chinese steel because we've got green taxes, their steel works are far less carbon-efficient. It's absolutely bonkers. We'll be buying carbon-intensive steel from China in the name of saving the planet.'

Buy Chinese steel to save the planet? That's just bonkers

Those who defend the green status quo insist the reason for the steel industry's plight is not green taxes but lower Asian labour costs, and the 'dumping' of steel at knockdown prices by China. A Tata spokesman refutes this, saying that in the past two years, the firm has paid £150 million in green-energy levies. In a fiercely competitive industry, this represents the difference between profit and loss. Moreover, one reason China can afford to dump steel is that its energy costs are so much lower.

Manufacturers in Germany and other EU countries have long been given partial exemptions from the cost of renewable subsidies. British manufacturers have been promised rebates since 2011, a pledge Osborne repeated last week, but even if they get the necessary approval from the European Commission, the respite may be brief.

Last week, the Government's Committee on Climate Change unveiled its 'fifth carbon budget', saying that, by 2030, almost all UK electricity will have to be from non-carbon sources. This transformation is likely to cost some £350 billion – and that, ultimately, will come from energy taxes and bills.

About the gloomiest person I met in Scunthorpe was David Wyner, a GMB union representative. He had just spent the afternoon 'consulting' with Tata over whose jobs would go. 'It's not fun,' he says. 'The people whose jobs are going, I know them.'

In The Open Hearth, Alan Glenworth takes a sip of his pint. He says: 'The young lads who've been at Tata ten years, who still have mortgages – if they lose their jobs, what are they going to do?'

Brace yourself for a hurricane of hot air...by David Rose

Tomorrow sees the start of the 21st annual United Nations conference on climate change in Paris.

It's due to last two weeks, will be attended by more than 20,000 world leaders, officials and green activists – and is being billed (once again) as a 'last chance' for the world to avoid a global warming catastrophe.

It's almost certain that the search for a legally binding global agreement to reduce emissions will fail. Instead, the conference will look at each country's individual emissions, and how they can reduce them – what they term 'intentional nationally determined contributions', or INDCs.

Tomorrow sees the start of the 21st annual United Nations conference on climate change in Paris

Britain is promising further deep cuts. Other nations' pledges amount to little more than apparently meaningless verbiage. For example, India's pledge starts with quotations from Hindu texts, stressing that it venerates 'Mother Earth'. Yet India is not promising to make any cuts at all. As for China, it now emits 30 per cent of world emissions – twice as much as the US. Yet its INDC says they are set to go on rising for at least 15 years.

The huge imbalance between energy prices in Britain and developing world competitors is only set to get worse. But whatever agreements are reached, one thing is for sure – there will be wall-to-wall apocalyptic coverage on the BBC and left-leaning press, with little attention to some inconvenient facts about climate change… the ones they'd rather you didn't dwell on.

Here then, is our handy guide to some of those facts and, above right, an all-too-human story of how Britain's world-beating mania for carbon reductions is leaving real people and real factories facing ruin…

Awkward facts big conference WON'T discuss

0.026

The number of degrees Celsius – yes, 26 thousandths of one degree – the world is warming per decade since the great warming 'pause' began 15 years ago.

It's hard to believe now, but back in the 1970s, the world's big fear was of a global freeze. Then, in 1990, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) triggered the great climate panic with its first report on global warming.

It said that the world's average surface temperature was rising by 0.3C every decade, and would continue to do so. But official Met Office data shows that, since 1990, temperatures have risen at less than half that rate, at 0.14C per decade, and over the longer term at just 0.11C per decade since 1950.

More than this, the Met Office's figures say there has been a global warming 'pause' for the past 15 years: in that time, the warming trend has averaged just 0.026C per decade.

2030

The year up to which pollution global leader China is committing to INCREASE its annual emissions…

All China will agree to is a pledge to stop its emissions rising AFTER 2030. This year it unveiled plans for 155 giant new coal-fired power stations. India won't even set an emissions peak year. Its vast coal use will triple by 2030, when it will have become the world's biggest emitter.

1 … the number of countries that have agreed to a legally binding target for a decarbonised economy by 2050. (Yes, it's Britain.)

Unlike everyone else, we are committed by law to an 80 per cent cut in our emissions by 2050. Last week, the Government's Committee on Climate Change issued new, more detailed targets for 2030, saying that by then, almost all electricity must be from non-fossil sources, and most vehicles must be electric. Experts say this will cost about £350 billion. This won't save the planet: the UK accounts for just 1.8 per cent of world emissions.

1 TRILLION dollars – sum the West is being asked for by China, India and the rest of the developing world by 2030.

Those nations say they won't stick to the meagre promises they have made unless the West writes them a cheque for $100 billion a year to cover the cost of extreme weather, supposedly caused by global warming, and new infrastructure. It means the total bill for the West will be at least $1 trillion by 2030.

9 … previous meetings that have been hailed the 'last chance' to save the world.

No, this isn't the first time a UN climate conference has supposedly been Earth's last stand. Identical 'last chance' claims were made before the equally big summits of 2001, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014. None of them managed to conclude a legally binding deal to cut world emissions.

18 Number of years that satellite records say there has been almost no global warming.

Yes, 2015 is likely to be a record hot year. This is due to the 'el Nino' effect, which for two years has been warming the surface of the Pacific. It's likely to be followed by a 'la Nina' – when the Pacific, and the world, will get cooler. Satellite records say there has been almost no warming since 1997.

7 Likely gigawatts shortfall in continuous UK electricity generating capacity at winter peak time by 2017-18.

Coal-fired power stations are closing, and no new gas or nuclear stations are yet being built. In cold winters, when solar panel output is negligible and the wind isn't blowing, we are close to a shortage of 'dispatchable' generation – power we can always rely on. Soon there will be a widening gap between supply and demand. We'll rely on the fast-growing number of small diesel generators – which make the dirtiest form of power known to man.

800 The fall, in millions of tons, in the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by US energy production per year since 2006.

America'S emissions have been plummeting because of its shift from coal to gas-fired electricity, the result of fracking for gas from shale. This has led to big falls in energy prices, making the US industry more competitive.