Government spent two years trying to conceal how infrequently James Wharton travelled to north of England

The government has spent two years and £40,000 of taxpayers’ money trying to hide how little the northern powerhouse minister visited the north of England in his role, in what one prominent northern figure called “a blatant disregard for the principles of democratic accountability”.

In February 2016 the Guardian submitted a freedom of information (FoI) request to the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) asking how regularly James Wharton, who had then been northern powerhouse minister for just over six months, travelled outside London.

The department flouted a requirement to respond to the request within 20 working days and did not provide a response for more than four months – at which point it denied the application.

The Information Commissioner’s Office then undertook an investigation, during the course of which it found that the department adopted “what appears to have been a strategy of wilful procrastination in order to obstruct a request for information”.

The DCLG appealed against the decision to the first-tier tribunal of information rights, where in early 2018 Judge Hazel Oliver ruled that the department must hand over Wharton’s diary.

From start to finish, the process took 26 months.

The department fought for so long to prevent the release of the information that two other men, Andrew Percy and Jake Berry, have since taken up the role of northern powerhouse minister, and the entire department has been renamed as the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.

However, internal communications revealed by subsequent Guardian FoI requests show that despite spending £40,000 trying to stymie the release of information, the government knew as early as March 2016 it had little chance of preventing the information being made public.

Hidden in 111 pages of internal DCLG emails relating to the FoI request is a document headlined “Official – Sensitive” dating from March 2016 which includes official advice stating “there is a strong likelihood of a decision to withhold the requested information … being overturned”.

Legal experts are unimpressed. “It sounds like a classic: they knew they were likely to lose and still wasted time and money on it, and come out looking even worse,” said Paul Bernal, senior lecturer in law at the University of East Anglia.

Manchester-based data protection consultant Tim Turner said: “Departments have shown time and again that they’re very secretive about who ministers meet and what they do, and spending £40,000 to hide it doesn’t seem close to the spirit of open government.”

The information that the government tried to suppress for two years shows that Wharton rarely left London as part of his role as the north’s representative in government.

Of the 693 lines of entries in Wharton’s ministerial diary, just under half contain identifiable addresses or office rooms in the “Location” column. Ninety percent of them are based in London.

Sarah Longlands, director of IPPR North, a Manchester-based thinktank, said: “It is of course disappointing that the minister charged with the northern powerhouse spent so little time in the area getting to understand what’s important to the people, communities and businesses of the north.

“But the attempts to thwart access to information about the work of the northern powerhouse minister show a blatant disregard for the principles of democratic accountability.

“The government need to use this as an opportunity to build a much more robust system of transparency and accountability, so that voters in the north can have confidence that the government are really serious and committed to supporting northern leaders to build a better future for the north.”

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, said: “We respect the outcome of the tribunal and have now released the information as requested.” They did not acknowledge queries about the low number of visits to the north of England.