It's time civil servants were open about energy lobbying

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2013/feb/06/lobbying-energy-civil-servants-transparency?intcmp=122


A waiter holds a glass of champagne. Photograph: Greg Dale/NGS/Getty Images

Last November I wrote a news story about how a register of meetings released by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) under freedom of information legislation had exposed the extent to which senior civil servants had been wined and dined by nuclear industry lobbyists.

The register was revealing on two levels: first, it showed how there had been dozens of meetings since Decc's Office for Nuclear Development (OND) had been formed in 2009; second, it showed just how lavish the hospitality offered by the lobbyists had been with meetings regularly taking place at some of London's most luxurious restaurants and hotels.

Craig Bennett, the director of policy and campaigns at Friends of the Earth, remarked at the time: "What the taxpayer should be asking is whether this succession of lavish hospitality has resulted in lavish subsidies for nuclear."

There was, unsurprisingly, a strong reaction from readers to the story. But some, rightly, asked me via the comments or Twitter if comparable registers of meetings were available for the senior civil servants working with other sectors such as oil and gas (known as the "Energy Development Unit&quot , and renewables ("Office for Renewable Energy Deployment&quot .