A landmark ruling by the Information Commissioner could force government departments to reveal how public money is spent.

The Department of Infrastructure refused to disclose how much its transport services division had spent buying new buses, insisting the details and costings were commercially sensitive.

That decision was upheld following an internal review.

But the applicant then appealed to the Information Commissioner who has now ruled that the DoI was not justified in refusing to supply the information requested and failed to take reasonable steps to search for that information.

And in a ruling that could set a precedent for other FoI requests, Commissioner Iain McDonald noted: ’Public authorities are expected to be accountable and transparent in their dealings where considerable expenditure is incurred.

’Improving public awareness of how public money is spent, and the integrity of those expenditure decisions, are drivers of the FoI Act. The public expects value for money - any assessment of whether public services offer value for money cannot be ascertained without knowledge of the cost.’

The DoI has been given 30 days to take reasonable steps to find the information about the purchase price for each bus and either disclose that information or give another refusal notice complying with the provisions of the Act.

An FoI request seeking the purchase price for the buses supplied to Bus Vannin and a copy of the contract with Mercedes Benz was submitted in October last year.

The DoI refused, saying release of contract documents into the public domain would ’prejudice the commercial interests of transport services and Mercedes’.

In a second refusal notice following the internal review, the department said it didn’t hold the information as it didn’t have a contract with Mercedes.

The Information Commissioner noted it was ’unusual’ for there to be no contract for the tendered supply of goods.

But he said it is likely that the DoI did have the financial information requested and he was not satisfied that it took reasonable information to search for it.

In October last year the DoI wrote to supplier EvoBus UK Ltd seeking its views on the revealing the price of every bus purchased. The company replied: ’Our pricing information is confidential and commercially sensitive and we do not want it revealed.’

But the Information Commissioner said the department had not articulated or demonstrated what commercial interests would be prejudiced.

He pointed out pricing, specification and contract value of goods and services supplied by UK firms can be disclosed under UK FoI legislation, and details of the winning tenders in Europe are published by the EU.

The DoI did consider the public interest for and against maintaining the ’commercial interests’ exemption, but the Information Commissioner noted there was no logic in how these weightings were allocated.

Partially upholding the complaint, that relating to the purchase price for each new bus, he concluded the department failed to show how disclosure would prejudice commercial interests.