The Guardian newspaper has reacted angrily to losing its freedom of information (FoI) bid to force the Ministry of Justice to name more than 100 judges who have been disciplined over the last 10 years and disclose why they were disciplined.

The ministry refused the Guardian’s FoI request on the grounds that disclosing the information would ‘damage public confidence in the judiciary’. The Guardian appealed to the information tribunal, which on 10 June upheld the ministry’s argument. In his judgment, the tribunal’s chairman David Marks QC said there would be a risk of ‘great distress to at least some judicial office holders’ whose ‘privacy would be invaded, perhaps intrusively so’ by press coverage of their conduct.

Rob Evans, the Guardian journalist who made the FoI request in July 2005, said the decision to shield highly paid public servants in this way was ‘outrageous’ and that justice secretary Jack Straw had ‘evidently learned nothing from the MPs’ expenses debacle’. The information requested is not private data exempt from disclosure under the Data Protection Act, Evans said on the newspaper’s Comment is Free online section: ‘It is public data, a record of the findings and sanctions on a public official, and should be as accessible as any court judgment… [but] Straw seems to insist that justice may not be seen to be done. Keeping these matters secret is no way to maintain public confidence.’