Officials from Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man are seeking to block the publication of the exchanges after a First Tier Tribunal ruled the UK Home Office should publish the documents.
Representatives from the External Relations Departments of the three Crown Dependencies have now written to the Home Office arguing that the documents should be exempt under Freedom of Information rules.
They argue that the tribunal had failed to consider the wider public interests of the Crown Dependencies as autonomous jurisdictions and should exempt the correspondence under guidelines which state that FoI requests can be blocked if they would be likely to prejudice international relations.
A States spokesman said: ‘The Government of Jersey is committed to the principles of transparency and accountability.
‘However, the government must be able to undertake free and frank discussion with other administrations, including the UK, to ensure the effective conduct of government affairs.
‘It is therefore important that any assessment of correspondence between administrations under Freedom of Information legislation is conducted with
the appropriate provisions in mind.
‘In this case, as outlined by the Minister for External Relations, the Government of Jersey is concerned that the correct exemptions were not taken into account by the Information Rights Tribunal, and this could set an unhelpful precedent that impedes future inter-government dialogue.’
The statement added that exchanges with the UK government should be treated with the ‘same confidentiality’ as correspondence between other countries.
The tribunal found that there was nothing controversial in the material before deciding to agree that the documents should be released.
In September 2015, then-Chief Minister Ian Gorst, indicated that five or six Syrian refugee families could be rehomed in Jersey.
However, around three months later, Senator Gorst said that if Jersey did go ahead with the proposal, it could lead to further UK-based refugees coming to
Jersey under the European Convention on Human Rights and the plan was subsequently scrapped.
The judgment added that there was ‘considerable public interest in knowing the approach of the Crown Dependencies to this issue’.
Last week, Lord Alf Dubs – a member of the House of Lords – called for the Crown Dependencies to share the UK’s responsibility in housing refugees.
