The Guardian today lost its appeal against an emergency gagging order that banned the newspaper from publishing documents that allegedly show details of huge tax avoidance schemes at Barclays Bank.

The bank forced The Guardian to remove several internal memos from its website after lawyers obtained an injunction early on Tuesday morning.

The documents, initially leaked by a whistleblower to Vince Cable, deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats, detail a web of complex transactions through which the bank’s structured capital markets division reportedly made more than £1 billion by exploiting tax loopholes.

Yesterday, The Guardian returned to court to appeal against the order.

Alan Rusbridger, editor-in-chief, told Mr Justice Blake: "I considered these documents to be of the highest significance in the debate about tax avoidance.

"They revealed, at first hand, the processes involved in structuring extremely complex and artificial tax avoidance vehicles: how lawyers and accountants worked together to exploit loopholes in government legislation, and the degree to which they are sanctioned at the highest levels within Barclays."

Barclays argued that publication of proprietary documents, which the bank claims were stolen by a disaffected former employee, would damage its business by revealing the bank's know-how and "global expertise gained over several years" to competitors.

This morning the judge said he would maintain the injunction but no further details were available.

However, the judge said that he “could see no reason” why the Guardian could not make reference to the sensitive documents without publishing them in full.

As well as barring the paper from publishing the documents, the judge also prohibited The Guardian from encouraging any other media outlets to publish them.

Barclays said: "We welcome today's ruling. We could not be passive following the theft of these commercially sensitive documents and took this course of action to argue an important principle that both client confidential and privileged material that is Barclays property should be protected."

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