Damian Green arrest

Dear Sir or Madam,

please provide me with all information held by House of Commons
authorities, especially but not limited to the Office of the
Speaker, with regards to the arrest of Mr Damian Green MP and to
the search of his office in the Palace of Westminster.

Furthermore, in
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/polit... a statement
of the speaker's office is quoted as "There is a process to be
followed and that was followed."
Please provide me with all information and records you possess on
this process in general and on how it was applied in the specific
instance of Mr Green's case.

If any written correspondence between House authorities (including
the Speaker) and the Metropolitan Police or other agencies exists
which concerns this case, I would like to request access to it too.

Furthermore, I wish to ask whether a written authorisation of the
search of Mr Green's office exists which has been signed by the
Speaker or another member of the House staff. Authorisation in this
context refers to any document, letter or part of such document or
letter that explicitly or implicitly gives the Metropolitan Police
the permission to enter the premises of Parliament and conduct a
search there. "Explicit or implicit" permission includes a letter
or other document that simply refers to legal provisions eg. by
outlining why a specific permission is not necessary.

Please note that my most comprehensive request is stated by and in
the first paragraph, while the latter paragraphs merely try to
clarify in which documents I am especially interested but they do
not reduce the scope of the first request.

Yours faithfully,

Michael Bimmler

Dear Sir or Madam,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of
Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of House of Commons's
handling of my FOI request 'Damian Green arrest'.

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is
available on the Internet at this address:
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/da...

I believe that not all material is exempt and ask for a review.

Yours sincerely,

Michael Bimmler

Dear Mr Castle,

Many thanks for your reply - could you advise me of your new target
date to complete the Internal Review?

Yours sincerely,

Michael Bimmler

Dear Mr Castle,

have you already been able to set a target date for the completion
of this internal review?

Yours sincerely,

Michael Bimmler

Dear Mr Castle,

further to my previous correspondence, this is to advise you that I
believe the House of Commons to be in breach of applicable guidance
on the handling of Internal Review requests and thus ultimately in
breach of FOI legislation.

As you will surely know, the ICO's Good Practice Guidance suggests
that Internal Review requests should be completed in 20 working
days and should only in exceptional cases take 40 working days, but
in no instance longer than that. As my Internal Review request
dates from December 22th, both these deadlines are now long past.

I would like to ask you to supply me with the response to my
Internal Review request at your earliest convenience or
alternatively, provide me with a justification why your team has
not been able to follow the ICO's guidance as well as a definite
and final target date. In case I do not receive a satisfactory
answer by the end of this week, I shall have no other remedy but to
formally take this up with the Information Commissioner but I hope
to save both of us this additional complication.

Yours sincerely,

Michael Bimmler

Dear Mr Castle,

as you know, the Information Commissioner's Office has written to
you on this matter at the end of March. I very much hope that you
are now in a position to send me the outcome of the review and that
it is not necessary for me to pursue this matter further with the
ICO.

Yours sincerely,

Michael Bimmler

Dear Mr Castle,

as you have not provided me with an Internal Review reply, even
after the intervention of the ICO's Case Reception Unit, the ICO
now had to assign this to a case resolution team (Ref. FS50239182)

To avoid lengthy and unnecessary procedures, I urge you again to
respond to my internal review request, so that I can withdraw my
complaint to the ICO.

Yours sincerely,

Michael Bimmler

Dear Mr Castle,

notwithstanding the current ICO investigation, I would like to
remind you that you are still under the obligation to provide me
with a response to my Internal Review request, which has been
pending for several months now.

Yours sincerely,

Michael Bimmler

Please forward to:

Director General, Information Services

Director General, Resources

Clerk and Chief Executive, House of Commons

Dear Sirs,

I have been in repeated correspondence with Mr Bob Castle of your
Freedom of Information Team.

Mr Castle replied to a Freedom of Information request of mine,
entitled (Damian Green arrest), refusing access. I have sent a
request for an internal review on December 22nd. The latest
communication I have received from Mr Castle was on February 8th,
where he promised to look into when I would receive an answer to
the internal review request. Since, he has simply ignored my
reminders.

I may, at this stage, point out that the Information Commissioner,
as competent authority on this area of legislation, has set down
written guideline stating that Internal Review requests should
usually take no longer than 20 working days but in no case more
than 40 days.

Due to Mr Castle's continuous failure to provide me with a reply to
my statutory Internal Review request or even only acknowledge my
communications, I was forced to file a complaint with the ICO on
this matter at the end of March. Staff from the ICO has then
written to Mr Castle on or about 27 March 2009, inviting him to
answer my internal review request in the next 20 days at the
latest. As Mr Castle has ignored this letter and neither provided a
response to me nor to the Information Commissioner's Office, the
ICO then had to open a formal complaints investigation on April
25th, 2009. The case is since waiting to be assigned to one of the
ICO's caseworkers, a process which may well take in excess of 180
days judging from the ICO's website.

Needless to say, that the obligation to provide me with a written
reply has not ceded to exist just because I have now escalated this
to the Information Commissioner's Office. I would ask you to
formally direct Mr Castle to send me a reply to my Internal Review
request, as he is obliged to under the Freedom of Information Act
2000, an act passed by the very Parliament he is employed by.

I look forward to your reply, Sirs, at your earliest convenience.

Yours sincerely,

Michael Bimmler

Dear Mr Castle,

I am aware of Mr Walker's letter to me dated May 22nd in which he
replied to my complaint about the time it takes to resolve my
Internal Review request. I acknowledge the fact that this case
raises several complex legal issues and that it may thus take more
time to provide me with a substantial reply.

However, I would be grateful if you could briefly set out to me the
status of the review and your estimated time scale. I would be
fully content with a reply such as "We have asked our legal
advisors to comment on these matters - we expect their guidance by
the end of June, we shall then consider their submission internally
and hope to be able to provide you with a reply by the end of July"
or something along these lines. This would be much more helpful
than the status quo, where I have no idea whatsoever, what work has
already been done on this Internal Review case and what is still to
be done -- as you surely are aware, ICO practice guidance asks you
to keep me up to date on the status of the request and this would
be an opportunity to do so.

Yours sincerely,

Michael Bimmler

Dear Ms Kelly,

thank you for your email and I look forward to a response to my
correspondence.

Yours sincerely,

Michael Bimmler

Dear Ms Kelly,

may I enquire about the fate of my email dated 11 June 2009?

Yours faithfully,

Michael Bimmler

Dear Sir or Madam,

I hereby withdraw my request.

Yours faithfully,

Michael Bimmler