Foreign Aid To A Nuclear Power

Dear Mr Moore,

FOI REQUESTS TO THE LEADER OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS: VOTING RECORDS

Please refer to your two e-mails of 1 December 2009 addressed to the
Leader of the House of Commons asking for lists of MP's who voted on the
Lisbon Treaty and, Foreign Aid to Pakistan.

Both of these e-mails have been passed to the Foreign and Commonwealth
Office (FCO) by the Office of the Leader of the House of Commons. As the
Leader of the House of Commons is a Government Minister, requests for
information received at that Office, are re-allocated to Government
Departments to respond to, rather than being passed to the House of
Commons to answer.

Please note that while the FCO is the Lead Government Department on the
Lisbon Treaty and foreign affairs policy, the Department for International
Development (DFID) is the Government Department responsible for Foreign
Aid questions.

However, in the case of both of your requests, and despite the rather
fallacious and contrived wording in your e-mails, the FCO can confirm that
it does not hold the information you appear to be requesting about voting
records in the House of Commons. These may be recorded in Hansard, and you
are advised to search for the information on [1]www.parliament.com or
direct your requests to the House of Commons, or DFID, if you cannot find
the information you are looking for. If you do re-submit your FOI
requests, you may be asked to re-phrase the wording to comply with the
integrity of the Freedom of Information Act and also to specify exactly
what recorded information you are seeking. The address for the House of
Commons is:

Freedom of Information Officer
House of Commons
Department of Finance and Administration
London SW1P 3JA
E-mail: [2][email address]

The e-mail contact address for DFID is [3][email address].

We hope that you find this information helpful.

Information Rights Team
FCO
Old Admiralty Building
London SW1A 2PA

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Dear Mr Moore,

The Freedom of Information Act gives a right of access to recorded
information held by public authorities; it is not about answering
questions posed by applicants.
A proper and thorough search cannot be carried out without a clearly
worded and specific FOI request. If you wish to obtain the statistics of
a vote by MPs, you can do so by consulting Hansard where the information
is publicly held, as the Foreign and Commonwealth Office advised you.

Alternatively if you were to re-phrase your question as a request for
recorded information we would of course be happy to re-consider your
request. A valid request under the FOI Act is one that asks to see
recorded information held by the public authority, such as information
on a specific issue, or process, not one that asks for opinion or seeks
answers or calculations.

Yours sincerely,

Claire Graham

Claire Graham
Correspondence Manager
Office of the Leader of the House of Commons
26 Whitehall
London SW1A 2WH

Tel: 0207 276 0856
Fax: 0207 276 1006

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