Dear Sir,

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST

Please could you provide the following:

1. current stock list of the Government Hospitality Cellar at
Lancaster House

2. Details of the most recent additions to the cellar in 2008.

I would like the information in electronic format if possible.

Yours faithfully,

Alex Skene

Dear Mr Skene

Thank you for your Freedom of Information request. It has been passed to the relevant section within the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to deal with. They will be in touch with you should your request need clarification.

We received your request on 22 April 2008 and will aim to respond within 20 working days.

Yours

Lynsey Hughes

Information Management Group
Information Rights Team

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Dear Mr Skene

Please find attached the reply to your query about the Government Wine Cellar.

Yours sincerely,

Robert M O'D Alexander
Head of Government Hospitality
Protocol Directorate

020-7008 8517

<<FOI GOVERNMENT HOSPITALITY WINE CELLAR.doc>>

Lancaster House, Stable Yard, St James's, London SW1A 1BB

Government Hospitality
1908 - 2008
Celebrating 100 Years of Service to Government

Visit our blogs at http://blogs.fco.gov.uk

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Dear Mr Alexander,

Many thanks for your reply. I'm very disappointed that you were
unable to release any information about the current stock list of
the Government Wine Cellar.

Based on your reasons in favour of non-disclosure, I would be happy
to receive the stock list without the following details if it means
that the information provided would fall outside the Section 43
exemption:

# Number of bottles held of each wine # Price paid per bottle #
Tasting notes

This would allow a simple list of wine held to be made public
without prejudicing any commercial interests.

Please also bear in mind that according to guidance published by
the Information Commissioner, the strength of the public interest
test relating to commercial interests diminishes with time, so
information relating to stock acquired many years ago should be not
be relied upon by the exemption and should preferably be disclosed.

Yours sincerely,

Alex Skene

Dear Mr Skene

Thank you for your Freedom of Information request. Your request was only received by the Information Management Group on the 12 June 2008. Robert Alexander was unable to forward your request onto us sooner, as he has been on leave. For future reference, you can send any new FOI requests to our departmental inbox, [GHACPW request email] This inbox is checked on a daily basis. Your requests has been passed to the relevant section within the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to deal with. They will be in touch with you should your request need clarification.

We will be treating your request as received on 12 June 2008 and will aim to respond within 20 working days.

Yours

Samuel Osei-Wusu
Information Rights Team

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<<Final Reply FOI 0485-08 Mr A Skene.doc>>

Robert M O'D Alexander
Head of Government Hospitality
Protocol Directorate

020-7008 8517

Lancaster House, Stable Yard, St James's, London SW1A 1BB

Government Hospitality
1908 - 2008
Celebrating 100 Years of Service to Government

Visit our blogs at http://blogs.fco.gov.uk

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Dear Mr Alexander

Many thanks for your mail of 7th July.

I would be very grateful if you would forward this mail to Jackie
Barson as I would like to initiate an internal review of my Freedom
of Information request.

Yours sincerely,

Alex Skene

* * * * *

Dear Ms Barson

I wish to request an Internal Review of my FOI request dated 15th
May 2008 (refs FOI 0485-08 & 0354-08. All correspondence relating
to this request can be followed at
<<http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/go...>>.

Please take the following into consideration when carrying out the
review:

1) The Refusal Notice of 7th July did not adequately re-assess my
revised information request. This was for the stock list with the
"offending" Section 43 data redacted as indicated in the previous
Refusal Notice of 15th May. No further information was provided in
the new refusal as to why this information was exempt.

Regarding this, I would also like to point out that I did not
suggest that "some information relating to prices, stock quantities
and tasting notes might be excluded from the list to facilitate its
release" - I requested that all information regarding the above be
redacted.

2) There was a failure to provide due assistance and advice as per
the Secretary of State's Code of Practice and Section 16 of the
Freedom of Information Act.

<<http://www.dca.gov.uk/foi/reference/impr...>>
"Appropriate assistance in this instance might include - providing
an outline of the different kinds of information which might meet
the terms of the request; - providing access to detailed catalogues
and indexes, where these are available, to help the applicant
ascertain the nature and extent of the information held by the
authority;"

3) The Refusal Notice referred to Section 43 - I am assuming that
Section 43(2) was applied.

From the DCA's guidance:
<<http://www.dca.gov.uk/foi/guidance/exgui...>>
"3.1 In order to decide whether or not disclosure could prejudice
commercial interests it is necessary to identify: - the interests
themselves and how disclosure might prejudice them, and - whose
interests they are"

In the Refusal Notice of 7th July: * the interests were not defined
* the identity/ies of whose interests they belong to were not
defined

4) Consultation with third parties.

From the ICO's guidance:
<<http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documents/l...>>
(Section G.a, p10) "In order to determine whether the disclosure of
information would prejudice a commercial interest, a public
authority should, in accordance with the Secretary of State’s Code
of Practice, consult with the parties likely to be affected by any
disclosure."

In the Refusal Notice of 7th July, there was no mention of
consultation with third parties to allow publication of the
information.

I would like to draw your attention again to the Secretary of
State's Code of Practice:
<<http://www.dca.gov.uk/foi/reference/impr...>>

"30. Where information to be disclosed relates to a number of third
parties, or the interests of a number of third parties may be
affected by a disclosure, and those parties have a representative
organisation which can express views on behalf of those parties,
the authority may consider whether it would be sufficient to notify
or consult with that representative organisation. If there is no
representative organisation, the authority may consider that it
would be sufficient to notify or consult with a representative
sample of the third parties in question."

5) I would finally like to draw your attention to a similar
Advisory Committee involved in purchasing assets that give pleasure
to many, and are often used in conjunction with hospitality and
entertaining. The Government Art Committee acquires many works of
art for presentation in Government buildings (including the FCO
building in London), and it freely and openly publishes the
acquisition costs for each item to the public
<<http://www.gac.culture.gov.uk/informatio...>>.
It also offers a searchable database of all the items in their
collection. There are many parallels to be drawn between the Fine
Art and the Wine Trade market - small number of market participants
(galleries -vs- merchants), wide diversity of items (paintings &
sculptures -vs- viticulturists & grape types). I would argue that a
precedent has been set in making the requested information public.

I therefore formally request that you review the decision to
withhold the information and disclose it without further delay.

I would also be very grateful if you could acknowledge your receipt
of this request.

Yours sincerely

Alex Skene

Dear Mr Skene

Thank you for your email. We will be treating your letter as a request for an internal review of your Freedom of information requests, 0354-08 and 0485-08. It has been passed to the relevant department within the Foreeign and Commonwealth Office to deal with. They will be in touch with you with an outcome.

Yours sincerely

Samuel Osei-Wusu
Information Rights Team

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Dear Mr Osei-Wusu,

I would be very grateful if you could provide an update on my FOI
Internal Review (original FOI requests refs 0354-08 and 0485-08
[1]), and a proposed target date for its completion - the ICO
considers that 20 working days is a reasonable target [2], and this
has now passed.

[1] original correspondence -
<<http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/go...>>

[2] ICO Guidance -
<<http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documents/l...>>

Kind regards,

Alex Skene

Dear Mr Skene,

My colleagues in our Information Management Group have sent me a copy of your e-mail of 15th August, requesting an update on the progress of the Internal Review of your FOI requests about the Government Hospitality Wine Cellar. I am coordinating the Internal Review on behalf of Jackie Barson who is on leave at present.

We do aim to meet the ICO's recommendation that Internal Reviews should be completed within 20 working days whenever possible. In this case the review has taken longer than I would have anticipated, but I am confident that we will be able to issue the report of the IR before the end of this month. If I think there will be a further delay, I will let you know as soon as possible.

Yours,

Andrew Partridge

Open Government Liaison Officer (OGLO)
Protocol Directorate
Room 1/69
Old Admiralty Building
Foreign & Commonwealth Office
Tel: 020 7008 0993 (FTN 8008 0993)
[email address]

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Dear Mr Partridge,

re Internal Review of my FOI requests about the Government
Hospitality Wine Cellar

I have yet to receive a response from yourself about the above
Internal Review - please could you confirm whether you've already
replied and emails have perhaps not successfully been delivered? If
this is the case please can you re-send any correspondence.

Otherwise it appears that your end-August target for completion of
the above Internal Review is very overdue, so I would be very
grateful if you could provide me with an update as to the reasons
for the ongoing delay, and your new target date for completion.

Yours sincerely,

Alex Skene