Honours Scrutiny Committee

Dear Sir or Madam,

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST

The Honours Scrutiny Committee (formerly known as the Political
Honours Scrutiny Committee) is separately listed as a public
authority in Schedule 1 Part VI of the FOI Act 2000.

Please could you provide: -

1) details of their Publication Scheme and a contact email address
to send FOI requests to

2) a copy of the terms of reference for the Committee

3) a copy of the related Order of Council dated 18 October 2002 as
cited in Hansard:
<<http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa...>>

Yours faithfully,

Alex Skene

Dear Abby Oshodi

Your reference: FOI 256946

Many thanks for your email of 15 July. Please could you assist with
the following as it wasn't clear from your refusal letter:

1) Please could you confirm that you are refusing to publish your
Publication Scheme - "a public authority shall publish its
publication scheme in such manner as it thinks fit" - Freedom of
Information Act 2000, section 19(4). The definition of publish is
to circulate, distribute, or print information for the public at
large.

2) Please could you clarify whether you forgot to attach to your
email reply the "Order of the Council dated 18 October 2002 as
cited in Hansard" - you've added the following text to my request:

"being supplied with the file - Ceremonial Office H31"

this suggests that you are sending me the requested information.

3) To which of the three information requests are you applying the
Public Interest Test to? Please bear in mind that the Information
Commissioner has issued Practice Notices to other public
authorities, for example to the Dept of Health:

"The Department repeatedly applies blanket exemptions to requested
information with the effect of withholding entire documents from
release. This suggests that rather than considering requests on
their own merits, exemptions have been applied on a general
principle. The Commissioner is concerned that the application of
exemptions in this way may have the effect of suppressing
non-exempt information from release."
<<http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documents/l...>>
(p3)

4) You mention the "HD Committee" - from a quick internet search
this appears to be the "Committee on the Grant of Honours,
Decorations and Medals" - this puts your full response into doubt
as I was asking for information relating to the Honours Scrutiny
Committee. It looks like you've copied & pasted something
incorrectly!

Based on all the above, please could you clarify whether you've
correctly and fully formulated your response to my information
request?

Kind regards

Alex Skene

Dear Abby Oshodi

Many thanks for your corrected reply and your assistance.

Yours sincerely,

Alex Skene