Dear Sir or Madam,

Please provide a list of all gifts, hospitality or donations
supplied to the Home Office by Scientology organisations, over the
past 5 years.

Thank you for your time and attention.

Yours faithfully,

William Thackeray.

Dear Mr Thackeray,

Please find attached correspondence in relation to your recent Freedom
of Information request.

Yours sincerely,

John Bragaglia
Information Access Consultant

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Dear John,

Many thanks for your quick response.

I note that in your reply, you refer to Church of Scientology.

To clarify my request, I am looking for info in respect not only of
Church of Scientology, but also other Scientology organisations.

By 'Scientology organisations', I mean organisations which promote,
recruit members for, or raise money for, Church of Scientology
Religious Education College Inc (a US corporation which has been
denied charitable status in the UK).

To the best of my knowledge a list of such organisations would
include:

Jive Aces / Church of Scientology Inc / Greenfields School /
Greenfields Educational Trust / Hubbard Foundation / ABLE / Applied
Scholastics International / Narconon / Criminon / The Way to
Happiness Foundation International / Church of Scientology
Religious Education College Inc / Office of Special Affairs (OSA) /
Sea Org / Youth for Human Rights International / Citizens
Commission on Human Rights (United Kingdom) Ltd

Thank you again for your time.

Yours sincerely,

William Thackeray

Dear Mr Thackeray, thank you for your email.

I will ensure that the scope of your request is clear in any search that
is undertaken.

Yours sincerely,

John Bragaglia
Information Access Consultant

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Dear Mr Thackeray,

Please find attached response to your Freedom of Information request.

Yours sincerely,

John Bragaglia
Information Access Consultant

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Dear John,

Many thanks for your response to my FOI request, reference 11139.

I request that you undertake an internal review in respect of the
Department's response.

My reasons for this request:

In general, there is a strong public interest in members of the
public being able to query the Department's gifts and hospitality
register. Your response makes it effectively impossible to do so.
In respect of such a situation, the internal structure of the
Department is of little interest or relevance to the member of the
public making the query.

In this specific case, the organisation about which I am enquiring
has recently made gifts to public officials in other branches of
government. There is therefore a likelihood that similar gifts may
also have been offered to Home Office employees, especially as the
Home Office has in recent years made a number of decisions which
have had profound effects upon the organisation in question.

I am however unable to tell you to which part of the Home Office
such gifts may have been made, because I do not yet know the
details of any such gifts which may exist, as this is the
information which I am requesting from you.

In effect your response means that I can only ask you for
information about gifts about which I already know; in the case of
gifts which I do not already know about, I am unable to specify to
which part of the Home Office they have been made, because I don't
yet know about them.

This presents something of a "Catch-22" situation in respect of
gifts, in that I can only request access to information which I
already have, and to which it is therefore unnecessary for me to
request access.

I would point out that other public bodies do maintain a central
register of gifts, in some cases searchable by the public directly
over the Internet.

I would suggest that the maintenance of such a register should be
part of the Department's normal operations in respect of
accountability, and should not therefore be considered part of the
cost of responding to this FOI request.

Thank you for your time and attention on this matter.

Yours sincerely,

William Thackeray

Dear Mr. Thackeray,

Please find attached acknowledgement of your request for an Internal
Review into the handling and decision of your request under the Freedom of
Information Act.

Sincere regards,

Ian Lister
Information Access Consultant
Information Access Team

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Communications via the GSi may be automatically logged, monitored and/or
recorded for legal purposes.

Dear Ian,

Just a heads-up that the time limit for your response to my request
for an internal review has now expired, and I will be passing my
request to the Office of the Information Commissioner unless I hear
from you within the next few days.

Yours sincerely,

William Thackeray

Mr. Thackeray,

Thank you for your email.

In my email of the 3^rd March 2009, I explained that the Home Office aims
to complete all FoIA Internal Reviews within forty working days, and that
the deadline for your Internal Review is Tuesday 14^th April 2009.

I regret that we are not able to provide with our response to your review
at this time, but I anticipate that we will be able to do so within the
deadline I provided in my previous email. I will keep you appraised of any
developments with this review.

Thank you for your interest in the Home Office and for your patience in
this matter.

Sincere regards,

Ian

Ian Lister

Information Access Consultant

Information Access Team

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Dear Ian,

Many thanks for your response to your email.

Unfortunately your understanding of the FIO act's deadlines on
internal reviews differs from that of the Information
Commissioner's Office.

I refer you to their guidance, 'Freedom of Information Good
Practice Guidance No. 5;
Time limits on carrying out internal reviews following
requests for information under the Freedom of Information
Act 2000', which you can find at:
http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documents/l...

To quote from that document:

"FOIA requires a request to be complied with “promptly and in any
event
not later than the twentieth working day following the date of
receipt”
which suggests that internal reviews should also be completed
promptly."

"In view of all the above the Commissioner considers that a
reasonable time
for completing an internal review is 20 working days from the date
of the
request for review."

I note that document also says:

"There may be a small number of cases which involve
exceptional circumstances where it may be reasonable to take
longer. In
those circumstances, the public authority should, as a matter of
good practice,
notify the requester and explain why more time is needed."

but as you have not nofitied me and explained why more time is
needed, I believe the usual 20 day time limit applies.

I am therefore referring this request to the Information
Commissioner's Office.

Thank you again for your time and attention on this matter.

Yours sincerely,

William Thackeray

Mr. Thackeray,

I note with some disappointment that you have decided to refer this matter
to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) before the conclusion of
this review process. You are, of course, entitled to do so.

The Home Office is very familiar with all of the guidance issued by the
ICO and aims to meet the expectations of the Commissioner and the general
public. The department aims to answer all requests and reviews made under
this Act as quickly as possible.

I will continue to progress your review with all due urgency and hope to
write to you in the near future with the findings of this review.

Regards,

Ian

Ian Lister

Information Access Consultant

Information Access Team

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Dear Ian,

I note with some surprise that you say you are disappointed that I
have referred this case to the ICO.

As the Department is refusing to meet its legal obligations, as set
out in Guidance with which you are "very familiar", it can be no
surprise to you (and therefore no disappointment) that I have done
so.

Yours sincerely,

William Thackeray

I attach a letter relating to your Freedom of Information request - our
ref 11139

Gareth Wyn Hazzelby | InformationM anagement Service | Financial and
Commercial Group | Lower Ground Floor | Seacole Building | Home Office |
2 Marsham Street | London SW1P 4DF

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Communications via the GSi may be automatically logged, monitored and/or
recorded for legal purposes.

Mr. Thackeray,

I have noted from your whatdotheyknow.com page that my email of last week
has not been posted. Please see my email below in regards to your request
for an Internal Review.

Regards,

Ian

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Dear Ian,

Evidently an email did go astray there, my thanks to you for
checking and resending it.

Best regards,

William Thackeray

Mr. Thackeray,

Please find attached our response to your Internal Review.

Thank you interest in the Home Office and you patience in this matter.

Sincere regards,

Ian Lister

Information Access Consultant
Information Management Service

Home Office

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Communications via the GSi may be automatically logged, monitored and/or
recorded for legal purposes.

Dear Ian,

Thank you for your response to my internal review request.

I would like to clarify my request by excluding the Criminal
Records Bureau (CRB), the Home Office HR Directorate and the Office
for Security and Counter-Terrorism (OSCT).

As immigration is one of the issues concerned, I am unfortunately
not able to exclude the UKBA or the IPS.

Yours sincerely,

William Thackeray

Dear Mr. Thackeray,

Please find attached our response to you recent FoIA Request.

Sincere regards,

Ian Lister

Information Access Consultant
Information Management Service
Home Office

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Communications via the GSi may be automatically logged, monitored and/or
recorded for legal purposes.

Dear Ian,

Thank you for your response to my FOI request.

The link to the Home Office website which you provided does not
work - it gives a 'page not found' error. Could you please check
and re-send?

The link as shown in your PDF was:
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/about-us/fr...
(but this doesn't work).

Thank you.

Yours sincerely,

William Thackeray

Good morning.

My apologies about that.

Please try visiting our FoI Disclosure Log page
([1]http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/about-us/fr...)
and search for `11482' and it should locate this information.

If you still experience difficulties, please let me know and I will be
happy to email you a copy.

Sincere regards,

Ian

Ian Lister

Information Access Consultant

Information Access Team

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