Scientology gifts

Dear Mr Thackeray

FOI CASE: 111003

Thank you for your Freedom of Information request about gifts from
Scientology groups , which was received 30 January 2009.

You asked to be provided with a list of all gifts, hospitality or
donations supplied to the Deaprtment for Culture, Media and Sport by
Scientology organisations over the past 5 years.
We are dealing with your request under the Freedom of Information Act
2000.
We aim to reply to your request within 20 working days following the day
on which we received your request.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if I can be of further assistance.

Regards,
Sharon Lewry
FoI Central Team
Public Engagement and Recognition Unit

Department for Culture, Media and Sport
2-4 Cockspur Street
London SW1Y 5DH
Tel: 0207 211 6307
Website: [1]www.culture.gov.uk
DCMS aims to improve the quality of life for all through cultural and
sporting activities, to support the pursuit of excellence and to champion
the tourism, creative and leisure industries

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Our case reference: CMS 111003

Dear Mr Thackeray,

Your request of 3 February 2009 for information regarding Hospitality
I refer to your request for "a list of all gifts, hospitality or donations
supplied to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport by Scientology
organisations, over the past 5 years", which we received on 3 February.
I am, unfortunately, not able to identify and locate the information you
have asked for without receiving further details from you about the nature
of the information you are seeking. To provide you with the information
you require, I will need to know:
1. What you mean by the term "Scientology organisations". If you would
like information on a particular company or organisation, please state
this - otherwise, as we do not ask groups to declare affiliations, it will
not be possible to locate information answer your request within the cost
limits of the Freedom of Information Act.
2. Are there specific groups within DCMS you would like the information
for - e.g. Ministers? Board members? Staff in any particular directorate
of the Department?
You may be interested to know that the Cabinet Office has a policy of
publishing lists of hospitality received by Board members of Government
departments - they will be publishing a list of hospitality received in
2007 shortly.
If you need any help or advice or have any questions about this letter,
please contact me on 020 7211 6948 or
[1][email address]. Alternatively, please write to
me at the above address. Please quote the above reference number in any
communications.
If you have not sent me the information I have asked for within three
months of the date of this email, then I will assume that you are no
longer interested in pursuing your request and will consider the matter
closed.

Yours sincerely,

Chris Fosten
FoI Central Team
Public Engagement and Recognition Unit

Chris Fosten
FOI Central Team
Public Engagement and Recognition Unit

Department for Culture, Media and Sport
2-4 Cockspur Street
London
SW1Y 5DH
telephone: 0207 211 6948
Website: [2]www.dcms.gov.uk

DCMS aims to improve the quality of life for all through cultural and
sporting activities, to support the pursuit of excellence and to champion
the tourism, creative and leisure industries.

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I am out of the office until Monday 9th March.

If your email is about FOI or is urgent, please contact Caroline Osborne-James on ext. 2358 (or [email address])
or Sharon Lewry on 020 7211 6307 (or [email address])

Otherwise, I will pick up your email when I am back in. Your email has not been forwarded.

Chris Fosten.

Public Engagement and Recognition Unit

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Dear Mr Thackeray

FOI CASE: 113440

Thank you for your Freedom of Information request about Scientology gifts,
which was received 4 March 2009.

You clarified your request as follows:-

1) By Scientology organisations, I mean organisations which promote,
recruit members for, or raise money for, Church of Scientology
Religious Education College Inc (a foreign 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

2) No specific groups.

We are dealing with your request under the Freedom of Information Act
2000.
We aim to reply to your request within 20 working days following the day
on which we received your request.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if I can be of further assistance.

Regards,
Sharon Lewry
FoI Central Team
Public Engagement and Recognition Unit

Department for Culture, Media and Sport
2-4 Cockspur Street
London SW1Y 5DH
Tel: 0207 211 6307
Website: [1]www.culture.gov.uk
DCMS aims to improve the quality of life for all through cultural and
sporting activities, to support the pursuit of excellence and to champion
the tourism, creative and leisure industries

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Dear Mr Thackeray,
I refer to your request for "a list of all gifts, hospitality or donations
supplied to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport by Scientology
organisations, over the past 5 years" which you sent us on 4 April 2009,
which you kindly clarified for us as being limited to the following 15
organisations:

* Church of Scientology Religious Education College Inc
* 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
* Office of Special Affairs (OSA)
* Sea Org
* Youth for Human Rights International
* Citizens Commission on Human Rights (United Kingdom) Ltd

Firstly I would like to apologise for the delay in responding to your
original request, and the need to ask you to provide us with a late
clarification.

I would like to explain the reasoning behind the need for this late and
undesirable action. Information on hospitality is unfortunately not held
centrally, and as your original request was framed in quite wide terms, we
needed a series of iterative discussions with colleagues across
theDepartment to see whether they held information that could be captured
by your request. After a number of these discussions, which took place
over quite a number of working days, it started to become clear that we
could only address your question properly and correctly by asking you for
clarification. I can only apologise that we were only able to do so on
the last day permissible under the Act. If the Department were to receive
a similar request in future we will seek clarification from the applicant
at any earlier stage, using this experience as a learning point. As I'm
sure you may appreciate, there is sometimes a balancing act in trying to
comply with the letter and spirit of the Act, and on this occasion we are
genuinely sorry that we have not been successful in providing the speedy
service that we are keen to provide.

Since receiving your clarified list, we have conducted a thorough and
detailed search of our records. We have established that from our search
we do not hold the information you have requested.

In order to be as helpful as possible I have asked colleagues to conduct a
search on a further set of records. We think that it is unlikely that
this remaining search will yield information, but we do wish to do all we
can to be of assitance. I will contact you in the next few days to notify
you one way or the other as to whether we have found any information that
falls within the scope of your request from these extra records.

If you need any help or advice or have any questions, please so contact
me. Once again, apologies for the initial delay.

Yours sincerely,

Caroline Osborne- James
Freedom of Information Team
020 7211 2358

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Dear Mr Thackeray,

I wrote to you on 1st April 2009 regarding your request for information.
I can now confirm that the search of our further records has provided no
information that falls into the scope of your request.

Please do contact me if you have any further questions regarding this
case.

Yours sincerely,
Caroline
Freedom of Information Team
020 7211 2358

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