Dear Department for International Development / Government Equalities Office,

It has come to my attention that several organisations including Stonewall and Greens LGBTQ+ have pre populated response forms on their websites for the consultation on reform to gender recognition act. These forms contain completed positions / replies to the various questions in the consultation. People using these forms only need to enter their personal and contact details before these are submitted as individual consultation responses.

I would therefore like to see any guidance or policy documents related to
1. Documents pertaining to the offices’ position / policy on the practice of organisations supplying and submitting a large number of pre-filled responses to the consultation?
2. Guidance /documents on how or if responses to the consultation will be screened for uniqueness beyond the personal and contact detailed entered to ensure these pre filled responses are identified?
3. Any other documents or guidance on how your agency will try to prevent manipulation or misuse of the consultation process.
4. guidance documents on how the final results to the consultation are to be reviewed

Please do not reply with a request that I contact or resend this FOI to a separate email address for Government Equalities Office responses. As that office is part of DfID I believe it within your department’s remit to see this request is sent to the responsible officers and that an adequate reply is sent back.

Yours faithfully,

carl donohoo

Dear Department for International Development,

I am extremely dissapointed that you have not met your legal requirements to reply to my foi which you acknowledged having received last month. I am also troubled you have not as is standard practice for Government bodies replied to me to say if there are any issues with my request or that more time might be needed. Instead it would seem you have ignored my legal rights to access information and made no contact since the initial acknowledgment and you are therefore in breach of HMG’s commitments on transparency. I hope to receive a meaningful explanation and reply to my query in the next two days. If I do not I will request an internal review and refer the matter to the ICO.

Yours faithfully,

carl donohoo