Dear Freedom of Information Officer

Could you please provide details of any inquiry carried out by the DFT or any of its Executive Agencies or NDPBs into the actions of Stephen Byers, Patricia Hewitt, Geoff Hoon or Margaret Moran in relation to the claims made by them in the recent Dispatches programme on TV that they may have influenced government policy inappropriately. This should cover both formal and informal inquiries and I need details of:

1 Which documents were inspected and the time and date this happened;

2 Which staff were spoken to and the time and date this happened together with their job titles, what was asked and what the response was;

3 Who instigated the inquiry and why;

4 Copies of all internal communications and documents relating to this issue.

Assurances have been given by government that there is no need for a Parliamentary inquiry on this matter due to confirmation having been provided by the relevant government departments within 24 hours that there was no substance to the claim of these politicians to have influenced policy. I need a copy of any such assurances that have been provided by anyone at the DFT to this effect, when this assurance was given and what the objective basis of this assurance was.

If no inquiry has taken place and no assurances have been given please simply say so and do this promptly. There can be little justification for obfuscation and delay in such circumstances if the civil service is, as it claims, politically independent.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours faithfully,

Chris Richards

Dear Andrew,

Thanks for this. My query relates to any investigation carried out into the claims made by Byers, Hewitt, Hoon or Moran and as such is not specific to any one minister, although I do understand that Lord Adonis was referred to in the relevant programme by Byers and as such this aspect has particular interest.

If an investigation has been carried out by staff in your Department then this should hopefully be very easy to determine as records will exist of this investigation and it was a very recent issue.

I hope that this has clarified matters for you and look forward to hearing from you soon.

Yours sincerely,

Chris Richards

Dear Victoria Robb,

Thank you for this response. It is interesting that this matches almost word for word the answer provided by the Cabinet Office implying that you are simply following a line pre-determined from the centre rather than trying to answer this in any genuine fashion.

I have looked at the links and they do not answer any of the specific questions in the FOI query. Could you please answer the actual questions asked in line with both the spirit and the letter of the Freedom of Information Act.

If you are unwilling to do this then I would like to request an internal review in advance of making an appeal to the Information
Commissioner.

Yours sincerely,

Chris Richards

Dear Victoria Robb

I received your acknowledgement of my request for an internal
review on the 6th of May. You have still not responded to either my
original request or the request for an internal review.

If I do not received a response to this within two working days of
the date of this communication I will assume that you have decided
not to comply with the requirements of the Freedom of Information
Act and will appeal this directly to the Office of the Information
Commissioner.

Yours faithfully,

Chris Richards