Dear Ministry of Justice,

You recently provided a response to a Petition relating to parental alienation. You can view the petition and your response here: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions...

In relation to the petition and the MoJ response, please provide the following under the freedom of information act 2000.

- Any and all correspondence between the petitions committee (and/or their staff) and the MoJ
- Copies of draft responses (before the final response that was eventually published)
- Copies of any electronic communication and/or input from Cafcass relating to either the petition or the MoJ response
- Any ministerial signoff form showing clearly the names of government ministers responsible for approving the response.

Yours faithfully,

Mr A.J. Wilson

Dear Ministry of Justice,

I am yet to receive a response to this FOI request. The MOJ is now in breach of timescales laid out in the Act.

Yours faithfully,

Mr A.J. Wilson

Dear Disclosure Team,

The Ministry of Justice has now exceeded another 20 working days since the time limit set under Section 10 of the Freedom of Information Act was reached on June 10th. The ICO makes clear in its guidance that (extension) delays beyond 20 working days should be exceptional.

Your response June 17th gave no indication as to the cause of the delay which remains unclear at this time. Please provide a full response to the requested information along with an explanation as to why it has taken over 40 working days to comply with this request. Should a full response not be forthcoming within 48 hours I shall be making a complaint to the ICO.

I look forward to your response.

Yours sincerely,

Mr A.J. Wilson

Dear Ms Stevenson,

Further to your email of July 10th 2019; over 2 additional weeks have elapsed since you wrote.

The original request was made well beyond the statutory time limit for a response. At this time, the MoJ is now seriously delinquent (without reasonable explanation) to both the original timetable along with your (late) requested extension.

If a full response including all requested information is not forthcoming by midnight on Tuesday 30 July I will be raising the issue with the ICO.

My patience is exhausted.

A very irritated,

Mr A.J. Wilson

Dear Ministry of Justice,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of Ministry of Justice's handling of my FOI request 'Petition response'.

Despite an inordinate amount of patience on my part the MoJ has yet to release the information requested in my FOI request of May 10th.

I appreciate that Janice Stevenson has acknowledged the delay but the MoJ is now inexplicably delinquent in providing a satisfactory response (or indeed any explanation regarding the cause of the delay).

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/p...

I look forward to your prompt response.

Yours faithfully,

Mr A.J. Wilson

Dear Disclosure Team,

The latest piece of communication does not in any way relate to FOI 190510006.

Of course, if any personal information was contained in material requested under the FOIA then the MoJ would just need to redact such information and publish the remaining unredacted material (as is normal practice). There was no need to write to me informing me of my rights to access personal information (of which presumably you have nothing other than my name below).

It is my view that the MoJ's actions in taking what can only be described as a ridiculous length of time to respond to FOI 190510006 is deliberate and I look forward to the ICO's view on this in due course.

Yours sincerely,

Mr A.J. Wilson

Dear Ministry of Justice,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of Ministry of Justice's handling of my FOI request 'Petition response'.

Whilst I appreciate that you have disclosed “some” of the requested information; the bulk of what I have asked for has been withheld under Section 36(2)(b)(ii) and Section 36 (2)(c). I do not consider that either of these exemptions are valid in this case and would also argue that the MoJ has taken the appropriate steps in order to comply with the FOI Act.

The MoJ has said that

“there might be comments by individual officials on early drafts of the response to the petition that do not necessarily reflect the later consensus view of the department“

You then go on to say that

“Disclosure of the information, therefore, would be likely to lead to sub-standard, inaccurate and imprecise responses, because officials would be less likely to properly record and convey their views, comments and suggestions”

This seems to be a contradictory statement as it implies you are already receiving “sub-standard, inaccurate and imprecise responses”. Furthermore, the ICO guidance on this issue states that these exemptions are normally engaged when the public authority considers that there may be a “chilling effect” on the matter in question. They go on to say that

“However, once the decision in question is finalised, chilling effect arguments become more and more speculative as time passes. It will be more difficult to make reasonable arguments about a generalised chilling effect on all future discussions.”.

In this case, the decision in question has been finalised and there is no prospect of advice or opinion on this issue being impacted by disclosure of the requested information.

I do not want this to go back to the ICO so I will accept disclosure of information from the MoJ where personal details of those providing whatever unsavoury opinion you are trying to hide are redacted. I would ask though that any information regarding the organisation in which the individual works (i.e CAFCASS / MoJ/ etc) is not redacted as this would not identify an individual. This solution should nullify any chilling effect argument.

In terms of the “public interest in disclosure” argument; I would draw your attention to the recently published case where Judge Wildblood sitting in Bristol family court oversaw a case where a father fought for 8 long years to see his children. Clearly the Court system failed his children and him and makes a mockery of the MoJ’s response to the Petition in question. This story was covered wildly in a number of Press sources.

Should you continue to play games with the disclosure o the requested information I shall go again to the ICO and, if necessary to a Tribunal.

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/p...

Yours faithfully,

Mr A.J. Wilson

Dear Disclosure Team,

You appear to have conflated 2 separate FOI requests. This FOI request is awaiting an internal review.
The latest piece of documentation you have sent relates to a completely separate FOI request which was submitted through the What do they know platform.

You can find that request here: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/f...

Please resubmit your response to the appropriate email address so as to provide a clear audit trail for the ICO.

Yours sincerely,

Mr A.J. Wilson