As part of an ongoing process. This is the appointments diary of the Minister for the Environment for 2010. Some entries in Minister’s diary were deleted as they related to Government meetings and associated records (s.19), Parliamentary matters (s.22) and personal Information of parties other than the requester (s.28).
I did not realise that the Leader of the Party for open Government could have so many secret meetings. Where was he from the 5th to 11th of April that was so secret.
Thanks for publishing this document and the others you have been posting too.
I am wondering why so many meetings in the Minister’s diary have been redacted.
I can understand that a government Minister can occasionally be involved in a meetings, the content of which should remain confidential.
This however is quite ridiculous. So many meetings – weekly almost daily – that we are unable to even see who the minister met, never mind what transpired at the meeting.
I think this makes a mockery of the Freedom of Information Act.
Who is deciding what is redacted and what criteria are they using in so deciding?
I don’t know who would have decided on these redactions (probably the current Minister’s office), but from looking at my own diary from the period it looks like they’ve decided to remove all Green Party business, as well as diary entries that might be considered “personal”. For example the Green Party think-in from 13-15 January has been blacked out.
John only kept one diary during this period, so it would include a lot of family and personal diary entries, which have been redacted. My own records show that between 5th and 11th April John was on a week’s leave.