June 10, 2005

ICR and its refusal to accept donations

Further to this issue of the ICR refusing to accept a donation from a member of the shooting sports I have recently received this message from Philip Black regarding my request for information about how I might apply for further details about the refusal under the Freedom of Information Act:

Dear John,

Thank you for your further email of 25.05.05.

In importing the principle of freedom of information into our law the legislature recognised that there are occasions when access to information should be restricted. This is one such occasion as disclosure of the information being sought is potentially detrimental to the safety and welfare of our staff. In the circumstances we are not prepared to provide the information which you are seeking.

It seems that some of the information that they are holding in private that relates in some way to this refusal could be dangerous to their employees if the general public, or some members of the general public, were to be made aware of it. We can only wonder at what this dangerous information might be. What activity can the ICR have been involved in that has the potential to be dangerous to their employees if some others were to find out about it?

I am going to write to them asking about an appeals process.


UPDATE

Here is my mail:

Dear Philip,

Please advise me (or forward this mail to your information officer so that they can) on any appeals process that I might follow. Frankly I find it hard to believe that your refusal to accept this donation can be a danger to anyone.

What I can believe is that other cases of donations accepted by you can be seen as inconsistent with your ruling on this particular case and I am guessing that is where the danger lies.

And that, after all, is my point.

I think your organisation is being inconsistent here and has, for some reason, decided that this particular donation should not be accepted not because it involved subjective animal cruelty but because it comes from a politically incorrect minority group source.

We are still disgusted with the refusal.

Posted by John at June 10, 2005 08:45 AM | TrackBack