Joshua – the 2nd paragraph of your blog begins: In a judgment published by the Upper Tribunal this morning, Mrs Justice Steyn said:
The secretary of state acknowledges that the list of errors is long and mutually exacerbating; the errors, for which there is no excuse, are serious. This description is apt.
After ‘Mrs Justice Steyn’ said there are no quotation marks. It is therefore difficult to know where Steyn’s quote ends, and your commentary begins. Is ‘The responsibility for the mishandling of this case lies primarily with the secretary of state, but also to an extent with the government legal department’ your comment or hers?
I was interested in the attribution of responsibility to the government legal department (GLD). My understanding of the role of the GLD was that their responsibility was to act in the best interests of their clients rather than uphold the principles of fairness and justice (in a disinterested way). Their clients are government departments like the Judicial Office and the Cabinet Office (and, I presume, the JCIO). These ‘clients’ pay these departments substantial fees to represent them. I’m a layman not a lawyer, but doesn’t this mean that if the Cabinet Office employed GLD lawyers to defend itself against an action brought by Leigh Day lawyers (on behalf of, say the campaign group openDemocracy) about the alleged unlawful activities of the CO’s Clearing House Unit in helping government departments evade and delay the Freedom of Information requests by investigative journalists, it’s the duty of those GLD lawyers simply to win the case for the government ‘client’?
Of course, my example actually happened. The legal proceedings lasted 3 years I think and the Judge found in favour of openDemocracy. The activities of the Clearing House unit were condemned by Judge Hughes, the ICO, and many MPs. I don’t know but I assume the CO lawyers were from the 1300 team of GLD lawyers whose boss is the Treasury Solicitor. Shortly after the Judge's ruling, the unit was disbanded - as was the CO's Rapid Response unit.
As a victim of highly questionable activities by the GLD and its boss, the Treasury Solicitor, you can imagine why I’m particularly interested to know why Joshua or Judge Steyn says: ‘The responsibility for the mishandling of this case lies primarily with the secretary of state, but also to an extent with the government legal department’. As Olivia Newton-Bomb would say: 'Tell me more, tell me more'.
Can anyone tell me if the GLD ever represented the Post Office? Finally if you want to know more about the way the Cabinet Office handles FoI Requests, my FoI Request to them is available to all on the whatdotheyknow.com site. Just look for In the last 5 years, how many times have Cabinet Office officials ....?
Dudley: the normal convention is not to use quotation marks with an indented paragraph. Such paragraphs often appear in smaller type in books and with a sideline in blogs. Everything sidelined is taken from paragraph 4, as you can see by following my link to the judgment. But I have reformatted it in line with house style.
I would prefer you not to publicise your own case here but I can see why you regard it as relevant to this blog.
Joshua - thank you for the clarification on 'indenting', perhaps my age accounts for my missing it. I can't see that I'm guilty of publicising my case here: 14 lines are devoted to the GLD, only 2 to my experience with the GLD and then I don't go into ANY detail.
The point I want to make is: does the GLD tend to offer the advice it thinks its client wants to hear? Was that the case with the Clearing House unit and the CO?
How acutely embarrassing, obviously for the Home Secretary- indeed Secretaries- and the in house lawyers concerned, but then also for us as a supposedly sophisticated and fair minded nation whose Department of State ought to be able to negotiate its way around the laws and rules it was responsible for having propagated. And yet deeper plummets the remaining respect other countries might even now harbour for us.
Joshua – the 2nd paragraph of your blog begins: In a judgment published by the Upper Tribunal this morning, Mrs Justice Steyn said:
The secretary of state acknowledges that the list of errors is long and mutually exacerbating; the errors, for which there is no excuse, are serious. This description is apt.
After ‘Mrs Justice Steyn’ said there are no quotation marks. It is therefore difficult to know where Steyn’s quote ends, and your commentary begins. Is ‘The responsibility for the mishandling of this case lies primarily with the secretary of state, but also to an extent with the government legal department’ your comment or hers?
I was interested in the attribution of responsibility to the government legal department (GLD). My understanding of the role of the GLD was that their responsibility was to act in the best interests of their clients rather than uphold the principles of fairness and justice (in a disinterested way). Their clients are government departments like the Judicial Office and the Cabinet Office (and, I presume, the JCIO). These ‘clients’ pay these departments substantial fees to represent them. I’m a layman not a lawyer, but doesn’t this mean that if the Cabinet Office employed GLD lawyers to defend itself against an action brought by Leigh Day lawyers (on behalf of, say the campaign group openDemocracy) about the alleged unlawful activities of the CO’s Clearing House Unit in helping government departments evade and delay the Freedom of Information requests by investigative journalists, it’s the duty of those GLD lawyers simply to win the case for the government ‘client’?
Of course, my example actually happened. The legal proceedings lasted 3 years I think and the Judge found in favour of openDemocracy. The activities of the Clearing House unit were condemned by Judge Hughes, the ICO, and many MPs. I don’t know but I assume the CO lawyers were from the 1300 team of GLD lawyers whose boss is the Treasury Solicitor. Shortly after the Judge's ruling, the unit was disbanded - as was the CO's Rapid Response unit.
As a victim of highly questionable activities by the GLD and its boss, the Treasury Solicitor, you can imagine why I’m particularly interested to know why Joshua or Judge Steyn says: ‘The responsibility for the mishandling of this case lies primarily with the secretary of state, but also to an extent with the government legal department’. As Olivia Newton-Bomb would say: 'Tell me more, tell me more'.
Can anyone tell me if the GLD ever represented the Post Office? Finally if you want to know more about the way the Cabinet Office handles FoI Requests, my FoI Request to them is available to all on the whatdotheyknow.com site. Just look for In the last 5 years, how many times have Cabinet Office officials ....?
Dudley: the normal convention is not to use quotation marks with an indented paragraph. Such paragraphs often appear in smaller type in books and with a sideline in blogs. Everything sidelined is taken from paragraph 4, as you can see by following my link to the judgment. But I have reformatted it in line with house style.
I would prefer you not to publicise your own case here but I can see why you regard it as relevant to this blog.
Joshua - thank you for the clarification on 'indenting', perhaps my age accounts for my missing it. I can't see that I'm guilty of publicising my case here: 14 lines are devoted to the GLD, only 2 to my experience with the GLD and then I don't go into ANY detail.
The point I want to make is: does the GLD tend to offer the advice it thinks its client wants to hear? Was that the case with the Clearing House unit and the CO?
How acutely embarrassing, obviously for the Home Secretary- indeed Secretaries- and the in house lawyers concerned, but then also for us as a supposedly sophisticated and fair minded nation whose Department of State ought to be able to negotiate its way around the laws and rules it was responsible for having propagated. And yet deeper plummets the remaining respect other countries might even now harbour for us.