Perhaps the Treasury will try to claim that any such letter authorising the s36 redaction is itself “legal advice” or “advice about policy”, or a “communication between Ministers” and is therefore subject to a Section 35 exemption:

Section 35: Formulation Of Government Policy
http://www.dca.gov.uk/foi/guidance/exsumm/sec35.htm

But MacPherson’s letter says “No minister” was involved, not “No Treasury minister”.

Martin:
Is the unexcised text available anywhere? I’m interested to know exactly what was removed.

There is probably some convention that senior civil servants do not comment in public on, or even acknowledge the existance of, other Departments, apart from their own.

If it does turn out that there was no Minsterial “opinion” authorising the redactions, then who will be going to jail as a result of breaking the Freedom of Information Act ? Nobody.

The Information Commissioner does not have the power to prosecute anybody over this sort of incident, which can easily be brushed off as a mistake, if necessary.

The most that he can rule on, would be to force the Treasury to disclose the full document, which appears to have already been leaked. Even then he is unable to make such a ruling, or to have it enforced by a court, until after an internal Treasury review of the decision is called for by the original FOIA requestor, a process which could easily take another 3 months.

The majority of my FOIA requests have been delayed , and even appeals to the Information Commissioner also seem to be subject to long delays as well.

There simply is no “culture of open Government” as a result of the Freedom of Information Act, certainly not so far as the Home Office and the Treasury are concerned.