Three reasons used to stop Freedom of Information requests of the Met Office, I wonder why?

The Mail reports how the Met Office have tried to avoid providing information resulting from a Freedom of Information request from David Holland, an electrical engineer familiar with advanced statistics who has written several papers questioning orthodox thinking on global warming.

"The Met Office’s first response to Mr Holland was a claim that Prof Mitchell’s records had been ‘deleted’ from its computers.

Later, officials admitted they did exist after all, but could not be disclosed because they were ‘personal’, and had nothing to do with the professor’s Met Office job.

Finally, they conceded that this too was misleading because Prof Mitchell had been paid by the Met Office for his IPCC work and had received Government expenses to travel to IPCC meetings.

The Met Office had even boasted of his role in a Press release when the report first came out.

But disclosure, they added, was still rejected on the grounds it would ‘inhibit the free and frank provision of advice or the free and frank provision of views’.

It would also ‘prejudice Britain’s relationship with an international organisation’ and thus be contrary to UK interests.

In a written response justifying the refusal dated August 20, 2008, Mr Ainsworth – then MoD Minister of State – used exactly the same language."

If the first two reasons were not true then surely a penalty should be imposed.

Read the rest of The Mail article and ask yourself why the Met Office and the MOD are so keen to keep experts from looking over their data? I think we all know why, don't we?