DV
I am surprised that nobody has come back regarding your treatment by MOD under the FoIA – your post 93 refers. I am equally surprised that after so many years of forgetting that the truth will always out as it now has started to on Chinook, Hercules, Nimrod, Sea King etc MOD again appears to be assuming that they can be judge and jury and hence get away with hiding behind their own “self-serving” interpretation of the rules. You do not say what action you intend to take, but it seems to me that you do not have to take this ruling “lying down”.
As I am sure you know, but for the benefit of other readers, Section 14 of the Act states:
14. Vexatious or repeated requests.
(1)Section 1(1) does not oblige a public authority to comply with a request for information if the request is vexatious.
(2)Where a public authority has previously complied with a request for information which was made by any person, it is not obliged to comply with a subsequent identical or substantially similar request from that person unless a reasonable interval has elapsed between compliance with the previous request and the making of the current request.
There is no special definition of the meaning of “vexatious” within the FoIA (or indeed “reasonable”), but if we now look at some top level legal definitions it is clear that MOD’s letter to you is probably nothing to do with your alleged “abuse” of the FoIA, but, as you say yourself, is about keeping the lid on Pandora’s box. Indeed their statement that all future requests for information from you re Nimrod engineering and airworthiness are already considered to be “vexatious” would anyway appear to be contrary to section 14 (2) of the Act.
Vexatious: A legal action or proceeding initiated maliciously and without Probable Cause by an individual who is not acting in Good Faith for the purpose of annoying or embarrassing an opponent.
Probable Cause: Apparent facts discovered through logical inquiry that would lead a reasonably intelligent and prudent person to believe that an accused person has committed a crime, thereby warranting his or her prosecution, or that a Cause of Action has accrued, justifying a civil lawsuit.
Good Faith: Honesty; a sincere intention to deal fairly with others.
Cause of Action: The fact or combination of facts that gives a person the right to seek judicial redress or relief against another. Also, the legal theory forming the basis of a lawsuit.
I guess you would not see your requests as failing any of these “tests”. As before it would seem that MOD continues to forget the old adage that “when you are in a hole you should stop digging” – yet every time they unjustifiably try to silence or ignore someone like you with what you and many others would see as doubtful “legal” rulings MOD makes the hole larger – the classic from a few years ago was, of course, their interpretation (or rather misinterpretation) of the employment laws applying to pregnant servicewomen! But they have the legal and other resources to allow them to get away with it most (but not all) of the time! However, on the assumption that you do not accept that your requests are in any way vexatious and are following a logical theme (as opposed to wildly “lashing out” which could be seen as vexatious) I presume your next “port of call” will be the Information Commissioner with a request that he confirms that you are indeed not a vexatious “litigant” – since in the UK it is normally the “judge” (in this case the Information Commissioner) who would decide this and not an organisation like MOD.
I googled "vexatious" and "section 14" and came up with this.
http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documen...d_requests.pdf
It would be interesting to see, verbatim, the wording of the FOI requests that DV has submitted, and how many, how often.
Given some posts here I suspect he may have unwittingly have given them a sound basis upon which to invoke section 14.