Dear The Treasury,

Before the 2011 election, a number of papers related to the Mixed-Ownership Model were withheld by Treasury upon receipt of an OIA request from the Green and Labour research units. This withholding was judged to be justified by the Ombudsman because of the early stage at which the programme was at and the apparent broadness of the advice. Now that the programme has progressed, this justification for withholding would no longer apply with such strength. Notably, s9(2)(f)(iv) would most likely no longer apply, as it has been recognized that s(2)(f)(iv) mainly applies in the situation that advice has been tendered but a decision has not yet been made.

Due to this I would like to request under the Official Information Act the documents that were the subject of the complaints to the Ombudsman. This includes:

* Treasury reports T2011/1710, T2011/1184 and T2011/1578
* the Treasury aide memoire Additional advice on potential share allocations
* the two discussion papers on allocation policy prepared by the Crown’s financial advisors Deutsche Bank / Craigs Investment Partners.
* the small number of emails between Treasury and MFAT officials regarding the drafting of advice to Ministers (namely, Treasury Report T2011/1710: Mixed Ownership Model – Foreign Ownership Restrictions), and a copy of the draft advice with comments and suggested changes tracked.

In considering the public interest in this case I would encourage the Treasury to consider the interest in releasing these documents so that the public can better understanding the decision making process that the Ombudsman goes through in deciding whether withholding information is justified. This is the purpose of my request: I want to compare the Ombudsman's report on the complaints about withholding with the information in order to see what level of advice is inspecific enough that it would 'not inform voters about how the government proposes to implement the mixed ownership programme.'

Please feel free to contact me if you wish me to clarify my request.

Yours faithfully,

Joshua Grainger