Dear Mr. Alder,

I am sorry to trouble you again, but there are two or three other matters I wanted to raise in connection with the MCA submission to the Select Committee on Public Administration. The first relates to item 10 in the Committee questionnaire, and to your response: "MCA policy is for only a senior official - for example a member of the MCA Board not involved in the original decision - or the Department of Health's Policy Management Unit (PMU) to conduct appeals against a refusal to disclose information."

The implication here is that appeals against non-disclosure would routinely be handled by someone other than the person who was the subject of the complaint arising from non-disclosure. This does not appear to have happened in my case, but have I missed something?

Briefly, I wrote to Dr Keith Jones, with a formal Code request, on 16^th January. He replied on 6^th February, and asked me to contact him if I had any queries. He also indicated I should write to him if "unhappy" about his decision. I was, and wrote on 11^th February to say so.

Apart from a cryptic remark "in the first instance" - which I suppose could mean that Dr Jones would pass on my complaint to another reviewer - there was no indication I could get the decision independently reviewed, but every indication I would not.

Could someone please let me know what is going on and, if the matter is now in the hands of an independent reviewer, who the reviewer is and how they were selected?

Could you also please send me a copy of the document used by senior MCA staff when conducting reviews, the PMU Internal Review Guidelines on handling appeals?

Secondly, I want to question the Agency response to Q 11, in which you discuss the development of the MCA website. Please could you tell me if the developments you mention to the Select Committee are essentially the same as those described as follows, in the National Inventory Project: