Yearly cost of protecting ex-PM Tony Blair
Dear Home Office,
How much did you spend protecting Tony Blair in the years 2014 & 2015?
Please any financial statements in which this is accounted for.
Yours faithfully,
Ranjan Kumaran
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Ranjan Kumaran,
Thank you for contacting the Home Office with your request.
This has been assigned to a caseworker (case ref 39301). We will aim to send you a full response by 12/05/2016 which is twenty working days from the date we received your request.
If you have any questions then please do not hesitate to contact us.
Thank you,
P. Zebedee
FOI Requests
Home Office
OFFICIAL
Dear Mr Kumaran
Thank you for your email. Please note our response.
Yours Sincerely
FOI Team
Dear Home Office,
Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.
I am writing to request an internal review of Home Office's handling of my FOI request 'Yearly cost of protecting ex-PM Tony Blair'.
During a time of extreme cuts it is plain to every decent minded citizen of this country that taxpayer expenditure of tens of millions of pounds per parliament on the protection of a globetrotting multimillionaire philanthropist should require no less public scrutiny than that of any other public expenditure.
Nobody in this country for one second believes that the cost of protecting Mr Blair is either free or met by Mr Blair himself.
The Royal Family are a far more valuable national asset than Mr Blair yet they are completely transparent about the taxes they pay and they expenses they incur:
http://bmsf.org.uk/red-pennies-the-queen...
Whereas Mr Blair's accounts are highly opaque:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics...
If he wishes to receive state funded protection the very minimum the taxpayer ought to expect is for there to be some degree of transparency regarding the cost and the contribution, if any, made by Mr Blair himself.
This is something which ought to be subjected to just as much scrutiny and public debate as every other aspect of public expenditure.
A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/y...
Yours faithfully,
Ranjan Kumaran
Thank you for contacting the Home Office FOI Requests mailbox.
The Freedom of Information (FoI) Act 2000 provides public access to
recorded information held by the department.
If you have submitted a valid FoI request, we will acknowledge your
request within 48 hours, and aim to provide the information requested
within 20 working days as specified under the FoI Act
PLEASE NOTE
If you have a general immigration enquiry, or require an update on a
specific case, you should contact UKVI directly, contact information can
be found here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/organisati... and
[1]https://www.gov.uk/visas-immigration
General enquiries should be directed to
[2][email address]
References
Visible links
1. https://www.gov.uk/visas-immigration
2. mailto:[email address]
Dear Mr Kumaran,
Please find attached a reply to your request for an internal review into
our handling of FoI request 39301.
Regards
B Dorrington
Information Rights Team
Knowledge and Information Management Unit
Performance and Risk Directorate
Home Office | 2 Marsham Street | London SW1P 4DF
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