To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs for what reason material referring to the CIC, redacted from a copy of a covering letter sent by his Department to the hon. Member for Billericay on 19 July was described as sensitive. (167674)

In assessing our response to the hon. Member’s request that I "confirm that Lord Hutton was made aware of” John Williams’s document, made in his letter to me of 18 June, we redacted the reference to material used by John Williams in his drafting because it was not relevant to the request and because we wished to protect the process that Williams used.

However in considering our response to the hon. Member’s subsequent request for the release of this information we concluded that the public interest in releasing this information outweighed that in withholding it.