Waste? Yes. Waist? No.

Thanks to the Daily Mirror for this.

When our new Justice Secretary Ken Clarke was interviewed on the television about his appointment in the cabinet he made a joke about how he looked in silk stockings.

Hopefully as somebody who rarely misses a trick I thought I’d wait to see what his inauguration outfit looked like before firing in a question to the Ministry of Justice.

When the answer came back that the clothes he wore for the ceremony cost around £20,000 it was clearly going to be a story – although from my point of view it was a shame that the vast bulk of the cost was incurred by Jack “The Veto” Straw who felt it necessary to spend £18,000 on the gown. Who says politicians can be out of touch?

Anyhow the reason for bringing this story to your attention is that when I sent in my question to the MoJ I couldn’t help myself and thought if I’m paying for Ken Clarke’s breeches then I wonder what size they are.

But the MoJ didn’t fall for that. Although they gave me the cost of his costume the details of his girth will remain subject to a S.40 exemption. [MoJ response]

The MoJ said: “Section 40(2) provides that personal data about third parties is exempt information if one of the conditions set out in section 40(3) is satisfied. Under Section 40(2) together with section 40 (3) (a) (i) of the FOIA disclosure of this information relating to third party would breach the fair processing principle, as there was a legitimate expectation by a third party, that this information would remain confidential.”

And we must remember that disclosure of his breeches would be a breach of the Data Protection Act.