It is alleged that the officials unlawfully got rid of emails to and from the airport\u2019s operator, BAA, between September and November 2007 as the government prepared to push through its controversial plans for a third runway.<\/p>\n
The allegations came to light after the Conservative MP for Putney Justine Greening, a member of David Cameron\u2019s Shadow Cabinet, spotted gaps in email conversations between transport officials and BAA. She had requested a number of emails under the Freedom of Information Act. Earlier emails had shown evidence of collusion between DfT civil servants and BAA in drawing up the consultation into Heathrow expansion.<\/p>\n
Justine Greening said: \u201cI have been trying to obtain these crucial discussions about the Heathrow consultation for nearly two years. When they were released it was clear that some of the material was missing. The deletion of these emails could be a criminal offence and I am very pleased that the information commissioner is investigating.\u201d<\/p>\n
She suspects that the missing emails could show that government officials skewed the evidence in collusion with BAA in favour of expansion.<\/p>\n
John Stewart, Chair of campaign group HACAN, said, \u201cIt seems like the Department for Transport would stop at nothing to push through a third runway.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stewart added that some key civil servants, like David Gray, who were key figures in the consultation, have now been moved to other jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Geraldine Nicholson, Chair of the No Third Runway Action Group, said, \u201cOnce more it seems as if the Government is prepared to destroy a community on the basis of a dodgy dossier.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Information Commissioner\u2019s Office, staffed by former police officers, has asked to interview civil servants at the DfT about the apparent destruction of evidence.<\/p>\n
ENDS<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Civil servants from the Department for Transport (DfT) are facing a criminal investigation over missing emails about the consultation into the expansion of Heathrow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hacan.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1096"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hacan.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hacan.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hacan.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hacan.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1096"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/hacan.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1096\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5380,"href":"https:\/\/hacan.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1096\/revisions\/5380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hacan.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hacan.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hacan.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}