Tag Archives: FOI

June 30, 2014 · 4:02 pm

What’s so foolish about FOI?

The television presenter Phillip Schofield took to Twitter recently to draw attention to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to Avon and Somerset Police. He did so because the request had asked about the cost to the force of Mr Schofield’s attendance at an open day.

Message to Tom Hodder .. No Fee!! My bro works for the police, it was a family day out!

I’ve no problem with his drawing attention to it, nor with his naming the person, but I thought it was rather unpleasant that he chose to use the hashtags #WastingPoliceTime #Fool. As Mr Schofield, and the response on WhatDoTheyKnow.com, say, the cost was nil, but I don’t suppose Mr Hodder was to know that: Mr Schofield was described on his own employer’s site as having been invited to attend, and he promotes himself as someone for hire for “personal appearances”. I didn’t know Mr Schofield’s brother works for the police, and I suspect Mr Hodder didn’t either.

Wasting Police Time is a term used to describe a criminal offence. What Mr Hodder was doing was exercising his statutory right to ask a public authority for information (in this instance about the expenditure of public funds), and I see nothing wrong in what he asked (nor, indeed, in the response by the police. I am sure Mr Schofield wasn’t seriously suggesting the commission of a criminal offence, but his use of the term, and the epithet “fool” seem mean-spirited. And, of course, as he might have expected, many of his fans jumped to his defence and to verbally attack Mr Hodder.

All this seems rather ironic when one considers Mr Schofield’s involvement in 2012 in another “transparency” story. This was when he confronted the prime minister with a list of alleged child sex abusers which he had found online, but which he failed to shield from the studio cameras – a stunt which Jonathan Dimbleby described as “cretinous”. This led to his employer having to pay the late Lord McAlpine (whose name was on the list) £125,000 to settle a defamation claim. Even the apology which followed the incident had a mean-spirited air about it, when Mr Schofield appeared to blame the cameraman.

Mr Schofield has one of the largest followings on Twitter (2.99 million, at the time of writing). People with that sort of following carry some responsibility, and if they criticise named individuals they should do so fairly. I think it would be in order if he apologised to Mr Hodder.

 

 

2 Comments

Filed under Freedom of Information, police, social media

Tagged as ,

June 25, 2014 · 6:24 pm

Wading through the rules: fairness for litigants in the Information Tribunal

Any judicial system needs to have rules to ensure effective and efficient case management: failure to do so risks delays, backlogs and, ultimately, breaches of natural justice and Article 6 Convention rights. Thus, we have the civil, the criminal, and the family procedure rules, and, within the tribunal system, the 2008 Upper Tribunal Rules, and a whole host of First-tier Tribunal Rules (the ones relating to Information Rights cases are the General Regulatory Chamber Rules 2009 (TPR)). In addition, there are Practice Notes (such as one for “Closed Material in Information Rights Cases”) and a range of forms and guidance.  There are even specific “Guidance notes for individuals representing themselves in freedom of information appeals in the general regulatory chamber of the first-tier tribunal” (which I shall call the “LiP Guidance” (with LiP meaning Litigant in Person)). (Interestingly, the only copy of this I can find online is hosted on a third party site.)

For such litigants in person, these sources of rules and guidance (and the navigating of them) are essential but complicated. A neat illustration of this point comes in a recent judgment of the Upper Tribunal on a Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) case.

In the First-tier Tribunal (FTT) a Mr Matthews had sought to appeal the Information Commissioner’s (IC) decision notice  that the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (DBIS) didn’t hold the majority of information sought about the tendering process for the delivery of marketing workshops from Business Link West Midlands, and that what it did hold was exempt from disclosure under section 40(2) of FOIA. Mr Matthews, referring to the LiP Guidance (at paragraph 16) asked for, and expected, an oral hearing.

However, in responding to the notice of appeal, the IC applied successfully, under rule 8(2)(a) of the TPR to “strike out” one ground of appeal, and under rule 8(3)(c) to “strike out” the remainder.

Lawyers, and those who deal in this subject regularly, recognise that to “strike out” all grounds of appeal means the appeal is no more. But others might sympathise with Mr Matthews, who did not have any help on this matter from the LiP Guidance, and who, when asked by the Upper Tribunal judge, explained that what he had thought it meant was

that the way in which he had written his grounds out may be stuck through or altered, or sent back to him to change, but that the appeal itself would continue

So, we have Mr Matthews, still expecting an appeal with a hearing, but getting neither.

But was he entitled to a hearing, not of his substantive appeal, but to determine whether his appeal should be struck out? This was what was, in the main, at issue in the Upper Tribunal.

Rule 32(3) of the TPR says that the general rule that the FTT must hold a hearing before disposing of an appeal need not apply when deciding whether to strike out a party’s case. It does not preclude a hearing, though, but, rather, leaves it to the FTT’s discretion. In this instance the Upper Tribunal judge decided that the FTT erred in law in not exercising its discretion to hold a hearing and, alternatively or additionally, for failing to give any reasons for not holding a hearing.

Accordingly, the case is remitted to the FTT for it to hold an oral hearing of the strike-out application.

This might seem a very convoluted and unimportant judgment, but it shows the Upper Tribunal is alive to the difficulties faced by lay self-represented litigants in what should be more of an inquisitorial, rather than adversial, system. And it shows, as have other cases before it (see for instance Dransfield v IC & Devon Council, and IICUS v IC & BIS & Ray) that the Upper Tribunal is not unwilling to remit cases to the FTT on grounds of procedural unfairness.

3 Comments

Filed under Freedom of Information, Information Commissioner, Information Tribunal, Upper Tribunal

Tagged as

June 12, 2014 · 1:44 pm

The Ministry of Poor Record Keeping?

If the Ministry of Justice really can’t search the text of emails for information, how can it comply with the FOI Code of Practice on Records Management?

In performing his functions under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) the Information Commissioner (IC) must promote the observance by public authorities of codes of practice issued under section 45 and section 46 of FOIA. Section 46 provides for a code of practice to be issued by the Lord Chancellor as to desirable practice for public authorities for the keeping, management and destruction of their records. A code was duly issued by the then Lord Chancellor Lord Irvine in 2002.

So, when deciding whether, for instance, a public authority has complied with its obligations under part 1 of FOIA (i.e. has it properly responded to a request for information?) the IC should, I submit, take into account where necessary whether the authority is complying with the Records Management Code.

With this in mind, consider the Ministry of Justice’s (MoJ) reported response to an FOI request for any mentions on its systems of the Howard League for Penal Reform. As Ian Dunt reports, the MoJ said that

On this occasion, the cost of determining whether we hold the information would exceed the limit set by the Freedom of Information Act

I have seen the MoJ response in question, and I accept that it is legitimate for a public authority to refuse to disclose information if the costs of determining whether it is held exceeds the limit prescribed by regulations (although authorities have an obligation under section 16 FOIA to advise and assist applicants as to how they might reframe their request to fall within the cost limits, and the MoJ have failed to do this). However, while the response refers to a necessity to search paper records, it also says

A manual search is required as central search functions (for example, those on email systems) would not identify all correspondence  – for example, if the Howard League for Penal Reform was mentioned in the body of the text

This appears to suggest, as Ian says, that “they can only search electronically for the headline of an email, not the body of a message”

If this is true (which seems extraordinary, but one is sure it must be, because intentionally to conceal information which otherwise should be disclosed under FOIA is an offence) it would appear to be contrary to the desirable practice in the Records Management Code, which says that

Records systems should be designed to meet the authority’s operational needs and using them should be an integral part of business operations and processes. Records systems should…enable quick and easy retrieval of information. With digital systems this should include the capacity to search for information requested under [FOIA]

It would be most interesting if the Howard League were to refer this to the IC for a decision. The IC rarely these days mentions the Records Management Code, but as the Code itself says

Records and information are the lifeblood of any organisation. They are the basis on which decisions are made, services provide and policies developed and communicate

Not only does poor records management affect compliance with FOIA (and other legal obligations), but it is not conducive to the reduction of back-office costs, developing new ways of working, and driving economies of scale (all things, of course, which the current Lord Chancellor prays in aid of his potentially devastating changes to legal aid provision).

p.s. As @Unity_MoT points out on twitter, if the MoJ struggles to search its systems to respond to FOIA requests, how does it undertake searches for responding to subject access requests under section 7 of the Data Protection Act 1998? See e.g. page 17 of the IC Code of Practice on Subject Access:

Not only should your systems have the technical capability to search for the information necessary to respond to a SAR, but they should also operate by reference to effective records management policies

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Freedom of Information, Information Commissioner, records management

Tagged as ,

June 9, 2014 · 3:08 pm

ICO’s power to refuse to decide cases is rarely used

The “filter” of section 50(2)(c) of the FOI Act allows the Information Commissioner to refuse to make a decision on frivolous or vexatious applications. It is rarely used. What an exciting intro to a blog post eh?

The First-tier Tribunal (Information Rights) (FTT), recently refused an application by Leeds City Council for an award of costs against a requester whose requests had been held by the Information Commissioner (IC), and the FTT itself, as vexatious under section 14(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA). Alistair Sloan has blogged about the decision itself, and I would commend his piece to readers, but an observation by the judge led me make an FOI request of my own.

After noting that

it must be possible, depending on the circumstances, for the maker of a request regarded by everyone else as vexatious, to defend his or her position on that point without automatically being treated under the costs Rules as behaving unreasonably

the judge adverted to section 50(2)(c) of FOIA. This permits to IC to not make a decision whether a public authority has complied with its FOIA obligations if the application for the decision is itself “frivolous or vexatious”. (This must be distinguished from a decision as to whether the original FOI request to the public authority was, pursuant to section 14(1), vexatious). It gives the IC an exception to the general requirement to make a formal decision on all cases where the applicant asks for one. The judge said

it is right to remember the protections which already exist for public authorities in the context of vexatious requests or hopeless appeals. Before a right of appeal is even a gleam in the Tribunal’s eye, there must be a complaint to the Information Commissioner (ICO). If the complaint to the ICO appears to be “frivolous or vexatious,” then there is no need for him even to make any decision appealable to the Tribunal. See Section 50(2) FIA

but then went on to note that he was

not aware of any published information about the extent to which the ICO makes use of this important provision.

 Ever keen to help our judiciary, I asked the IC, via What Do They Know. With admirable promptness they disclosed to me that, in the years for which records are retained (2007 onwards), the IC has declined to serve a decision notice because he considers the application vexatious or frivolous only 18 times (which breaks down into 16 frivolous and 2 vexatious).

Clearly, the IC considers this exceptional power to be just that – one that should be used only in exceptional cases, and maybe its use in 0.3% of cases accords with that. But in my research for this piece I did dig up again the IC’s submission to the Justice Committee for the latter’s 2012 post-legislative scrutiny of FOIA, and I noticed that there was this comment

For some reason Parliament made a distinction between this provision [section 50(2)(c)] and that in section 14(1) applying to requests to public authorities.

This strikes me as odd. It is quite clear that there is an important distinction between a vexatious request to a public authority and a frivolous or vexatious application for a decision. A requester could make a request to a public authority which was not in any way vexatious, yet choose to pursue the matter by applying for a decision in a way that made that application frivolous or vexatious. And it seems to me that this was what Judge Warren in the FTT was alluding to, and why it would be highly unusual – and potentially oppressive – to award costs against someone appealing a refusal of a vexatious request. Rule 10(1)(b) of the relevant tribunal rules does allow for the award of costs for unreasonably bringing (as opposed to conducting) the proceedings, but the availability of the filter of section 50(2)(c) FOIA should mean that it would be extraordinarily unusual for such an award ever to be made.

A final observation from me. The wording of section 50(2)(c) seems to make it clear that, as the IC would make no decision in a case where the application is frivolous or vexatious, then no possible right of appeal to the FTT could exist (and, therefore, judicial review would be the only legal remedy available). This would be in contrast to cases such as Sugar and (currently at case management stage in the Upper Tribunal) Cross v IC  where what is at issue is whether a decision by the IC that an organisation is not a public authority for the purposes of FOIA constitutes an appealable “decision”.

Leave a comment

Filed under Freedom of Information, Information Commissioner, Information Tribunal, judiciary, vexatiousness

Tagged as ,

May 29, 2014 · 8:31 am

Data Protection rights of on-the-run prisoners

Does data protection law prevent the disclosure under the FOI Act of the identities of prisoners who have absconded?

The Mail reported recently that the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) had refused to disclose, in response to a request made under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA), a list of prisoners who have absconded from open prisons. The MoJ are reported to have claimed that

under Freedom of Information laws, there is a blanket ban on releasing the criminals’ identities because it is their own ‘personal data’

but the Justice Secretary Chris Grayling was reported to be

furious with the decision, which was taken without his knowledge. He is now intending to over-rule his own department and publish a list of all on-the-run criminals within days

and sure enough a few days later the Mail was able to report, in its usual style, the names of the majority of the prisoners after Grayling

intervened to end the ‘nonsense’ of their names being kept secret…[and stated] that data protection laws will not be used to protect them, arguing: “They are wanted men and should be treated as such. That’s why on my watch we will not hold back their names, unless the police ask us not to for operational reasons”

Regarding the initial article, and in fairness to the MoJ, the Mail does not publish either the FOI request, nor the response itself, so it is difficult to know whether the latter was more nuanced than the article suggests (I suspect it was), but is it correct that disclosure of this information was prevented by data protection law?

More information was given in a follow-up piece on the Press Gazette website which cited a spokeswoman from the MoJ’s National Offender Management Service’s Security Group:

She said the department was “not obliged” to provide information that would contravene the Data Protection Act, adding, “for example, if disclosure is unfair”, which also meant that it did not have to consider “whether or not it would be in the public interest” to release the information

This is technically correct: FOIA provides an exemption to disclosure if the information requested constitutes personal data and disclosure would be in contravention of the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA), there is no “public interest test” under this exemption, and whether disclosure is unfair is a key question. The reference to “fairness” relates to the first data protection principle in Schedule One to the DPA. This provides that

Personal data shall be processed fairly and lawfully and, in particular, shall not be processed unless—

(a)at least one of the conditions in Schedule 2 is met, and

(b)in the case of sensitive personal data, at least one of the conditions in Schedule 3 is also met

As the Information Commissioner’s Office says (page 13 of this guidance) “fairness can be a difficult concept to define”, and assessing it in a FOIA context will involve whether the information is “sensitive personal data” (it is in this instance – section 2 of the DPA explains in terms that data about prison sentences is included in this category); what the possible consequences of disclosure are on the individual; what the individual’s reasonable expectations are; and the balance of the interests of the public against the rights of the individual (this last example shows that there is, in effect, if not in actuality, there is a kind of public interest test for the FOIA personal data exemption).

With this in mind, would it really have been “unfair” to disclose the identities of on-the-run prisoners? The consequences of disclosure might be recapture (although I concede there might also be exposure to risk of attack by members of the public), but does an absconder really have a reasonable expectation that their identity will not be disclosed? I would argue they have quite the opposite – a reasonable expectation (even if they don’t desire it) that their identity will be disclosed. And the balance of public interest against the absconders’ rights surely tips in favour of the former – society has a compelling interest in recapturing absconders.

But this doesn’t quite take us to the point of permitting disclosure of this information under FOIA. If we look back to the wording of the first data protection principle we note that a condition in both Schedule Two (and, this being sensitive personal data) Schedule Three must be met. And here we note that most of those conditions require that the processing (and FOIA disclosure would be a form of processing) must be “necessary”. The particular conditions which seem to me most to be engaged are the identically worded 5(a) in Schedule Two, and 7(1)(a) in Schedule Three:

The processing is necessary for the administration of justice

What “necessary” means, in the context of a balance between the FOIA access rights and the privacy rights of individual has been given much judicial analysis, notably in the MPs’ expenses case (Corporate Officer of the House of Commons v The Information Commissioner & Ors [2008] EWHC 1084 (Admin)), where it was said that “necessary”

should reflect the meaning attributed to it by the European Court of Human Rights when justifying an interference with a recognised right, namely that there should be a pressing social need and that the interference was both proportionate as to means and fairly balanced as to ends

In this way “necessary” in the DPA, accords with the test in Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which provides that any interference with the right to respect for private and family life etc. must be

necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others [emphasis added]

Deciding whether there was a “pressing social need” to disclose, under FOIA, the absconders’ identities to the Mail was not straightforward, and no doubt the civil servants at MoJ erred on the side of caution. I can imagine them thinking that, if it was necessary in a democratic society to publish these names, they already would be published as routine, and the fact that they hadn’t meant that it would not be proportionate to disclose under FOIA (I happen to think that would be wrong, but that’s not strictly relevant). But this is an interesting case in which the subsequent intervention by the Justice Secretary created the justification which perhaps did not exist when the FOIA request was being handled: after all, if the Justice Secretary feels so strongly about publishing the names, then doing so must be necessary in the interests of public safety etc.

As it was, five of the names (out of eighteen) were not disclosed, no doubt for the police operational reasons that were alluded to by Grayling. And this, of course, points to the most likely, and the most strong, exemptions to disclosure of this sort of information – those relating to likely prejudice to law enforcement (section 31 FOIA).

 p.s. I am given to understand that the Information Commissioner’s Office may be contacting the MoJ to discuss this issue.

2 Comments

Filed under Data Protection, Freedom of Information, human rights, police

Tagged as , , ,

April 25, 2014 · 1:28 pm

The slings and arrows of FOI

“…investigation by and even adverse comment from the Ombudsman is one of the slings and arrows of local government misfortune with which broad shouldered officials have to cope…” (Feld v London Borough of Barnet [2004] EWCA Civ 1307)

Ombudsmen loom over the actions of many public authorities. Particularly, the NHS and local authorities are subject to the scrutiny of respectively, the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO), and the Local Government Ombudsman (LGO). The Ombudsmen themselves must have broad shoulders, subject as they are to the oversight of both parliament, and, because they are public authorities subject to the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA), the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

The PHSO was recently asked, under FOIA, for the email address and telephone number of the Ombudsman herself, Dame Julie Mellor. The request was refused, on the basis of the exemption at section 40(2) of FOIA – namely that the requested information was Dame Julie’s personal data, and disclosure would breach the first data protection principle in the Data Protection Act 1998. This refusal has now been upheld by the ICO, in a decision notice which explains that

the data requested relates to a living individual who may be identified from that data and that [therefore] it constitutes personal data

That much is uncontroversial: a person’s email address and telephone number will generally be held to be their personal data, even in a professional context, providing that they can be identified from that data. However, the ICO goes on to say

the Commissioner considers that the Ombudsman would have a reasonable expectation that her email address and direct telephone number would not be placed into the public domain by disclosure under the FOIA…

…The Commissioner is aware that the requested email address and telephone number are personal to the Ombudsman but are professional contact details. He considers that their disclosure is unlikely to cause the Ombudsman distress on a personal level. However the Commissioner is satisfied that disclosure would disrupt the running of the organisation and it is apparent that the consequences would have a negative impact upon the PHSO

This seems to conflate two quite separate issues – personal privacy, and organisational impact. As far as I can understand it the argument is that, because this is personal data, and because disclosure would disrupt the running of the organisation, disclosure would not be “fair”, in line with the requirements of the first data protection principle. But, as the ICO’s own guidance on disclosure of personal data under FOIA explains (paragraph 44), the consequences to be taken into account are those to the data subject, not to their organisation, or a third party.

If disclosure of information would disrupt the running of a public authority, there are other, more appropriate FOIA exemptions which might apply. Specifically, section 36(2)(c), for situations where disclosure would prejudice, or would be likely otherwise to prejudice, the effective conduct of public affairs.

But even then I struggle to see how disclosure of such innocuous information would really cause sufficient prejudice to warrant keeping this information secret – shouldn’t the Ombudsman be able to implement systems to deal with a possible increase in emails and calls if the email address and phone number were made public? Isn’t this sort of potential irritation one of the slings and arrows of administrative misfortune with which broad shouldered officials have to cope?

(As a footnote to this piece, neither the section 40(2), nor the section 36(2)(c) are going to carry much weight when the information is readily available online already. I will not link to it, because I’m a cautious soul, but Dame Julie’s email address, at least, has been published on the internet as part of a document created by her, and hosted by a reputable academic institution.)

 

 

 

17 Comments

Filed under Data Protection, Freedom of Information, Information Commissioner, ombudsman, transparency

Tagged as , ,

March 12, 2014 · 5:36 pm

The FOI ministerial veto – why not?

The Court of Appeal has ordered disclosure of private correspondence between Prince Charles and the government. The judgment is potentially a triumph for transparency, but I have my doubts whether it reflects Parliament’s intentions when passing the FOI Act. And there will be a further appeal…

In September 2012 the Administrative Appeals Chamber of the Upper Tribunal (UT) handed down a judgment which struck me then, as it does now, as a remarkable work of research and scholarship. It was ruling on requests by the Guardian journalist Rob Evans – made as far back as April 2005 – under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) and the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 (EIR) for disclosure of information in private letters sent by the Prince of Wales to government ministers on matters of official policy. The UT’s judgment ran to 65 pages with three annexes, went into detailed analysis of constitutional conventions regarding the heir to the throne, and its decision was that the correspondence should be disclosed (overturning the prior decisions of the Information Commissioner (IC)). Subsequently, the Attorney General issued a certificate under section 53 FOIA – a “ministerial veto” – whose effect was to disapply the UT’s decision. The Attorney General’s certificate, in rather wider-spaced text, ran to ten pages.

Section 53 requires only that the accountable person (a minister)

gives the [Information] Commissioner a certificate signed by him stating that he has on reasonable grounds formed the opinion [that there had not been a failure to comply with the FOIA]

It is, as I’ve argued before , a bludgeon of an executive weapon, but it is, as are all acts of public authorities, potentially amenable to judicial review. So it was that, despite any statutory right of appeal, the Guardian made such an application. However, in July 2013, the High Court effectively decided that, although the ministerial power to override a superior court of record (let alone the statutory decision-maker, in the form of the IC) appeared to be a “constitutional aberration”, the proposition that “the accountable person is not entitled simply to prefer his own view to that of the tribunal” must be rejected. As Davis LJ said (para 111)

why not? It is inherent in the whole operation of s.53 that the accountable person will have formed his own opinion which departs from the previous decision (be it of Information Commissioner, tribunal or court) and may certify without recourse to an appeal. As it seems to me, therefore, disagreement with the prior decision (be it of Information Commissioner, tribunal or court) is precisely what s.53 contemplates, without any explicit or implicit requirement for the existence of fresh evidence or of irrationality etc. in the original decision which the certificate is designed to override

However, Davis LJ refused to accept that the wording of section 53 (“…stating that he has on reasonable grounds formed the opinion…”) permitted of an interpretation that:

the accountable person can, as it were, self-certify as to the availability of reasonable grounds

rather,

In my view, the language chosen clearly is sufficient to connote that an objective test is to be applied

But how to conduct that objective test? For Davis LJ, it must be that the reasonable grounds are “cogent”:

if an accountable person is to interfere, by way of exercise of the power of executive override, with the decision of an independent judicial body then that accountable person must be prepared and able to justify doing so. I am reluctant to talk in terms of burden of proof. But in terms of burden of argument the burden is in practice on the accountable person to show that the grounds for certifying are reasonable

Lord Dyson in the Court of Appeal has taken issue with this, saying (para 38) that

I do not consider that it is reasonable for an accountable person to issue a section 53(2) certificate merely because he disagrees with the decision of the tribunal. Something more is required […]
Examples of “something more” are given as
a material change of circumstances since the tribunal decision or that the decision of the tribunal was demonstrably flawed in fact or in law
Accordingly, as the Attorney General failed to give this “something more” but “simply disagreed with the evaluation made by the UT”, he failed to give reasons amounting to “reasonable grounds”. Thus (putting to one side a crucial other ground on which the appeal succeeded, relating to the EIR and European law, which I will deal with in a later blog post) the certificate had to be quashed.

As Dr Mark Elliot argues Lord Dyson here “adopted a significantly more exacting conception of reasonableness” than had the High Court and I would commend Dr Elliot’s piece to you as an expert analysis I am not competent to give.

However – and it pains me to say it, because I really don’t like section 53 – wasn’t it precisely Parliament’s intention that the accountable person did “merely” have to state that he had formed – on reasonable grounds – a different opinion to the preceding tribunal? If he cannot arrive at a different opinion, in the absence of “something else”, isn’t section 53 fundamentally weakened, even sidestepped? Indeed, Lord Dyson in my view arrives at this point, when he says

On the approach of the Divisional Court to section 53(2), the accountable person can override the decision of an independent and impartial tribunal which (i) is reasonable, (ii) is the product of a detailed examination (fairly conducted) of the issues after an adversarial hearing at which all parties have been represented and (iii) is not challenged on appeal. All that is required is that the accountable person gives sensible and rational reasons for disagreeing with the tribunal’s conclusion. If section 53(2) has that effect, it is a remarkable provision not only because of its constitutional significance (the point emphasised by the Divisional Court), but also because it seriously undermines the efficacy of the rights of appeal accorded by sections 57 and 58 of the FOIA
to which I am tempted to respond, adopting Davis LJ’s rhetorical device, “why not?” – that seems to have been what Parliament intended.

No doubt we shall see this explored more – the Attorney General is reported to have sought, and been given, leave to appeal to the Supreme Court.

1 Comment

Filed under Environmental Information Regulations, Freedom of Information, Information Commissioner, Uncategorized, Upper Tribunal

Tagged as , ,

March 7, 2014 · 8:29 am

The Ellison Review and records management

Failings in records management hampered the Ellison Review. In the absence of legal enforcement mechanisms, we should recognise the important of records managers

It is a truism that good records management is essential to good information rights practice. Section 46 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 requires the Lord Chancellor to issue a records management code of practice, and the code itself says

Freedom of information legislation is only as good as the quality of the records and other information to which it provides access. Access rights are of limited value if information cannot be found when requested or, when found, cannot be relied upon as authoritative

Similarly, records management is embedded in the principles of Schedule One to the Data Protection Act 1998, particularly those relating to adequacy, accuracy and retention of personal data.

But Mark Ellison QC’s report following The Stephen Lawrence Independent Review throws even sharper focus on how important records management can be in the service of justice, and the rule of law. Ellison’s Review was not a statutory inquiry, and thus did not have the legal powers to search records, or compel production of information (although its terms of reference did say that it should be given access to all necessary files). However, it appears to have been hampered by what looks like failings in records management. The report notes that

a number of potentially important areas of documentation…have not been provided to us. The explanation for this absence varies between:

a) a suspicion (or sometimes hard evidence) that they have been destroyed;
b) a belief that they must exist but cannot be found; or
c) that there simply is no record available and no way of knowing if one was ever made

Note that none of these explanations gives an indication that information has been deliberately withheld, so the subsequent announcement by the Home Secretary that there will now be a public inquiry (with full legal powers to gather information) into the infiltration methods of undercover police does not necessarily mean that information-gap will be filled.

The revelations of the disgraceful “spying” on the Lawrence family during the initial McPherson inquiry into Stephen’s death are, of course, the most important outcome of the Ellison Review. However, what unnerves me about the Ellison Review’s difficulties in getting information is that they starkly show that a failure to follow good records management practice potentially enables corruption and illegality to be covered-up, and that there is a lack of enforcement and regulatory mechanisms to prevent or punish this. The criminal sanctions regarding wilful destruction or withholding of information under FOIA apply only if the actions occur following the submission of a FOIA request, and, under the DPA, criminal sanctions only apply to unlawful obtaining or disclosure of personal data: destruction or hiding of information is unlikely to be a criminal act, in the absence of other factors.

I think this shows that Records Managers hold an exceptionally important role, one which is vital for organisational governance and compliance, and one which is sadly not recognised by some organisations. Records Managers should sit on information governance boards, should have a hotline to the Chief Information Officer, Head of Legal, Senior Information Risk Officer etc., and should be properly resourced and supported by those senior officers.

Stephen Lawrence would have been forty this year. The Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust helps transform the lives of the young people it supports.

1 Comment

Filed under Data Protection, Freedom of Information, police, records management

Tagged as , ,

December 30, 2013 · 1:47 pm

Making Motorman names public

UPDATE: 7 January 2014

In the comments to this piece the requester has informed me that the ICO is appealing this decision. Given how long the Upper Tribunal takes to turn things round, I don’t think we’ll be seeing these names for some time (if at all – if the ICO succeeds). I’ll keep the original post up though for the time being

END UPDATE.

So…will we get to see the names of the Operation Motorman journalists within the next week? Or will there need to be a bit of an extra push?

I tweeted earlier today to the effect that time is nearly up for the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) to disclose names of some of the journalists named in the ICO “What Price Privacy” report as having engaged the services of rogue private investigator Steve Whittamore, who was convicted in 2005  under the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA) of offences of illegally obtaining personal data.

My blog post from earlier this month describes how the First-tier Tribunal ordered on 29 November 2013, after a rather convoluted series of hearings on the papers, that the ICO disclose within 35 days

many, but not all, of the names of journalists recorded…as clients of the investigator at the heart of Operation Motorman…together with the names of the media outlet with which [they were recorded as having been] associated at the time

By my calculations, those 35 days are up at 17:00 next Monday (see part 2.8 of Civil Procedure Rules and rule 12(1) of The Tribunal Procedure (First-tier Tribunal) (General Regulatory Chamber) Rules 2009). This is, of course, unless the ICO has appealed the decision, but, as at 19 December, no such appeal appeared to have been lodged.

It is possible, however – bear in mind that the Order was for disclosure within 35 days – that the information has already been disclosed to the applicant – a Mr Christopher Colenso-Dunne. If that is the case, and if the applicant chooses not to make it public, then we may not yet see those names (it has been suggested to me that the person by that name for whom Google gives a search return may not be the applicant here). The Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) does not, in strict terms, oblige a public authority to make information public. Rather, it must “communicate” information to a person who has requested it (subject to the application of any exemptions). Although it is often said that disclosure under FOIA is to be taken as disclosure to the world at large, this operates as a concept, not a requirement. Some public authorities do, however, operate a “disclosure log” where some or all information disclosed under FOIA is made publicly available.

The ICO itself has a disclosure log, although it restricts this to responses “which we feel are of wider public interest”. There also appears to be a bit of lag in uploading responses (the last was one from 18 October).

One would certainly hope that, if the ICO is not appealing the decision, it will proactively disclose the information ordered to be disclosed. But, just in case, I’ve made a FOIA request for the same information, via whatdotheyknow.com, where it would be available for anyone to see (and which, of course, I’ll withdraw if the information becomes public in the interim).

3 Comments

Filed under Data Protection, Freedom of Information, Information Commissioner, Information Tribunal, journalism

Tagged as , ,

November 29, 2013 · 5:07 pm

ICO must disclose Motorman journalists’ names

The ICO has been ordered to disclose the names of some of the journalists referred to in “What Price Privacy” as having engaged the services of rogue private investigator Steve Whittamore

In April 2006 the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) published “What Price Privacy?” on what it described as “the unlawful trade in personal information”. The report revealed

evidence of systematic breaches in personal privacy that amount to an unlawful trade in confidential personal information

Those breaches were potential criminal offences under section 55 of the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA), and the report – which drew on the findings of documentation seized during Operation Motorman, arising from the activities of private investigator Steve Whittamore, said

Among the ‘buyers’ are many journalists looking for a story. In one major case investigated by the ICO, the evidence included records of information supplied to 305 named journalists working for a range of newspapers

In December 2006 the six-month follow-up report “What Price Privacy Now?” was published. This gave further details about the 305 journalists mentioned in the first report, and broke the data down into “Publication”, “Number of transactions positively identified” and “Number of journalists/clients using the services”.

And of course, this trade in personal information formed the basis of the first module (“The relationship between the press and the public and looks at phone-hacking and other potentially illegal behaviour”) of part one of Lord Justice (as he was then) Leveson’s inquiry into the culture, practices and ethics of the press.

In 2011 a request was made under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) to the ICO, for (1) “the number of transactions per journalist of each of the 305 identified journalists for each of the 32 identified publications” and (2) the journalists’ identities. The first request was refused by the ICO, on the basis that it would require a search through 17000 documents, and, therefore, section 12 of FOIA provided a statutory cost limit which meant it did not have to comply. Having been given these apparent facts the requester dropped his first request, but pursued the second. This was also refused, on the basis that the information was exempt under section 40(2) and section 44 of FOIA (the latter by virtue of the statutory bar on disclosure at section 59 of the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA)), in both cases because disclosure would be an unfair and unlawful disclosure of personal data of the journalists involved.

Because the ICO is the regulator of FOIA, a complaint about its handling of a FOIA request falls to be determined by the same office (a statutory arrangement which was to be described as an “unusual, and unsatisfactory, feature” of the law by the First-tier Tribunal (Information Rights) (FTT)). Accordingly, the office (describing itself as “the Commissioner”, as distinct from the “ICO”, which was the authority refusing the request) issued a Decision Notice which held that

the ICO correctly withheld the information by virtue of section 40(2). He has also found that the information could also be correctly withheld by virtue of section 44(1)

This decision was appealed to the FTT, which has today, after what has clearly been complex and strongly argued litigation, handed down three judgments (1, 2, 3) (two of which were preliminary or interim rulings, publication of which has been held back until now) which are, taken together, extraordinary, both for their criticism of the ICO, and for the outcome.

Taken as a whole the judgments find that, regarding some of the journalists named in the information held by the ICO, the balance of the public interest in receiving the information outweighs the legitimate interest of an individual to protect his or her privacy.

The FTT found that the information wasn’t sensitive personal data (which is afforded a greater level of protection by the DPA). This is at first blush rather surprising: section 2(2) of the DPA provides that sensitive data will be, inter alia, “data consisting of information as to…the commission or alleged commission by [the data subject] of any offence”. However, the FTT found that, although the information

does contain evidence that the investigator [Whittamore] engaged by the journalist committed, or contemplated committing, criminal activity. And, self-evidently, it discloses that the investigator received some form of instruction from the journalist. But there is no suggestion…that the journalist had instructed the investigator to use unlawful methods or that he or she had turned a blind eye to their adoption or, indeed, whether he or she had in fact expressly forbidden the investigator from doing anything that was not strictly legal [para 11 of third ruling]

The FTT had also invited submissions from the parties on the significance to the instant case of some of the passages from the Leveson inquiry, and, having received them, took note from those passages of

the issues of impropriety (which, while very possibly not involving criminality on journalists’ part, is nevertheless serious) and corporate governance in the context of the privacy rights of the [journalists]. We believe that, together, they give rise to a very substantial interest in the public knowing the identities of those who instructed the investigators [para 18 of third ruling]

But also tending towards favouring disclosure in the public interest was Leveson’s suggested criticisms of the ICO

We also give some weight to the public interest in knowing more about the information which was in the possession of the ICO and which the Leveson Report suggested it failed adequately to pursue [para 18 of third ruling]

The FTT noted the interests of the journalists, for instance that they would have had an expectation that details of their day-to-day professional activities would remain confidential, and that the Commissioner had argued that

publication of information indicating that they had engaged the services of the investigators concerned would be so unfair as to outweigh the factors in favour of disclosure [para 19 of third ruling]

but the FTT also noted, in effect, that the journalists involved must have had some idea of what was going on when they engaged Whittamore

it must have been well known within the profession what types of information could be obtained with the help of investigators, even if the means of obtaining it were not fully understood. The rights of individuals under data protection laws would also have been widely known at the time. In those circumstances those engaging the particular services…should have known that they ran the risk of becoming involved in behaviour that fell short of acceptable standards. This seriously dilutes the weight to be attributed to their privacy rights and leads us to conclude that the balance tips in favour of disclosure [para 19 of third ruling]

Accordingly, and, unless there is an appeal (Iwould be surprised if there isn’t) the names of some of the journalists who engaged Whittamore must be disclosed.

Other matters – criticism of ICO

In its preliminary ruling (November 2012) the FTT makes some trenchant criticism of the ICO’s handling of the requester’s first request (even though, as the requester did not pursue it, it was outwith the FTT’s jurisdiction). The refusal on costs grounds had been made, based upon a statement that the information requested had not been recorded in a database. Yet less than two months later the Leveson inquiry began, and, at that inquiry, evidence presented by the ICO effectively, in the FTT’s view, contradicted this statement

 we do not understand how the Appellant could have been given such a misleading response to the First Information Request…as a result of the misleading information given to the Appellant, he was not able to pursue his request…We only became aware of the ICO’s error after the Appellant drew our attention to the evidence presented to the Leveson Inquiry regarding the Spreadsheets. We assume (and certainly hope) that those in the Commissioner’s office handling this appeal had not become aware sooner [para 28 of first ruling]

The ICO clearly did not take well to this criticism, because the second interim ruling records that

the Commissioner has complained about part of the decision which he believes includes unfair criticism of his office and has asked us to correct the impression given [para 3 of second ruling]

but the FTT stood firm, saying

We continue to believe that our criticism was justified. The Appellant was told that he was wrong to assume that any database of information existed that could be interrogated…However, it is now known that the ICO held the Spreadsheets at the time…[and although the information in them] may not have provided the Appellant with precisely the information he requested, but it would have come close. Against that background we believe that the ICO was open to criticism for asserting, without further qualification, that it would be necessary to search through the 17,000 documents in order to respond to the request. [para 6 of second ruling]

5 Comments

Filed under Confidentiality, Data Protection, Freedom of Information, Information Commissioner, Information Tribunal, journalism, Leveson, Privacy

Tagged as , , ,