Freedom of Information

The Freedom of Information Act (2000) allows the general public to find out information that their elected representatives were not planning to release. Unless the invoke one of the exemptions. Or claim they do not have it. Or tell you it will cost too much. Or just ignore you.

You can of course complain to the Information Commissioner, but since the complaints are taking up to three years you have to really want the information to go down that route. Having said that I'll probably refer one of my requests to them even though the information I asked for is already fairly irrelevant (see £1.4 Billion cost of settlement rights for Gurkhas below).

I currently have three requests being processed, but will soon be adding more. The current requests are:

1. The Basis for the claim that allowing the Gurkhas to settle in the UK would cost £1.4 billion
2. The reasoning behind the budget cut to the Venture in Caia Park Wrexham
3. Processing times for Child Benefit claims

All three were made through the excellent www.whatdotheyknow.com

I have received a partial answer to the question regarding child benefit claims, but HM Revenue and Customs' email system does not seem to be working any more to get a full answer. Oddly the answer given said that they did not have a breakdown of how long claims took to process, yet they did now the average processing times. Surely one is needed to calculate the other? Slightly amusingly, on the day that they told me that on average all claims are dealt with within 28 working days our claim was completed. After FIVE MONTHS.

The Venture budget cut request has another few days before the time limit expires and will be the subject of a full post. I'm not necessarily against the cut, but there has not been enough information released so far for anyone to form a reasoned opinion of the matter. And that is the problem.

As for the Home Office, frankly I'm disgusted. They did tell me it would be impossible to give the answer within the 20 day limit (bizarre, but at least they warned me), but then ignored me for three weeks forcing me to request an internal review. An internal review is supposed to take no more than 20 days without an explanation for the delay. I really don't think

We are currently gathering all the information needed to complete this review and we will respond as soon as possible.

counts. Still, at least they are responding now, and there is a requirement that the review is carried out within 40 working days, so we're more than half way. I am really not keen on taking it further for the reasons mentioned above - especially since they apparently changed their minds about it costing too much anyway - but I probably will just because they should have answered.

So, three requests, one partial answer, one internal review and one in progress. Not exactly a stunning success for FOI, but it's a start.