1 Horse Guards Road London SW1A 2HQ
Information Rights Unit
Tel: 0207 270 4558
Fax: 0207 270 4861
Angie of the Elder Family
www.hm-treasury.gov.uk
[email address]
Via email to :
[FOI #10899 email]
25 June 2009
Dear Angie of the Elder Family
Your request for an internal review: electronic currency
Your email of 22 May requested an internal review of the Treasury’s response
to your request of 23 April which asked:
“Is electronic currency legal tender in the UK; and
“When electronic money is loaned, for example in the instance of on-line loan
applications, is there a creation of physical paper money to correspond with the
initial e-currency lent, and a physical creation of paper money that corresponds
to the interest charged on e-money loaned sufficient to pay the debt back? If so,
at what point does the paper money go into circulation?”
We had responded to your request on 22 May. This response is shown on
the Whatdotheyknow website on this date. Your review request was sent
later that day and asked:
‘why does it take more than 20 days to provide a simple yes or no answer, you
should be able to accomplish in less than 20 seconds. What are your reasons
for not doing do?
We have reviewed that handling of your request and our conclusions are
below.
Is this an FOI request?
We have considered your review request against the standards set by the
Freedom of Information Act (the Act), however it has concluded that as you
had asked questions where HM Treasury does not hold recorded information
to provide a response, your requests should not have been handled as
requests under the Act.
Nonetheless the Act sets standards for dealing with requests that it seems
reasonable to comply with, so your complaint has been considered against
these standards.
Response within the statutory deadline
Your request was sent at 20.07 hours on the evening of 23 April and we
received it until 24 April, thus the statutory deadline for response was 26 May
- taking account of the public holiday in May which counts as a non-working
days for calculating the time limit under the Act. Therefore the response
would have met the statutory deadline.
The Act asks public authorities to reply to requests promptly and no later than
20 working days. We receive a large number of requests and deal with them
in the order we receive them. We do endeavour to give prompt replies to
straightforward requests, however other pressures mean this is not always
possible. However we work hard to provide responses within the statutory
deadline and have a high degree of success in meeting this.
Requests for recorded information
As we indicated in relation to your earlier request of 14 April, broad questions
are not generally in the province of the Act. Your request of 23 April was in
the form of a question rather than a request for specific recorded information.
In the spirit of the Act we try to identify information that will help answer
questions asked under the Freedom of Information Act, but this is not always
straightforward.
I would note that in responding to your request of 14 April, which was also a
question, we referred to the Information Commissioner’s guidance which
states, in particular, that ‘Your request can be in the form of a question, but
the authority does not have to answer your question if this would mean
creating new information or giving an opinion or judgement that is not already
recorded’. Given that, in both instances, we did not hold specific recorded
information that answered your questions we did our best to help by providing
contextual information that seemed to us to be relevant.
Responding to your request
Your 23 April request repeated a question from the 14 April request that we
responded to on 23 April. (The response of 23 April was sent to you, at the
email address on your request, at 15.58 hours. At 20.07 hours on 23 April
you made the further request, via the Whatdotheyknow website, that is the
subject of this internal review). As we had already responded to your first
question we focussed on and answered your second question about the
creation of paper money to match electronic debt. Our review found that the
initial reply to your request should have pointed out that one of your requests
had been repeated.
Our response of 22 May confirmed that we did not hold recorded information
about the theoretical basis of money and commented that the Bank of
England was better placed to advise on the mechanics of the monetary
system because of their executive responsibility for monetary policy and
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financial stability. In order to be helpful the response also provided further
information about the impact on the money supply on new borrowing.
We recognise that this did not explicitly answer your question, however
requests considered under the Act are part of a legal process and we are
bound to answer only insofar as we hold recorded information that provides a
specific response.
I am sorry that you were dissatisfied with the service we provided, but I hope
that this explanation will satisfy you that we have responded to your requests /
correspondence in a timely manner, and in the spirit of the Act.
Rosemary Banner
Head of Information Rights Unit
For HM Treasury
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Document Outline
