2009 Election of Speaker

J Nelson made this Freedom of Information request to House of Commons

House of Commons did not have the information requested.

From: J Nelson

30 December 2011

Dear House of Commons,

How much did the 2009 election of the Speaker of the House of
Commons cost?

Yours faithfully,

J Nelson

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From: FOICOMMONS
House of Commons

12 January 2012

Dear J Nelson

Thank you for your request for information which is copied below.

The information you asked for cannot be separately identified.

For example, the House sat no later than a normal evening's business (no extra staff/catering/transport/overtime costs to attribute), all the ballot boxes and desks used were from existing stock, signage was produced in-House.

You may, if dissatisfied with the treatment of your request, ask the House of Commons to conduct an internal review of this decision. Requests for internal review should be addressed to: Freedom of Information Officer, Department of HR and Change, House of Commons London SW1 0AA or [House of Commons request email]. Please ensure that you specify the nature of your complaint and any arguments or points that you wish to make.

If you remain dissatisfied, you may appeal to the Information Commissioner at Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF.

Yours sincerely

Bob Castle
Head of Information Rights and Information Security

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From: J Nelson

12 January 2012

Dear House of Commons,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of
Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of House of Commons's
handling of my FOI request '2009 Election of Speaker'.

While no extra hours of sitting of the House were required there is
a daily cost of a sitting of the House of Commons, meaning the cost
of the sitting on the day the election was held must be either
available or able to be worked out; leading to the time taken to
conduct the election being able to be used to work out the cost of
the election. There is also an associated cost in terms of staffing
to produce the necessary equipment such as signage, information
sheets, ballot papers etc. While these items may have been stock
items there was a cost associated with their original purchase and
there will be a cost to replace the used equipment, which cannot be
re-used. There is also a cost of printing even if done in house as
the paper and ink will have a cost even if the printer itself is
wholly owned outright and a staff member must have been paid to
operate the printing machine.

While the costs may not be immediately available the costs can be
worked out as has been done in other areas such as the cost of oral
and written ministerial questions which run on the same principle
as the election of the speaker. As in so far as they do not extend
the sitting of the house, staff of the house, ministers and civil
servants are simply performing their jobs and the equipment used to
compile responses is already available and not specially purchased
just to answer the tabled question. With published cost able to be
worked out.

I thank you for your prompt response and look forward to hearing
the response to this latest request.

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is
available on the Internet at this address:
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/20...

Yours faithfully,

J Nelson

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From: FOICOMMONS
House of Commons

16 January 2012

Dear J Nelson

Thank you for your email.

The Freedom of Information Act provides the requester with an access right to recorded information held by public authorities. The information you seek is not recorded nor can it be produced by aggregating costs from other sources: the building blocks required to arrive at or work out the activity costs associated with the election simply do not exist.

While we have endeavoured to be as helpful as possible, the Freedom of Information Act provides the requester with an access right to recorded information. It does not extend, for example, to requests for views or comments about a particular matter. Your request can be in the form of a question, but a public authority does not have to answer your question if this would mean creating new information, making an estimate, providing analysis or giving an opinion or judgment that is not already recorded.

If you might be interested in seeing the overall costs associated with the operation of the House of Commons, the links below take you to our published accounts.

If you remain dissatisfied, you should make your complaint to the Information Commissioner, contact details were provided with our response.

Yours sincerely

Bob Castle
Head of information Rights and Information security

House of Commons Resource Accounts: http://www.parliament.uk/business/public...

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