Cayce Pollard

Email: [email address]

Your reference: FOICR 9032/08

14 April 2008

Dear Ms Pollard,

RE: FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST

Thank you for your email of 26 February asking for information on the total expenditure to date on management consultants in connection with the National Identity Scheme I am writing further to my correspondence of 4 March regarding your information request dated.

We are considering your information request. Although the Freedom of Information Act carries a presumption in favour of disclosure, it provides exemptions which may be used to withhold information in specified circumstances. Some of these exemptions are subject to a public interest test. These exemptions are known as qualified exemptions. The public interest test is used to balance the public interest in disclosure against the public interest in favour of withholding the information under qualified exemptions. Section 10(3) of the Act allows us to exceed the 20 working day response target where reasonably necessary to consider the public interest test fully. This is subject to us telling applicants when we expect to conclude our deliberations and provide a full response.

The information requested must be considered under the exemptions contained within sections 35 and 43 of the Act. These are qualified exemptions relating to the formulation of government policy and commercial interests. In order to consider the public interest test fully we need to extend the 20 working day response period, and now aim to respond by 28 April.

Should you have any queries about the handling of your information request then please do not hesitate to contact me.

Yours faithfully,

On behalf of the Identity and Passport Service

For advice on how and where to obtain a passport,

call the Passport Adviceline on 0870 521 0410

(24 hours a day, 7 days a week).

You can also email [email address]

or visit www.ips.gov.uk

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