REQUEST FOR INFORMATION: 19-02-2009-161530-015

Dear Mr McCaw,

Thank you for your correspondence received by the Ministry of Defence on 16 February, in which you asked for the following information:

Please supply in detail the total expenditure by the Army on Common Purpose courses from 1997 to date. Please also supply a copy of the invoice for each Common Purpose course paid for by the Army.

Your correspondence has been considered to be a request for information in accordance with the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. I have been asked to reply.

We do not hold this information centrally within the Army Headquarters, as the relevant budget offices deal directly with the Department's central payment processing organisation. We did, however, ask the Financial Management Shared Service Centre to run a search for the supplier code and a separate one for the company trading name, both against the Army budget, with the following results:

From September 2007 to date, they found no trace on the Oracle financial system of payments made by the Army to this supplier. A search of the earlier system (before Oracle) only found one bill paid by the Army in May 2007 for £2,000 (incl. VAT of £297.87).

They found some payments made by other non-Army departments, which were published in a Parliamentary Question in June 2007 and are publicly available at the Hansard website under reference 26 June 2007: Column 668W. Their website address is: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/pahansard.htm. I have not provided this information here as it is outside the scope of your request and is exempt under section 21 of the Freedom of Information Act (2000) as it is reasonably accessible to you by other means.

A wildcard-type search for payments made to the company name “Common Purpose” by the Army's Top Level Budget (TLB) against the miscellaneous bills system found 14 payments totalling £32,958.74 (Incl. VAT of £4,908.74) over the period February 1998 to October 2006. This includes two payments made in February/March 1998 to a company with “Common Purpose” in its title, totalling £4,582.50 (Incl. VAT of £682.50) which may not be the same company.

Having checked the policy for providing copies of invoices, I must advise you that the MOD only provides copies to the National Audit Office and such requests cannot be met without the agreement of the company concerned.

The company has advised that they are not prepared to allow the MOD to release copies of their invoices, as they regard the information as “commercial in confidence”. Therefore I cannot provide you with any invoice copies, as this aspect of your request is exempt under section 41 (Information provided in confidence) and section 43 (Commercial interests). Section 41 is an absolute exemption.

I hope that you find this information useful.

Yours faithfully,

Andy Manders

FOI Complaints Procedure

If you are unhappy with this response or you wish to complain about any aspect of the handling of your request at this stage, then you should contact me in the first instance. Please remember to quote the reference number above in any future communications. If informal resolution is not possible and you are still dissatisfied then you may apply for an independent internal review by contacting the Director of Information Exploitation, 6th Floor, MOD Main Building, Whitehall, SW1A 2HB (e-mail [email address]).  Please note that any request for an internal review must be made within 40 working days of the date on which the attempt to reach informal resolution has come to an end.

If you remain unhappy following an internal review, you may take your complaint to the Information Commissioner under the provisions of Section 50 of the Freedom of Information Act. Please note that the Information Commissioner will not investigate the case until the internal review process has been completed. Further details of the role and powers of the Information Commissioner can be found on the Commissioner's website, http://www.informationcommissioner.gov.uk