breakdown of "Marketing, press and publicity" spend

Dear Sir or Madam,

Please provide any available breakdowns of the "Marketing, press
and publicity £45.4m" figure from your 2006/7 annual accounts.

Any such information is not held for the purposes of creating the
BBC's output, but rather for advertising that output, and therefore
I believe that it is held for a purpose "other than those of
journalism, art or literature" and therefore falls under the FoI
act. If you disagree with this, please could you provide a full
explanation of why you disagree?

Yours faithfully,

Ganesh Sittampalam

Dear FOI Enquiries,

Have you appealed the decision notice from the Information
Commissioner regarding the costs of production of programmes to the
Information Tribunal? If not, what justification do you have for
not applying that precedent to this request?

Yours sincerely,

Ganesh Sittampalam

Dear Sir or Madam,

I have now reviewed all the ICO's decision notices on the BBC's
attempts to apply the schedule 1 exemption. I note that he has
consistently found that information only peripherally associated
with programme-making is not covered by this exemption, and it
therefore seems very likely to me that he will find the same thing
in this case. The dominant purpose of keeping breakdowns of your
marketing expenditure is surely to ensure oversight and ensure
value for money, rather than being core to the creative process
involved in programme-making: you will of course be aware that the
ICO has found that even the costs of making programmes themselves
are not exempt under this schedule, even if other exemptions do
apply.

I note that there have been many similar findings in decision
notices and only one of these has been appealed to the Information
Tribunal by you, according to the list of decision notices on the
ICO's website and the list at
http://www.informationtribunal.gov.uk/Do....
This suggests that even if you do "reserve your position on the
matter", you have not taken the necessary legal steps to overturn
these decisions.

If the schedule 1 exemption is indeed found not to apply, you will
have been in breach of the FOI act by not providing an immediate
internal review of your alternative claims of exemption under
section 43(2). With regard to those claims, you are free to redact
details of individual payments, as I agree that those would be
exempt as it could compromise your dealings with your suppliers;
what I do want to see are the totals under whatever headings you
normally classify this expenditure. I see no reason why knowledge
of the total amounts the BBC spends in specific areas would impair
your negotiation position.

Referring to the part of your response where you discuss the public
interest test, I notice that both considerations in "favour of
disclosure" are actually hedged with riders that would more
properly belong "on the other hand". It seems to me that you have
taken a biased approach to considering this test.

I also do not agree with your statement that "in order for the
information to be of value to the public, it would be necessary to
have access to information about the costs of other broadcasts who
commission similar content". Of course, it would be possible to
have access to that information about Channel 4, which would
provide at least one point of comparison; secondly, I believe that
it would be valuable in its own right as there is public interest
in debating not only whether the level of expenditure is "normal"
for the industry, but whether the expenditure should be made at
all. For advertising-funded broadcasters, marketing may help to
increase audiences which have a direct impact on revenues; the same
is not true of the BBC.

I therefore request that you do the following:

(a) Either abandon your insistence on the schedule 1 exemption, or
provide a proper explanation of why the ICO's previous decisions do
not apply equally in this case.

(b) In either case, provide an immediate internal review of your
claim of section 43(2) exemption, taking into account the arguments
above. That way I will be able to combine any necessary appeals on
the schedule 1 exemption and this one, resulting in a more
efficient use of the ICO's time, and the faster resolution of this
case. In view of the strong evidence against your schedule 1
stance, it seems to me that a refusal to do this would be evidence
that you are acting in bad faith, trying to spin the process out as
long as possible rather than actually comply with your FOI
obligations.

Yours sincerely,

Ganesh Sittampalam

Dear FOI Enquiries,

Thank you. I have now appealed this to the Information
Commissioner.

Yours sincerely,

Ganesh Sittampalam