Defence Business Services Secretariat
Room 6303
Tomlinson House
Norcross
Thornton Cleveleys
Lancashire
FY5 3WP
Ref: FOI2021/11055
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxx.xxx.xx
Ms S Corbett
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.xxx
21 October 2021
Dear Ms Corbett
Thank you for your email of 28 September 2021 requesting the following:
“
New legislation came in to help ensure veterans and their families are not
disadvantaged by tyour service ,other measures in the Bill states making the
complaints system more efficient, please provide by what means of access for
claimants! The Bill also renewed the Armed Forces Act 2006, following the Armed
Forces Acts of 2011 and 2016 as well as strengthening the Service Justice System
and Armed Forces Covenant, all dependent on how claims are collected and
submitted at a spefic time to claim's
March 2020, all planned medical examinations in relation to compensation scheme
claims were cancelled. Veteran UK unknowing to many veteran's a pilot scheme
launched August 2020 changed the way you gather medical evidence for War
Pensions Scheme claims and reviews. No requests for medical board examinations
or Hospital Case notes, issuing a Primary Care Factual report and a supplementary
Self-Assessment Form directly to the 'claimant' many DID NOT receive, Veteran UK
Staff going direct to GP for Primary Care Reports
•
Between 2017- 2020 how many new claims were received?
•
How Many were Iraq/Afghan veteran's from 2004-07 Gulf War How did
Veteran UK store Supplementary medical documents received prior to Pilot
scheme How was the data stored
•
What happened to the claimant's medical documents?
•
Who is designated Data Controller
•
How many medical data breach ICO Recitification's have been recieved for
claim's related to Mediccal Breach
•
How Many Complaints have Veteran UK received during 2019 from
claimaints
•
Provide a Policy of Complaints and non compliance to information request's
•
Who is responsible for loss of Data and policy process for complaints”
I am treating your correspondence as a request for information under the Freedom of
Information Act 2000 (FOIA).
A search for the information has now been completed within the Ministry of Defence, and I
can confirm that some information in scope of your request is held. The information request
is numbered below:
1. Between 2017 and 2020 there were 51,046 new War Pension Scheme (WP) claims
and 29,832 Armed Forces Compensation Scheme (AFCS) claims.
2. Data identifying if the claimant is an Iraq or Afghanistan Veteran is not held.
3. Medical documents are obtained on a case by case basis and held on the individuals
WP or AFCS case file.
4. The MOD is responsible for compliance with UK General Data Protection Regulation
(UK GDPR) and for ensuring data is handled accordingly. The Data Controller is the
MOD, the MOD is responsible for the processing of any personal data including
service individual’s medical data, which is categorise under UK GDPR as sensitive
data. Veterans UK is a pillar within Defence Business Services (DBS) and DBS is a
business unit within MOD. The MOD is the data controller regardless of which MOD
business unit undertakes the processing of the data.
5. It is unclear from the request what period of time your request for “data breach”
covers. However, having checked the data held regarding MOD data breaches, there
have been no data breaches referred to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO)
for DBS, therefore there can be no ICO rectifications for claims made to Veterans UK
regarding medical breaches.
6. During the period January 2019 to December 2019 the DBS Customer complaints
Team received a total of 335 complaints relating to Veterans UK.
7. Full details of the complaints procedure can be found at the following link-
https://www.gov.uk/.../veterans-uk/about/complaints-procedure
Under Section 16, (Advice and Guidance) you may find the following published statistics
relating to War Pension Scheme and Armed Forces Compensation Scheme Claims of use:
· WPS:
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/war-pension-recipients-index · AFCS:
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/armed-forces-compensation-scheme-
statistics-index If you have any queries regarding the content of this letter, please contact this office in the
first instance.
If you wish to complain about the handling of your request, or the content of this response,
you can request an independent internal review by contacting the Information Rights
Compliance team, Ground Floor, MOD Main Building, Whitehall, SW1A 2HB (e-mail CIO-
xxxxxx@xxx.xxx.xx). Please note that any request for an internal review should be made
within 40 working days of the date of this response.
If you remain dissatisfied following an internal review, you may raise your complaint directly
to the Information Commissioner under the provisions of Section 50 of the Freedom of
Information Act. Please note that the Information Commissioner will not normally investigate
your case until the MOD internal review process has been completed. The Information
Commissioner can be contacted at: Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House,
Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF. Further details of the role and powers of the
Information Commissioner can be found on the Commissioner's website at
https://ico.org.uk/. Yours sincerely,
David McKay
Defence Business Services Secretariat