IBI Corr
JJ Evans made this Rhyddid Gwybodaeth request to Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency
Dear Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency,
Please provide copies of all correspondence relating to the Infected Blood Inquiry or Infected Blood Compensation sent to or received by the below persons (including any attachments) during the period 1st October 2022 - 3rd January 2023.
1) Chief Executive Officer: June Raine
2) Alison Cave (Chief Safety Officer)
Yours faithfully,
JJ Evans
Our Ref: FOI 23/003
Dear JJ Evans,
RE: REQUEST UNDER THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT 2000
Thank you for your enquiry which we received on 3rd January 2023.
I confirm that your request is now being handled under the Freedom of Information Act and you should receive a reply within 20 working days from our date of receipt.
If you need to contact us again about this request, please quote the reference number above.
Please be aware that we publish FOIs replies and these are redacted and are located on our website at the following link below.
https://www.gov.uk/government/collection...
Kind Regards,
MHRA Customer Experience Centre
Communications and engagement team
Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency
10 South Colonnade, Canary Wharf, London E14 4PU Telephone 020 3080 6000
Dear MHRA Customer Services,
By law, Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency should normally have responded to this request promptly and by 31 January 2023.
Yours sincerely,
JJ Evans
Dear JJ Evans,
Thank you for your email.
We apologise you have not yet received a response to your request and this has been followed up with the relevant team and we hope to respond to you as soon as we can.
Kind Regards
MHRA Customer Experience Centre
Communications and engagement team
Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency
10 South Colonnade, Canary Wharf, London E14 4PU
Telephone 020 3080 6000
Dear MHRA Customer Services,
As per our policy, this FOI will be referred to the ICO if no response is received by COP 9th March.
Yours sincerely,
JJ Evans
Our Ref: FOI 23/003
Dear JJ Evans,
Thank you for your request under the Freedom of Information Act. Please
accept our apologies for the delay in response.
We have undertaken searches of the mailboxes which are used by Dr Raine
and Dr Cave for emails in scope of your request over the timeframe
specified. Due to the volume of results returned, it is not possible for
us to process your request any further. Section 12 of the Freedom of
Information Act allows public authorities to refuse requests where the
cost of dealing with them would exceed the appropriate limit, which for
central government is set at £600. This represents the estimated cost of
one person spending 24 working hours in determining whether the department
holds the information, locating, retrieving and extracting the
information. The searches we have conducted are returning between 729 and
2,531 items. As you are aware, we regulate blood and blood products and
have set up searches to try and reduce the number of items that simply
reference ‘blood’ as whilst we cannot say with certainty that they will
not be in scope of your request, we think it reasonable to try and reduce
the overall volume of items before reviewing the material further.
We judge that we would need between two and three minutes to review each
item we have returned, though this may be a conservative estimate where
there are attachments involved. We therefore judge your request to fall
within Section 12.
We would ask you to please consider refining your request by reducing the
date range from three months to two months.
If you disagree with how we have interpreted the Freedom of Information
Act 2000 in answering your request, you can ask for an internal review.
Please reply to this email, within two months of this reply, specifying
that you would like an Internal Review to be carried out.
Please remember to quote the reference number above in any future
communications.
If you were to remain dissatisfied with the outcome of the internal
review, you would have the right to apply directly to the Information
Commissioner for a decision. Please bear in mind that the Information
Commissioner will not normally review our handling of your request unless
you have first contacted us to conduct an internal review. The Information
Commissioner can be contacted at:
Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF
Yours sincerely
MHRA Customer Experience Centre
Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency
10 South Colonnade, Canary Wharf, London E14 4PU
Dear MHRA Customer Services,
Thank you for your response. I am happy to refine the request to the period 1st November 2022 - 1st January 2023.
Should a full response be received within 5 working days, we will request that the live ICO case is closed with no further action necessary.
Yours sincerely,
JJ Evans
Our Ref: FOI 23/181
Dear JJ Evans,
RE: REQUEST UNDER THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT 2000
Thank you for your enquiry which we received on 10 March 2023.
We confirm that your request is now being handled under the Freedom of Information Act and you should receive a reply within 20 working days from our date of receipt.
If you need to contact us again about this request, please quote the reference number above.
Please be aware that we publish FOIs replies and these are redacted and are located on our website at the following link below.
https://www.gov.uk/government/collection...
Kind Regards,
MHRA Customer Experience Centre
Communications and engagement team
Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency
10 South Colonnade, Canary Wharf, London E14 4PU
Telephone 020 3080 6000
Dear JJ Evans,
Please accept our apologies for the delay in reply. Please find our response to your request attached.
Kind regards
MHRA Customer Experience Centre
Communications and engagement
Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency
10 South Colonnade, Canary Wharf, London E14 4PU
Telephone 020 3080 6000
gov.uk/mhra
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Dear Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency,
Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.
I am writing to request an internal review of Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency's handling of my FOI request 'IBI Corr'.
You have refused my defined request on a particular subject, in relation to two individuals, within a narrow timeframe, on the grounds of being Vexatious, I disagree with this decision for the following reasons below and believe the information should be disclosed.
Firstly, the request has proper justification given my specific interest in this area and the request was not “….manifestly unjustified, inappropriate or improper use of a formal procedure.”
I disagree that the request is likely to cause a disproportionate or unjustified level of disruption, irritation or distress. Particularly given then narrow scope of the request.
Neither the tone or content of the request was objectionable in any way.
In your response you say that you have used "searches" using "broad wording". I would encourage you to use more specific search methods and train staff in how to use more specific searches if this is creating issues for you. The ICO may also be able to offer advice in how to better conduct more specific searches. This should be possible given the specific nature of the request.
You go on in your response, which seeks to justify your application of s14, to identify other exemptions you believe may apply. In particular, you say "the information within scope of your request would be likely engage the exemptions under sections 31(1)g) and 31(2)(a), (b) and (c)". I disagree with this.
The Infected Blood Inquiry is not a public authority and so cannot engage 31(1)g) or, therefore, 31(2)(a), (b) and (c). This is evidenced within the Inquiries Act itself which states: "During the course of an inquiry held under the Inquiries Act, that inquiry is not a public authority for the purposes of those Acts."
You also mention S32. Again, the Infected Blood Inquiry is not a public authority, nor is it a court. Sir Brian Langstaff has, on several occasions, explained the Inquiry is not a court.
Finally, you have described my request as a “catch-all” request. Given its defined and narrow scope, with legitimate purpose, I disagree with this finding.
A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/i...
Yours faithfully,
JJ Evans
Internal Review of FOI 23/003
Dear JJ Evans,
Thank you for your email.
We confirm that an internal review will be carried out on FOI 23/003. We normally aim to respond to requests for internal review within 20 working days of receipt. However, due to high volumes of queries we are currently receiving related to COVID-19 please be aware that responses may take longer than usual.
Kind Regards
MHRA Customer Experience Centre
Communications and engagement team
Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency
10 South Colonnade, Canary Wharf,
London E14 4PU
Telephone 020 3080 6000
Dear JJ Evans,
Thank you for your email.
I am writing to extend the deadline for completion of the internal review for request FOI 23/003. In accordance with the FOI Code of Practice and ICO guidance, we are extending the deadline for a further 20 days until 18 August 2023.
Kind Regards
MHRA Customer Experience Centre
Communications and engagement team
Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency
10 South Colonnade, Canary Wharf, London E14 4PU
Dear JJ Evans
I've been conducting the internal review of your request made on 10th March 2023, which we logged as FOI 23/181, and I wanted to let you know that I won't be able to complete the review and issue the decision to you today as I'd hoped.
This is because I've needed to go back over the considerations for your previous request FOI 23/003, which was made on 3 January 2023, as well, and the handling of this earlier request will also be covered in the review. I am sorry that this means I need a few more days to complete the review; I will provide this to you next week.
While I've been working on the review, I have wondered whether it might assist if you would be happy to talk to me about your request. I was going to write this into the review itself, but I thought I would mention it to you now. If you have Zoom, I've been using this to work through some quite complex requests with the person who's made the request, so I thought I would mention it here in case you would be interested.
I will complete the review next week, but if you think a discussion could be useful in the meantime, then please do let me know. I'm not sure if the whatdotheyknow formatting removes email addresses, but mine is [email address] (if that hasn't come through, it's simply lou dot lander and the usual @mhra.gov.uk address.)
Yours sincerely
Lou Lander
Freedom of Information Manager
MHRA Customer Experience Centre
Communications and engagement team
Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency
10 South Colonnade, Canary Wharf, London E14 4PU
Dear JJ Evans
Thank you again for the time you spent on our call yesterday - it really was appreciated, and I hope we've taken some good steps forward.
To recap, we discussed the internal review decision and I explained that, while I understood that my colleagues had been well-intentioned in trying to 'narrow the scope' of your request, this then still left them with an unmanageable amount of information, and it was this that led to the decision that was applied to FOI 23/181. I am sorry that we did not come to you sooner to explain the volume of results and to ask you about the information you would be most interested in. I hope my advice below will take us forward in this respect.
To confirm the decision of the review formally here, having worked through the handling of the request and gone back over the initial searches done, the decision of the review is that it would have been correct to apply section 12(1) to your request, as it isn't possible (within 24 hours) to go through the volume of results retrieved by the searches to locate and extract all the information that fell within the scope of your request wording. I do apologise that my review has taken some time to reach this decision, but I hope that the remainder of this email will be useful for you by providing further advice and assistance.
In our call, we talked about the different types of information that the searches had initially retrieved for your request wording, and you identified that you were specifically interested in whether information would be held about 'Infected Blood Compensation'.
Based on the review I've done of the previous searches (and the fact that they were so successful in retrieving references relevant to the key words for the original request), I've put in a query to our IT team to run two searches for 'Infected Blood Compensation', and 'Infected Blood' + 'Compensation'.
As part of my advice and assistance prior to you making a new request, I've asked that the initial searches covers the two-month time period '1st November 2022-3rd January 2023'. As we discussed, I have asked for the initial searches to include documents searches as well as emails.
I have also asked IT if they can then contact me when the searches have been run to advise me how many results have initially been identified. If this is a smaller number, I am hopeful that we will be able to proceed with a new request for the full time frame. If the number of results is significantly larger, I will see if I can get any further details that might help me advise what the best narrowing of your request might be.
There is usually at least a few days turnround for the IT searches, so if am not able to come back to you before the Bank Holiday weekend, then I will be in touch to advise on the initial results after this. Based on those results, I hope at this point we will be able to agree and confirm the wording of the new request.
Thank you again for your time yesterday. You are welcome to contact me with any questions you may have, or if anything I've said isn't clear.
Lou Lander
Freedom of Information Manager
MHRA Customer Experience Centre
Communications and engagement team
Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency
10 South Colonnade, Canary Wharf, London E14 4PU
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Hi Lou,
Hope all well, Good speaking the other week. I was wondering if you had heard back on the searches yet?
Yours sincerely,
JJ Evans
Dear Jason
Thank you for your email and I hope you're well. That's very good timing - I got the preliminary results back at the end of last week and I spent a couple of hours on them yesterday, particularly focusing on the run up to the date that you'd mentioned and a few days after. This stage gives me access to view each result, so I can determine if they're relevant (then I would need to ask for them to be exported if so). There's no result that's been relevant so far.
Very many results were clearly not relevant and I'm in the process of going back to IT to check this why this and potentially have one more search run again - I'm not sure this one was focused on the specific phrase and the combination I'd suggested, if you can bear with me another few days.
Alternately, if you'd like to move ahead with a request now rather than wait, I'd have to say that the best way to go forward would be to reduce the time frame down to a week around the most important date for you, and to keep to the very specific wording of "'Infected Blood Compensation' that we discussed on our call. This would be a retrievable amount and we could check them fully.
Best wishes
Lou Lander
Freedom of Information Manager
MHRA Customer Experience Centre
Communications and engagement team
Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency
10 South Colonnade, Canary Wharf, London E14 4PU
Dear Jason
Just to update you - I've requested the searches to be run again.
I'll be back in touch as soon as I know the results.
Best wishes
Lou Lander
Freedom of Information Manager
MHRA Customer Experience Centre
Communications and engagement team
Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency
10 South Colonnade, Canary Wharf, London E14 4PU
Dear Jason
I've got the re-run search results back.
The first one produced no results for the specific phrase 'Infected Blood Compensation'; the second search for 'Infected Blood' + 'Compensation' produced a very much smaller number of results than before.
These are retrievable - and sufficiently small to able to read through and identify anything that might be definitely relevant within twenty-four hours. I've only sampled a few - the searches are still picking up emails and documents that cover multiple subjects (ie. Item 4 Infected Blood; Item 11 Staff Compensation) but it's possible now to review them all for the whole time period you suggested.
I've still seen nothing more specifically about the subject you're interested in - but what I'd suggest is, after this prep, my advice would be to:
- Make a request for all correspondence on Infected Blood Compensation, or Compensation specifically in respect of 'Infected Blood', received by or sent by the two staff individuals specified in FOI 23/003 and FOI 23/181, in the time period 1st November 2022 to 3rd January 2023.
I stress that full review of the results may not locate anything relevant - I haven't gone through them all yet. But the 'prep' work I've done - with your valuable help - has brought us to the point that there's a manageable amount of info to review for possible relevance without triggering any exemptions for section 12 or 14. I would just like to thank you again for discussing this with me in detail.
If you would like to go ahead with the request, could I ask one thing please? Would you open a new whatdotheyknow page and send the request through to the MHRA in the usual way - the Customer Services team can then log this in the usual way and give you a new reference number and a statutory time frame for response. They'll let me know as soon as soon as your request is received and being logged and I can pick up from there with the results I've got from the most recent search.
To bring everything together, specific wording for the request would be:
"I request all correspondence on Infected Blood Compensation, or Compensation specifically in respect of 'Infected Blood', that's been received by or sent by the two staff individuals specified in my previous requests FOI 23/003 and FOI 23/181, in the time period 1st November 2022 to 3rd January 2023."
Please do let me know if anything is unclear. The formatting on whatdotheyknow doesn't help highlighting anything, so I will send separately to you as well just to confirm (with formatting!).
You are also, of course, welcome to amend any wording as you wish - I'd only say that this wording I've suggested is based specifically on the preliminary searches I've done after our discussion, so any significant changes in time frame etc would mean new searches will need to be done.
Best wishes
Lou Lander
Freedom of Information Manager
MHRA Customer Experience Centre
Communications and engagement team
Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency
10 South Colonnade, Canary Wharf, London E14 4PU
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