Thank you for getting in touch. Please note this is an automated email.

We’ll get back to you as soon as we can with a further acknowledgement.
You’ll usually hear from us on the next working day, but it might take a
little longer during busy periods.

In the meantime, if you want any further information about the GMC, please
visit our website.

Thank you

Information access team

General Medical Council

Email: [GMC request email]

Telephone: 0161 923 6365

Working with doctors Working for patients

The General Medical Council helps to protect patients and improve medical
education and practice in the UK by setting standards for students and
doctors. We support them in achieving (and exceeding) those standards, and
take action when they are not met.

dangos adrannau a ddyfynnir

Dear JJ Evans,

Your information request - F19/10153/SJ

Thank you for your email dated 13 May, in which you ask for copies of all
internal correspondence within the GMC during the period 1 August 2018 to
29 March 2019 where the subject contains the any of the keywords -
Infected Blood, Contaminated Blood.

How we will consider your request

You’ve asked that we consider your request under the Freedom of
Information Act 2000 (FOIA). The FOIA gives us 20 working days to respond,
but we’ll come back to you as soon as we can.

Who to contact

Sadie Jones will be handling your request. If you have any questions you
can call her on 0161 250 6889 or her at email [1][email address].

Yours sincerely

Lauren Barrowcliffe

Information Access Team Assistant

[email address]

0161 240 8356

General Medical Council

3 Hardman Street

Manchester

M3 3AW

dangos adrannau a ddyfynnir

Dear Mr Evans

Thank you for your patience, in regards to your request under the Freedom of Information Act (2000). Unfortunately, I am not yet in a position to provide a response to you as I am still making disclosure considerations.

If you have any concerns about the way that I am handling your request, please contact Julian Graves, Information Access Manager, at [email address].

Yours sincerely

Sadie Jones
Information Access Officer
[email address]
0161 250 6889

General Medical Council
3 Hardman Street
Manchester
M3 3AW

dangos adrannau a ddyfynnir

Thank you for your email.

I am currently out of the office until Tuesday 18 June, with no access to
my emails. If you require any urgent assistance please contact the
Information Access Team on 0161 923 6365 or email [email address]

Many thanks

Sadie Jones

Working with doctors Working for patients

The General Medical Council helps to protect patients and improve medical
education and practice in the UK by setting standards for students and
doctors. We support them in achieving (and exceeding) those standards, and
take action when they are not met.

dangos adrannau a ddyfynnir

Thank you for getting in touch. Please note this is an automated email.

We’ll get back to you as soon as we can with a further acknowledgement.
You’ll usually hear from us on the next working day, but it might take a
little longer during busy periods.

In the meantime, if you want any further information about the GMC, please
visit our website.

Thank you

Information access team

General Medical Council

Email: [GMC request email]

Telephone: 0161 923 6365

Working with doctors Working for patients

The General Medical Council helps to protect patients and improve medical
education and practice in the UK by setting standards for students and
doctors. We support them in achieving (and exceeding) those standards, and
take action when they are not met.

dangos adrannau a ddyfynnir

Dear Mr Evans

Thank you for your email, my apologies for not responding to your first email of the 11 June sooner.

Unfortunately, due to the amount of internal correspondence where the subject contains either 'Infected Blood' or 'Contaminated Blood', I am still gathering and considering the information held.

I don't believe that I will be in a position to respond to your request until the week commencing the 8 July, at the earliest.

I am sorry for any inconvenience that this delay may have caused you.

Yours sincerely

Sadie Jones
Information Access Officer
[email address]
0161 250 6889

General Medical Council
3 Hardman Street
Manchester
M3 3AW

dangos adrannau a ddyfynnir

Thank you for getting in touch. Please note this is an automated email.

We’ll get back to you as soon as we can with a further acknowledgement.
You’ll usually hear from us on the next working day, but it might take a
little longer during busy periods.

In the meantime, if you want any further information about the GMC, please
visit our website.

Thank you

Information access team

General Medical Council

Email: [GMC request email]

Telephone: 0161 923 6365

Working with doctors Working for patients

The General Medical Council helps to protect patients and improve medical
education and practice in the UK by setting standards for students and
doctors. We support them in achieving (and exceeding) those standards, and
take action when they are not met.

dangos adrannau a ddyfynnir

Dear Mr Evans

Your information request - F19/10153/SJ

Thank you for your patience, I have now considered your request under the
Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA). I'm sorry for the significant
delay in my response.

When I last updated you on 24 June, I was in the process of reviewing
documents that had been extracted from our systems and preparing them to
be included in a disclosure bundle. However, as I progressed with the
request, the scope of information that required consideration expanded
considerably. Due to the work that would be involved to retrieve the
information requested, I can’t provide the information you requested.
Under the FOIA there’s an exemption for requests where it would cost the
public authority more than £450 to process - equivalent to two and half
days’ work.

The cost of your request

I have interpreted your request as 'correspondence with the subject title
as either Infected Blood or Contaminated Blood'. In order to identify the
correspondence that would fall into scope of your request, I would need to
request emails from all individuals involved in the Infected Blood Inquiry
and also search our records management systems. To estimate the cost we
can take into account determining, locating, retrieving and extracting the
information requested.

Having completed email searches for 12 core staff members, I have
identified almost 1,000 email strings which could potentially be in scope
of your request. Whilst assessing the email strings of these core
individuals, I have identified over 60 additional staff members; whose
emails would also need to be checked. This is likely to lead to a search
of many hundreds of staff members’ emails; I believe that the retrieval of
emails alone would engage this exemption.

I have also searched our online records management systems, which have
identified:

·       3,800 search hits for 'Infected Blood'

·       1,500 search hits for 'Contaminated Blood'

In order for me to check the relevance of the documents, I would need to
manually check through the details of each record, to confirm if it’s
within the scope of your request.

Using the information summarised above, I have completed the below table
with my time estimations:

Source Time Total
reviewing time
Infected Blood - search hits 1 minute per document 63 hours
Contaminated Blood - search hits 1 minute per document 25 hours

Based on the time estimates above, I believe that to comply with your
request it would take around 88 hours. Based on an hourly rate of £25 per
hour (which is set by the Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate
Limit) Regulations 2004) this would cost us around £2,200. Your request
would therefore cost us significantly in excess of the ‘appropriate limit’
to process. I would emphasise that time spent retrieving and considering
emails from individual staff member’s accounts will be in addition to the
calculations above and will be considerable.

The exemption

Under the FOIA, the specific exemption which we believe applies is at
section 12. This states that we are not required to comply with a request
if we estimate that the cost of doing so would exceed the appropriate
limit.

Your right to appeal

I'm sorry I couldn’t provide the information you requested. If you would
like to appeal this decision to Julian Graves, Information Access Manager,
please set out your reasons in writing to [1][GMC request email]. Please
note that we will only usually consider appeals received within 40 working
days of our response. You can also appeal to the [2]Information
Commissioner, the regulator of the FOIA and DPA.

Chronology, advice and assistance

Even though I haven't been able to comply with your request under FOIA, I
am required to provide you with advice and assistance in relation to your
request. I would like to provide you with a chronology of the work that
the GMC has been doing to assist the Infected Blood Inquiry.

·       August 2018 - Letter sent from the GMC to the Infected Blood
Inquiry to ask for any relevant information be passed to us so that we
could conduct investigations and to also advise that we would be willing
to assist.

·       October 2018 - The GMC received an initial letter from the Inquiry
requesting all information held by the GMC.

·       January 2019 - Specific search terms were agreed between the GMC
and the Infected Blood Inquiry, and all GMC staff members requiring access
to the search terms were required to sign undertakings before
seeing/working with the search terms.

·       February 2019 - First Section 21 Notice received from the Inquiry
in relation to an individual doctor

·       March 2019 - GMC provided their first doctor disclosure to the
Inquiry under Section 21

·       April 2019 - The GMC completed the review of search results and
disclosed relevant documents to the Inquiry. The GMC also confirmed to the
Inquiry that we would not be destroying any originals of the documents
disclosed to them until the Inquiry published their report.

·       May 2019 - The GMC completed disclosure of relevant case material.

·       June 2019 & July 2019 - Correspondence with the Inquiry regarding
the oral testimonies, including responding to queries and providing
additional information.

We have been informed by the Inquiry that following the first oral
testimonies, it is likely that they will provide us with a list of
individuals to search for on our records management systems. Some of the
records management systems that we use are most efficiently searched by
using a name, therefore we agreed with the Inquiry that this would be the
best way for us to provide them with further information.

As with all public authorities, the GMC have faced some challenges in
relation to resourcing; however, assisting with the Infected Blood Inquiry
is one of our top priorities. Therefore some staff members have been moved
from their normal day-to-day work to assist with searches, write-outs,
Inquiry correspondence etc..

In order for you to consider making a further information request without
it engaging the costs exemption, you may wish to be aware that the GMC
have created a ‘working group’ to lead on our work with the Inquiry. The
working group regularly meet to discuss outcomes, progress and future
developments of the Inquiry and the impact on our work.

Kind regards

Sadie Jones

Information Access Officer

[3][email address]

0161 250 6889

General Medical Council

3 Hardman Street

Manchester

M3 3AW

══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════

dangos adrannau a ddyfynnir

Thank you for getting in touch. Please note this is an automated email.

We’ll get back to you as soon as we can with a further acknowledgement.
You’ll usually hear from us on the next working day, but it might take a
little longer during busy periods.

In the meantime, if you want any further information about the GMC, please
visit our website.

Thank you

Information access team

General Medical Council

Email: [GMC request email]

Telephone: 0161 923 6365

Working with doctors Working for patients

The General Medical Council helps to protect patients and improve medical
education and practice in the UK by setting standards for students and
doctors. We support them in achieving (and exceeding) those standards, and
take action when they are not met.

dangos adrannau a ddyfynnir

Dear Mr Evans

Thank you for your email narrowing the scope of your request.

I will look info this for you and get back to you as soon as I can.

Yours sincerely

Sadie Jones
Information Access Officer
[email address]
0161 250 6889

General Medical Council
3 Hardman Street
Manchester
M3 3AW

dangos adrannau a ddyfynnir

Dear Mr Evans

Please find attached a copy of my initial response and the disclosure bundle.

If you have any queries, please let me know.

Yours sincerely

Sadie Jones
Information Access Officer
[email address]
0161 250 6889

General Medical Council
3 Hardman Street
Manchester
M3 3AW

dangos adrannau a ddyfynnir

Dear Mr Evans

Please find attached a copy of my final response and the disclosure
bundle.

If you have any queries, please let me know.

Yours sincerely

Sadie Jones

Information Access Officer

[1][email address]

0161 250 6889

General Medical Council

3 Hardman Street

Manchester

M3 3AW

══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════

dangos adrannau a ddyfynnir