List of Crown Commercial Service suppliers and agencies

The request was refused by Crown Commercial Service.

Dear Crown Commercial Service,

Alexander Mann Solutions are a PRIVATE company with a service provision contract to the government. They source contract and contingent workers through a framework of suppliers and agencies approved by the Crown Commercial Service. This framework is often quoted in FOI requests as the method which is used to procure contingent workers.

I believe there are approximately 300 plus suppliers and agencies which form the Crown Commercial Service and through which contract and contingent workers is sourced, please could you supply me with a full list of these suppliers and agencies.

Yours faithfully,

Trevor Price

Cabinet Office FOI Team,

1 Attachment

Dear Trevor Price,

Please find attached our response to your recent Freedom of Information
request (reference FOI2021/05561).

Yours sincerely,

Freedom of Information Team

Cabinet Office

Dear Crown Commercial Service,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of Crown Commercial Service's handling of my FOI request 'List of Crown Commercial Service suppliers and agencies'.

Thank you for your response of 24 March, where you confirm that the information requested is held by the Cabinet Office. You have used Section 43(2) of the Freedom of Information Act in a tenuous attempt to justify your refusal to disclose the very basic information which I originally requested. As no typed name has been transparently provided as a signatory to this response, and it is also impossible to deduce any name from the actual signature on this FOI response, it is unclear as to whom within the FOI team has apparently made this 'decision'. It is noted that this request for an Internal Review should be submitted to Rachel Anderson, as the Head of Freedom of Information at the Cabinet Office, so it is reasonable to assume that a different (and more junior) member of the same team has concluded that this information should apparently be withheld.

The reference document (The Public Interest Test) published by the ICO outlines the requirements which need to be proven and met by any authority claiming a qualified exemption under this section of the FOIA. Presumably you will already be familiar with the content, but in this instance I consider it prudent to reiterate what the ICO clearly state within this document:

"when a public authority wishes to withhold information under a qualified exemption, it must carry out a two-stage process. Firstly, it must decide that the exemption is engaged i.e. the exemption applies to the requested information. Then it must carry out the public interest test, which means that it must decide whether the public interest is better served by maintaining the exemption (and hence withholding the information) or by disclosing the information."

It continues thus:

"The effect of section 2(2)(b) is that when the authority has carried out the public interest test, it can only withhold the information if the public interest in maintaining the exemption outweighs the public interest in disclosing it. If the public interest is equal on both sides, then the information must be released. If the public interest in disclosure is greater than the public interest in maintaining the exemption, then the information must also be released. In this sense we can say that there is an assumption in favour of disclosure in FOIA."
The ICO also make it clear, when describing the principles behind the Freedom of Information Act, that everybody has a right to access official information. Disclosure of information should be the default – in other words, information should be kept private ONLY when there is a good reason and it is permitted by the Act.

Returning to my request, I simply asked for the names of the 300+ suppliers and agencies which are listed on the Crown Commercial Service framework - no more, no less.

Your response claims that disclosure of this list would 'prejudice the commercial interests of the named supplier and the Crown Commercial Service'. You accompany this statement by also confirming that 'private sector companies engaging in commercial activities with the public sector must expect some information about those activities to be disclosed throughout the lifecycle of all commercial arrangements'. If the public are disallowed from even knowing the names of the companies, suppliers and agencies used by the Cabinet Office/CCS to source contract and contingent workers, then how could ANY information (let alone 'some') be disclosed during the course of any commercial arrangement which would, as you quote, prejudice their commercial interests? It is a contradiction in terms - on the one hand, you concur that private sector companies engaging in commercial activities with the public sector must expect some information to be disclosed, yet refuse to reveal even who those companies - being paid using public funds from the Exchequer - actually are. This loose and ambiguous reasoning does not appear, in any sense, to legitimise or substantiate your refusal to disclose.

You also claim that 'the requested information contains information on the prime suppliers operations, which if released would affect their competitive position in their respective market and confidence that its customers, suppliers or investors may have in its commercial operations'. I have requested nothing of the sort and remain completely disinterested in, and ambivalent about their operations - so why have you used this irrelevant and factually incorrect point as a pretext for withholding this information?

You also state that 'potential bidders for future contracts may be deterred from competing and sharing information with us' should you disclose the list of names - on what evidence do you claim that? Details of contracts which the government has awarded, or has put out for tender, with private sector companies are regularly published in the public domain - if your claim has any validity, then would that not suggest all these other companies would be similarly disadvantaged or deterred from any future agreements with government? I think not.

As for your last point - 'the Crown Commercial Service must retain commercial confidence of all parties when they choose to share commercially sensitive information with the department' - as you are well aware, I am not asking for ANY commercially sensitive information. All I have requested are the names of the 300+ companies/agencies/suppliers listed on the CCS framework - and nothing else. These commercial agreements between the public and private sector are funded exclusively (unless you can confirm otherwise) by taxpayer-funded revenue, held by the Exchequer and used to source and provide labour for public sector bodies performing work for government departments. When considering just that one single point in isolation, the public interest must therefore be served by disclosing the names of all those companies/agencies/suppliers who are in receipt of those taxpayer-funded monies and who should, to reiterate your previous comment, expect (at least) 'some' information to be disclosed. It would be both disingenuous and unrealistic to continue to claim that the disclosure of their names on this list would have any negative effect or impact, commercial or otherwise. I therefore repeat my request for all 300+ names to be supplied as per my original request - should this be refused once again, then I will escalate this to the Information Commissioner's Office.

In closing, please may I also refer you to a mistake which the FOI team have made in relation to another request on the WhatDoTheyKnow site - an individual called Beverley Knight submitted a Freedom of Information request to the Cabinet Office titled 'Governance Review of the Defence Medical Services' on 12 March 2021. This was allocated the reference FOI2021/05589 on 15 March. On 24 March, the Cabinet Office FOI team have mistakenly supplied the response to my own FOI request (with reference FOI2021/05561 and clearly addressed to me) to Beverley Knight as well, and as a result she (or someone) has classified/closed her own request as 'Cabinet Office did not have the information requested'. I trust you will be attempting to rectify this with Ms. Knight at your earliest convenience.

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/l...

Yours faithfully,

Trevor Price

Cabinet Office FOI Team,

Dear Trevor Price,

Thank you for your request for an internal review (reference
IR2021/08495), which was prompted by our response to your request for
information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

We shall endeavour to complete the internal review and respond to you
within 20 working days.

Please remember to quote the reference number above in any future
communications.

Yours sincerely,

FOI Team

FOI Team Mailbox, Crown Commercial Service

Dear Mr Price,

I believe that I may have misinterpreted your original request under the
FOIA, made on 12 March 2021. I originally interpreted your request to mean
"a list of the subcontractors that are used by Alexander Mann Solutions",
and my original response was based around this initial interpretation.
However, upon review of your original response and your request for an
Internal Review, I believe you are seeking different information.

I can confirm that Alexander Mann Solutions are the sole supplier on the
Public Sector Resourcing (RM3749) framework agreement, managed by the
Crown Commercial Service (CCS). CCS operates dozens of framework
agreements across several different categories with thousands of suppliers
providing services to the public sector. A list of suppliers for each
framework agreement is published on the CCS website. A list of framework
agreements for the people pillar, and the suppliers providing services
under each framework agreement can be viewed at the following link:
[1]https://www.crowncommercial.gov.uk/agree....

I believe this is the information you are seeking. Please let us know if
this is not the case and if you still wish for an internal review
(IR2021/08495) to be conducted.
Yours sincerely,

Freedom of Information Team

Cabinet Office

show quoted sections

Dear Cabinet Office/CCS,

Thank you for your follow-up message dated 22 April.

I am fully aware that Alexander Mann Solutions is the sole supplier on the PSR (RM3749) framework agreement and that their six-year, £15 billion service provision contract with the Cabinet Office (as represented by Crown Commercial Service) for the supply of contingent workers is due to expire on 16 January 2024.

It is unclear to me as to why you think you might have misinterpreted my original request, but I can confirm that neither your first, nor your most recent response provide a satisfactory answer in relation to the information I am seeking, so I will attempt to clarify.

Another recent FOI request (to a different public authority) received this (extracted) response:

"Public Sector Resourcing (PSR) is a single lot framework through which public sector authorities can source all contingent workers, excluding clinical workers. The strategic partner, Alexander Mann Solutions (AMS), supported by over 300 specialist recruitment agencies provide a fully managed end-to-end service enabling hiring managers to access contingent workers."

I have no interest in the 'dozens of framework agreements across several different categories with thousands of suppliers providing services to the public sector' as quoted in your latest response. The link you provided (from which I can access the RM3749 framework agreement alongside 25 other, separate agreements) does not provide the information I require, so please therefore, as per my original request, supply me with a full list of the 300+ specialist recruitment agencies which support Alexander Mann Solution in sourcing contingent workers.

I trust this now clarifies my requirement, so please continue with the internal review.

Yours sincerely,

Trevor Price

Cabinet Office FOI Team,

1 Attachment

Dear Trevor Price,

Please find attached our response to your request for an Internal Review
(reference IR2021/08495).

Yours sincerely,

FOI Team