Dear Judicial Office for England and Wales,

When was the current Judicial Office Data Privacy Officer appointed?

Was it an internal appointment or was it advertised for external applicants to apply for the position?

If it was advertised externally, were there any qualification requirements for applicants? If there were, did these include any legal qualifications or Professional Certificates for GDPR legislation?

In the 12 months, how many requests has the JO Data Privacy Officer received for advice on breaches of Data Privacy rights?

Of those requests, how many have come from a JCIO case investigator Ms J K at the JCIO?

Of those requests, how many times has the JO Data Privacy Officer who has no legal, or GDPR certification qualifications, given his opinion on whether the JCIO committed a data breach and also opined that it was "very likely that the judge has not breach (sic) any data protection laws in contacting GLD"? [quote from JO's Data Privacy 17 Aug 2021 response to a request for advice from a JCIO case investigator]

How many times in the last 12 months, has the JO Data Privacy Officer provided advice to a JCIO case investigator when he knew that any advice he gave would be compromised by a conflict of interests because the Judicial Office was involved in a separate but related investigation into a complaint about the same judge’s alleged breach of a complainant’s Data Privacy rights?

Yours faithfully,

Dudley Jones

Dear Judicial Office for England and Wales,

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

I am writing to request an internal review of Judicial Office for England and Wales's handling of my FOI request 'questions related to the post of Judicial Office Data Privacy Officer'.

This MoJ response lives up to the standards of honesty I have come to expect from the MoJ – they are exactly the same standards as I have come to expect from the Prime Minister.

You start with the same trick as you’ve practised before:

I write an FOI Request to the Judicial Office and I get an FOI Response from the MoJ instructing me that as the JO is an ‘arm’s length’ body of the MoJ, it’s perfectly appropriate the MoJ should respond on behalf of the Judicial Office (JO).

But then sometimes (SEE BELOW) - I get an FOI Response from the Judicial Office, not the MoJ and they actually provide the information requested. In this (MoJ) Response you tell me:

‘The MoJ does not hold any information in the scope of your request. This is because we are not the appropriate authority to contact on this subject. The information requested, if held at all, would be held by the Judicial Office (JO).

It obviously escaped the attention of the myopic official responding to my FOI Request, that it WAS addressed to the ‘Judicial Office’ (i.e. the ‘appropriate authority’) and not the MoJ. I would have thought the clue to this is in the first line – the one you quote above:

‘Dear Judicial Office…’. The ‘Judicial Office’ or ‘JO’ is mentioned 7 times in my FOI Request, and yet, you still seem to be confused about who this request was addressed to? Does this officer require a period of re-training?

More disturbing is your follow-up to this. You say ‘The JO is not a public authority for the purposes of the FOIA. It is not listed in Schedule 1 of the FOIA and requests for information held by JO are, therefore, not subject to the FOIA’.

Can we be quite clear about this? You appear to be saying the JO is not bound by the FOIA, that it is not obliged to respond to FOI Requests for information. Have I understood you correctly?

If you honestly mean what I think you mean, then the JO (an ‘arm’s length body’ of the MoJ ‘) is not subject to the FOIA’, whereas the MoJ clearly is subject to it – or at least has been responding to FOI Requests since 2015 on the WhatDoTheyKnow site.

What adds to the confusion is that the Judicial Office responded to my FOI Request on the 25 November 2021 and surprise, surprise, they answered most of my questions. Evidently your ‘arm’s length body’ only 9 months ago, thought they were subject to the FOIA. Obviously I need to report the change in status to the ICO. Can you tell me the date on which they ceased being ‘subject’ to the FOIA?

Is the thing that determines whether you regard the JO as being subject to the FOIA, the degree of embarrassment revealing the information requested in a specific FOI Request would create? If information that would be – if it were to be made public – highly embarrassing or damaging for the reputation of the Judicial Office (and maybe it’s parent body, the MoJ) does the JO then become NOT ‘subject to the FOIA?

Usually the way the MoJ/JO/JICO overcome the problem is to trot out one of those standard responses: ‘we don’t hold that information’ (when you often clearly do) or 'that’s something handled by the MoJ/JO not us’, or those favourites: ‘this is covered by an exemption’ or it’s ‘vexatious’ (aka don’t you dare try to make us uncomfortable, and reveal our wrong-doing’).

I’m surprised the MoJ allowed the JO to respond to my FOIA Request – 211021035/211028006.

In the JO’s response to the above Request, they say: ‘The Judicial Office does not have a published complaints procedure… and is not obliged to have one’.

Really? How curious that the parent body, the MoJ, has a published complaints procedure. The JO continue: ‘Any person wishing to complain about the service provided by Judicial Office officials may write to the Chief Executive’.

This was the advice given to an 80 year-old man (with serious health problems) during the lockdown. ‘Go to the shops, buy some notepaper, and a stamp, come into contact with infected people, go back home, write your letter, go out again and try to find a post box, frankly we don’t give a ****.’

‘We won’t – like the MoJ, our wonderful parent body – provide you with an email address, and help you stay alive. We won’t – like the helpful MoJ - provide a phone number, and make it very easy to phone the MoJ about any complaint you might have’ (at least that’s what they stated in an FOI Response to me).

The JO can’t even be bothered to provide the address of their Chief Executive (‘you think we want to make it easy to complain?’).

Isn’t it time the MoJ carried out radical reforms of the JO, your very own 'arm's length body'? They seem to be a cynical, shabby and dishonest outfit. They are secretive, unaccountable. They want to ensure their activities are kept hidden from the general public, the idea of transparency is anathema to them, and the MoJ is happy for them to operate more as the MoJ’s Stasi department, than an 'arm's length body'.

Aren't you concerned It looks as if the JO have been colluding with the JCIO to pervert the course of justice and protect a senior judge they were offering assistance to. I make an FOI Request for information about this collusion. JCIO Senior Caseworker Manager, Ms L. W. has been forwarding all the email correspondence about the investigation of my complaint to the JCIO about Judge F***** to the JO – as the investigation progressed. I have proof in the shape of all the emails obtained via an SAR request to the JO. Then the JCIO Caseworker investigating my complaint about Judge F*****, falsifies the wording of my complaint about the Judge’s breach of my Data Privacy rights to the (unqualified) Data Privacy Officer at the JO and asks for his ‘advice’. The JO DP Officer is compromised because the JO is involved in helping the same judge about her violation of her code of conduct and her breaching of my DP rights. But he still dutifully responds and provides the desired answer.

It's blatant corruption by the JCIO and the Judicial Office, it reflects a government ‘mired in sleaze and corruption’.

So how does the JCIO escape scot free from the morass described above? They pull exactly the same trick as the JO. Naz Rasul, Senior Caseworker Manager - a Manager who has questions about his supervision of my caseworker (who I’ve now been informed by a whistle-blower has suddenly left the JCIO whilst facing investigation by the JACO!) responds to my request for an internal review by saying:

‘I am writing to let you know that the internal review response is currently on hold. This is because an issue has arisen with the applicability of the FOIA to the Judicial Conduct Investigations Office. This is being looked in to as a matter of urgency’.

Could there be any more blatant corruption? The JO (and next week probably, the JCIO) want to make sure they are no longer ‘subject to the FOIA. The JO protect the JCIO, and the JCIO will reciprocate. The JCIO will forward all the correspondence from their investigation to the JO, and if people get wise to what they are doing, the JO will try to release themselves from the constraints of the FOIA. So nice when you can function in secret, no longer worrying about even the pretence of transparency. So far the JCIO have avoided transparency by making sure they keep hardly any records of decisions taken.

The corruption has spread from No !0 to infect all Government Departments.

I await your internal review. It will no doubt follow the usual procedure and rubber-stamp the original Response.

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

Yours faithfully,

Dudley Jones

Dear Un-named MoJ Disclosure Team official,

Thank you for your response to my request for an internal review. You say:

‘The JO Data Privacy Officer was appointed on 1 August 2018. In line with HMG recruitment policies in place at the time the post was open to applications from across the civil service. Amongst the essential qualities required for the post was ‘a detailed knowledge and understanding of data protection legislation’.

In that case why was Andrzej Brzezina appointed as the JO Data Privacy Officer? He has no legal qualifications, he is not a qualified lawyer, and he has no GDPR qualifications?

That is what I was told by a source at the JO and I’d be very surprized if that information was untrue … because the source was Mr Brzezina himself.

In the corporate world, it’s inconceivable that in 2022 they would have a designated Data Privacy Officer who did not possess Professional Certificates in GDPR legislation. Of course, they would not have had those qualifications at the beginning of 2018 because – as you point out – the legislation was introduced in that year.

What happened in companies then was that qualified lawyers were required to attend GDPR courses and pass exams to acquire Professional Certificates so they could take up posts where a detailed knowledge of GDPR was essential.

Mr Brzezina was not a qualified lawyer, and he was appointed without any insistence by the MoJ/JO that he obtain GDPR qualifications. Which leaves one wondering: the JO has 14 or 15 qualified lawyers on its staff roll – why didn’t the MoJ or JO appoint one of them on the understanding that over the next 2/3 years, they obtained GDPR qualifications? I have friends who followed this route.

Later in your response you say:

‘During the same period the JO Data Privacy Officer has provided advice to a JCIO caseworker Ms J K on two matters. One other these related to what constitutes a data breach. At no time has the JO Data Privacy Officer provided advice in circumstances when they believed there might be a conflict of interests.’

Really? This suggests you haven’t read my FOI Request which I would have thought was a basic pre-requisite of anyone conducting an honest and trustworthy internal review. Here’s what I said (so there is no confusion I will name the Judge):

‘The JO DP Officer is compromised because the JO is involved in helping the same judge [Chamber President Judge Mrs Justice Farbey] about her violation of her code of conduct and her breaching of my DP rights. But he still dutifully responds and provides the desired answer.’

Frankly, one cannot believe the JO DP officer didn’t know there was a conflict of interests in responding to Ms Keeling’s falsified version of my complaint about the breach of my DP rights. I presume the MoJ are aware that all the JCIO correspondence between myself and Ms Keeling about her investigation of my complaint about Judge Farbey was being forwarded by JCIO Senior Caseworker Manager, Laura Walters.... AS THE INVESTIGATION PROGRESSE.

Clearly, Naz Rasul, Ms Keeling’s handler (another JCIO Senior Manager) knew all about her requests for “advice”, and turned a blind eye to the fact that he knew the JO DP Officer was compromised by the JO’s involvement in a separate but related complaint about Judge Farbey’s misconduct.

It's perhaps indicative of the MoJ respondent’s unease and guilt about his support of the JO Data Privacy Officer’s claim he ‘did not believe’ there was any conflict of interests’ when he provided advice to Ms Keeling, that his syntax goes awry. In the second sentence above, he says ‘One other these related to what constitutes a data breach’. It’s meaningless gibberish. This kind of syntactical mess is often a ‘give-away’: the apologist feels he has got to lend his support to what he knows is untrue.

On the plus side, let me congratulate the MoJ’s un-named reviewer on his commitment to ‘transparency’. What sits oddly with his claim, however, is the following statement from his response:

‘In the 12 months prior to your request, reference 220530020, being received the JO Data Privacy Officer has not received any requests for advice on breaches of the rights provided to data subjects by the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) or the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA) from members of the general public.’

Since I hadn’t asked a question about requests for advice on data breaches ‘from members of the general public’, it’s difficult to see what the relevance of this information is.

Your desire for transparency is admirable; in future, however, I suggest you confine it to questions for information I have actually asked. Since it’s obviously a ‘fake’ question, one that enables you to give a fake answer, it raises disturbing questions about the MoJ’s probity.

Given the internal reviewer’s unreliable response about ‘conflict of interests’, I would like him to re-address this issue, and provide information that is accurate, reliable and truthful. Even if Mr Brzezina “genuinely” believed there was ‘no conflict of interests’ - which I very much doubt – the person who conducted this review must have known Brzezina’s testimony was unreliable. I say this because he must have known from his discussions with JO Managers that the JCIO had been conducting an investigation of a complaint about Judge Farbey in collaboration with the Judicial Office. This raises further disturbing questions about the MoJ.

Incidentally, it’s pointless denying this because I have SAR email evidence to prove it.

I will give you 2 weeks to revise your review, taking account of the points I have made here. If I hear nothing from you in that time, I will forward this letter of clarification (plus your internal review and other evidence) to the ICO and other relevant bodies.

As a footnote, it’s interesting that Ms Jane Keeling, the inexperienced JCIO Caseworker chosen to investigate my complaint about Judge Farbey (in the last 3 years, there has never been a very serious complaint about a senior Judge investigated by someone who was not a Senior Caseworker – Ms Keeling was not a Senior Caseworker!) is no longer employed by the JCIO. This means her handling of the case which was, at the very least, grossly improper, if not illegal, cannot now be questioned by the JACO Ombudsman investigating the JCIO’s handling of my complaint about Judge Farbey.

I’m sure there’s no connection between these 2 things though I have been informed by a source at the JICO that Keeling was ‘persuaded’ to leave rather than her voluntarily resigning. I couldn’t possibly comment.

Yours sincerely,

Dudley Jones

Dear Disclosure Team,

Dear Judicial Office for England and Wales,

At last I've received some information about the workings of this secretive, shadowy organisation (the JO) - though even then, the MoJ deliberately provided information about a question I hadn't asked. One of the questions I asked was:

‘In the last 12 months, how many requests has the JO Data Privacy Officer received for
advice on breaches of Data Privacy rights?’

Your answer was:

‘In the 12 months prior to your request, reference 220530020, being received the JO Data Privacy Officer has not received any requests for advice on breaches of the rights provided to data subjects by the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) or the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA) from members of the general public. During the same period the JO Data Privacy Officer has provided advice to a JCIO caseworker Ms J K on two matters. One other these [sic] related to what constitutes a data breach. At no time has the JO Data Privacy Officer provided advice in circumstances when they “believed” [my emphasis] there might be a ‘conflict of interests’.

This was a ‘cunning plan’ designed to hide the fact that your ‘arms-length’ Department, the JO, HAS acted in an unlawful way. In the last 12 months, the (totally unqualified) JO Data Privacy Officer HAS received a request for advice from the JCIO about a breach of Data Privacy rights – the proof is there ‘in plain sight’. The request was from Ms Jane Keeling, a JCIO investigator. If the JO DP officer told the MoJ there was no ‘conflict of ‘interest’, he was LYING and the MoJ is well aware of that. You've tried to weasel your way out of this by using the word ‘believed’. He ‘believed there was no ‘conflict of interests.’

You are using the word ‘believe’, in the Boris Johnson sense of the word. Johnson, a proven serial liar, declared that he hadn’t ‘believed’ he had broken lockdown laws. The police investigation took a different view. Do the MoJ support The JO DP Officer’s view, i.e. that there was ‘no conflict of interests’? If so, can they email me a categorical assurance that they consider there was ‘no conflict of interests.’

What does this whole shabby affair suggest about the MoJ? They have responded to the FOI Request in a specious and misleading way. They have been economical with the truth. What is their role in ensuring that the rule of law is maintained? Do they maintain a strict surveillance of any possible breaches of the law – and act to redress them?. How is it that the widest miscarriage of justice in British legal history - the scandal of the illegal persecution of Post Office SPMs - went un-noticed by them for at least 10 years? Or, if they were aware of it, sitting on their hands and doing nothing? Or have I misunderstood the role and function of the MoJ?

As I pointed out in a letter of clarification above, the MoJ/JO appointed a JO DP who has no legal qualifications, and no GDPR qualifications. What does this say about their selection/appointment procedures? Isn’t it strange that there were no better qualified applicants? Were any of the fully qualified 14 lawyers already working for the JO made aware of the selection/appointment process? Were those lawyers alerted to the fact that there was an appointment process and that – considering the uninspiring candidates who’d applied for the job – they might consider applying?

I find the relationship between the MoJ and its (completely independent?) ‘arms-length Judicial Office, baffling. It would appear that less stringency transparency and complaints procedures obligations are placed upon the JO than the MoJ, because they are representing Judges. Or are they simply protecting them? Is that their role? A Judge’s instruction right or wrong? One gets the impression that the JO will never question judges about the legitimacy of what they are asking the JO to do. Do they ever advise Judges that the tasks they are asking JO lawyers to carry out are questionable in law? Are they simply legal guns for Judges to make use of? Ditto the GLD and government departments. It would be nice to have answers to these very important questions, but I anticipate the MoJ will ignore them.

Yours sincerely,

Dudley Jones

Dear Disclosure Team,
The un-named MoJ official who 'responded' to what she's clearly regarded as a new FOI Request (she's even given it a new Request number: 220723008) is obviously very confused - or totally incompetent.

If it was a new FOI Request, it would have been submitted separately from the previous one - on the whatdotheyknow.com site. It was, in fact, a letter of clarification, designed to expose the duplicity and evasiveness of the MoJ to public view, to 'name and shame'.

In this Response to a FOI Request that wasn't an FOI Request, you say:
"Your request is being handled under the FOIA. I have considered your request for information but I am unable to answer it without further clarification[!]

Section 1(3) of the FOIA does not oblige us to answer requests where we require further clarification to identify and locate the information requested. Your correspondence seems to ask for interpretations and views. Please can you indicate what recorded information you are interested in. We are aware that it is not always possible to be very specific, as a requester may not know exactly what a public authority may hold. However, I find your request discursive and scattergun in nature".

As I say the official writing this response is blissfully unaware that no new request has been made. Or perhaps it's been automatically generated by a machine - one unequipped with AI. My letter of clarification (not 'request') was intentionally 'discursive and scattergun in nature'.

And it was greeted by exactly the kind of reaction I'd anticipated. Friends have described the MoJ's responses as devious and corrupt. . I couldn't possibly comment - but it's nice to hold up their dirty washing for all to see. People need to know about their Stasi outfit (the Judicial Office aka MoJ's 'dirty tricks' department and friend of dodgy-dealing judges... a bit like the Cabinet Office's Clearing House unit). Must be nice for the JO to know they're released from their obligation to be transparent. So much easier than cobbling together responses to FOI Requests from investigative journalists. Why should the general public know what the JO are 'up to' . Henceforth, it will remain secret, behind closed doors. Of course, claiming your exempt from the FOIA is a deliberate two-fingered insult to the ICO and the general public. How long before the MoJ decide their exempt from the FOIA?

Yours sincerely,

Dudley Jones