Dear Judicial Conduct Investigations Office,

On the 19 January 2022, I received a FOI Response to my request of 212 December 2021 which said: "Dear Mr Jones, Thank you for your request…. in which you asked for the following information from the Ministry of Justice (MoJ): How many times in the last 3 years has the investigation of a very serious complaint about a Chamber President Judge been assigned to a caseworker who is not a senior caseworker?"

This was a deliberate misrepresentation of my request. I did not ask the "Ministry of Justice" (MoJ) for this information, I asked the Judicial Conduct Investigation Office, the JCIO. As far as I know, the MoJ does not investigate complaints from the general public about the alleged ‘misconduct’ of judges. I would like an apology for this misrepresentation. To avoid any further ‘accidental’ misunderstanding, or misinterpretation of my FOI Request, I will re-submit my FOI Request – making it absolutely clear what I mean by a ‘serious complaint’.

Sadly, I have become all too familiar with this sort of devious Response to my FOI Requests. The ‘MoJ’s’ Response eventually informs me the answer to my Request is ‘zero’.

They ‘explain’ that they (the MoJ or the JCIO?) are interpreting ‘a very serious complaint’ as applying to the sanction which would follow from their upholding a very serious complaint about a judge. The sanctions available include 'formal advice, formal warning, reprimand and removal from office'. ‘By “upper end”, they say, 'we mean a reprimand or removal from office’. According to the Ministry of Justice, therefore their definition of a ‘very serious complaint’ is one in which may result in a ‘reprimand’ or ‘removal from office’.

I think here, the perception of the general public may be very different from that of the Ministry of Justice. The leap from ‘reprimand’ to ‘removal from office’ seems enormous. ‘Removal from office’ is ‘sanction’ which is very rarely used. I can only recall one which was in 2015 when 3 judges were removed from office after being found guilty of watching ‘porn on an official computer’(interestingly this didn’t feature on the JCIO official list of ‘things you i.e. the general public could complain about’). The sanction, in this case seemed savage to me, and the complaint must presumably have been from an ‘insider’ not an ordinary member of the public who happened to be passing an office window. I would have thought these poor judges whose lives/marriages were ruined deserved no more than a ‘reprimand’.

The MoJ (or JCIO) know that when I made the FOI Request I had in mind the JCIO’s investigation of my (‘very serious’?) complaint about a Chamber President Judge who I complained had a) failed to respect a fundamental obligation of her judge’s code and preserve the ‘separation of powers’ and b) breached my Data Privacy rights (that is, acted unlawfully). That these are both very serious charges is something a lay person may not fully understand - though a lawyer will.

The JCIO’s investigation of my complaint was “handled” by a caseworker who was not a SENIOR caseworker. This caseworker’s mishandling/maladministration of my complaint (which may yet lead to criminal charges being made against her) is currently being investigated by the JACO, the Judicial Ombudsman.

Yours faithfully,

Dudley Jones

Dear Judicial Conduct Investigations Office,

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

I am writing to request an internal review of Judicial Conduct Investigations Office's handling of my FOI request 'Questions relating to the misrepresentation of my FOI Request of 21/12/2021 in the JCIO's FOI Response of 19/01/2022'.

Your response to my FOI question:

How many times in the last 3 years has the investigation of a very serious complaint about a Chamber President Judge been assigned to a caseworker who is not a senior caseworker?"

Is that you refuse to answer it because it is ‘vexatious’. You attempt to justify this allegation on the grounds that since I mention the possibility of a ‘criminal prosecution’, it represents an ‘inappropriate targeting, and harassment of a member of staff’.

This is extraordinary. I think any investigative journalist, or member of the public reading this would conclude I must not only have mentioned the name of the member of staff (the one being ‘targeted and harassed’) but also have given some details of what they had done. But, of course, you know that is entirely FALSE.

You go on to compound your dishonesty by claiming that the JCIO/MoJ ‘do not believe that my FOI Request is an attempt to obtain information’.

For the record: can we be quite clear about this. Is the JCIO/MoJ seriously claiming that the question:
‘How many times in the last 3 years has the investigation of a very serious complaint about a Chamber President Judge been assigned to caseworker who is not a senior caseworker?"

is ‘not a request for information’?

If that's what you are saying, then this response is another example of a pattern of behaviour by the JCIO that makes it manifestly clear that it 'not fit for purpose’.

Your priority is clearly to avoid answering a request for information that – were you to do so honestly – would be enormously embarrassing. You are desperately scrabbling around to find a way of justifying that refusal.

You know it’s extremely rare for someone who is not a senior caseworker to be assigned to a very serious complaint about a Chamber President Judge. In this case, the suspicion must be that you deliberately assigned this case to a case worker who is not a senior caseworker. And then you asked a senior caseworker to be ‘on hand’ to ‘advise’ them – I have proof of this in the form of JCIO emails that were provided to me by the JCIO some time ago!

Th non-senior caseworker investigating my complaint decided to deliberately misrepresent a question I put to the JCIO about Data Privacy rights, and send it the (unqualified) Data Privacy Officer at the Judicial Office for advice. When they did this, they (like their senior caseworker handler) were well-aware that the JO was compromised because it had been accused of acting improperly in a separate case involving the same Chamber President Judge. But should there be any ensuing legal action, the senior caseworker advising the case investigator would be ‘in the clear’.

The refusal to answer my question represents a wilful evasion of the JCIO’s responsibilities under the FOI Act. It is motivated by a desire to hide information that should be made available to an FOI Requestor.

It is arguably a more serious abuse of the FOI Act than that of the Cabinet Office last year, even though it has no financial consequences for the general public. The CO was fined £500,000 for its evasion, prevarication, and abuse of the FOIA and, of course, it’s the taxpayer who picks up that bill, along with another £500,000 lawyers' fees for its unsuccessful 3 year defence of the charges made against it (also met by the taxpayer).

Can I suggest that in the internal review I’ve requested, you actually provide the information I requested, and you abandon specious claims like I have not made a request for information, and that I was guilty of targeting and harassing a member of staff. As I state above, I have not named/identified the member of staff, and I did not provide in my original request, any details of what they had done.

My decision to provide some detail of their behaviour here, was forced upon me by your fallacious ‘targeting and harassment’ claim. I had to make it clear that the real reason for your refusal to answer my request was that you wanted to avoid answering a question that you would find embarrassing, and potentially incriminating.

Please bear in mind the ongoing investigation, before making any ill-considered responses in your internal review.

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

Yours faithfully,

Dudley Jones

Dear Rasul, Nazir (JCIO),

You say in your response to my request for an Internal Review: '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'.

Can you explain what you mean by this? Are you saying the JCIO is not any longer bound by law to respond to FOI requests? That the Freedom of Information Act does not apply to them, and that they are therefore able to operate in secrecy, that they are released from any transparency obligations?

This is extraordinary. The JCIO has ben responding to FOI Requests for at least 8 years. In all this time there has never been a problem.

Is this related to my present request, and a way of your escaping the very difficult position it puts you in? You are in a very senior position in the JCIO: you are a Senior Caseworker Manager, and you were the person who was supervising the caseworker who conducted the investigation of my complaint to the JCIO about the misconduct of Chamber President Judge Mrs Justice Farbey DBE. This is not an assertion, it is a statement of fact: emails obtained via an SAR Request contain some from the caseworker to you asking for advice, and you knew that this caseworker was asking the Data Privacy Officer for the Judicial Office for advice on my claim that Judge Farbey had - among other things that would be classified as misconduct - breached my Data Privacy rights. This caseworker you were supervising was not a senior caseworker, and I have been informed by a whistle-blower that they were chosen for that very reason.

I can't think of any other case of this very serious nature where a caseworker has been chosen to investigate very serious allegations about a Chamber President Judge who was not a senior caseworker. You must have known that the advice about my claim about the breach of my Data Privacy rights that the caseworker put to the JO Data Privacy Officer (who had no legal or GDPR qualifications) totally falsified my claim. The caseworker asked for advice on whether the JCIO had breached my Data Privacy rights.

The question was absurd, and the JO Data Privacy Officer - as well as YOU, Mr Rasul must have known it was completely false. The motive for the falsification is clear: the Data Privacy Officer was asked to play his part in a charade, the intention of which was to elicit the response 'no, the JCIO had not breached my DP rights' and they could then use this as a reason for dismissing my complaint about Judge Farbey.

The JO Data Privacy Officer duly played the part you wanted him to, and the JCIO could dismiss my complaint about the breach of my Data Privacy rights.

What compounded this corrupt procedure is that you must have known the Judicial Office DP Officer was compromised by the JO being involved in a separate but related complaint about Judge Farbey. Even if you hadn't falsified my complaint, his advice could not possibly have been impartial. The Judicial office were acting ON BEHALF OF JUDGE FARBEY - they were REPRESENTING HER. The DP Officer must have known this, just as you knew it.

What makes the position of the JCIO still worse is that Laura Walters, like you, a Senior Caseworker Manager, saw fit to pass on to the Judicial Office all the correspondence between myself and the JCIO caseworker as the investigation progressed - despite both the JCIO and the Judicial Office knowing that the JO was involved in a separate but related complaint from me about Judge Farbey's recruitment of the JO as her messenger, and subsequent sharing of sensitive material with the GLD! Again, this is not an assertion, it is a statement of fact. I have email proof of this which I obtained via an SAR Request. Perhaps you would like to try and justify this behaviour? I'm sure there is an innocent explanation for what might initially look to many people as thoroughly corrupt behaviour.

I have passed all this email evidence to the JACO who will shortly be beginning their investigation of my complaint about the JCIO.

As I pointed out in my request, I am seeking legal advice about the caseworker's actions and whether they would be regarded in law, as an attempt to pervert the course of justice. Of course, this would also apply to you, Mr Rasul. And the JCIO's specious attempt to avoid the FOI Request on the grounds that I had compromised the position of the caseworker and subjected them to 'harassment and intimidation' is - as I pointed out in my request for an Internal Review - totally without foundation. I had been very careful to avoid anything that might identify the official, I had given no indication of their name, or their gender. The fact that you chose to respond to my request left me no option but to mention your name, Mr Rasul.

There is one other thing causing me some concern, and perhaps you can clarify the position of the caseworker you were supervising/advising on this case. I have been informed by the whistle-blower I mentioned earlier, that the caseworker who investigated my complaint about Judge Farbey is no longer employed by the JCIO. Can you confirm whether this is correct?

I know that the official concerned was with the JCIO last August, and that at that stage, had been with the JCIO for at least 6 years. Is there any connection between this official's departure (you see, I am careful to give no indication of the gender of this official), and the behaviour I have described above.

Unfortunately, it means the JACO investigator will not be able to question the caseworker, but at least they will be able to talk to you.

Yours sincerely,

Dudley Jones