2015 General Election Expenses Fraud - Breakdown of staff investigation time by role and task(s)

Response to this request is long overdue. By law, under all circumstances, Greater Manchester Police should have responded by now (details). You can complain by requesting an internal review.

Dear Greater Manchester Police,

I am interested in obtaining information regarding how the Police force prioritise, track, itemise and record time spent by officers and staff at all pay grades, working on and investigating Election Expenses fraud allegations relating to the 2015 General Election.

Nationwide evidence submitted by Returning Officers and Electoral Administrators to the Electoral Commission in recent years has high-lighted the general reluctance of Police forces to investigate and prosecute cases of alleged fraud committed by Political Parties, Candidates and their agents, even when the evidence base exists to do so. Often on the basis that such prosecutions would not be in the "public interest"?

The lack of enforcement action by Police in recent years in response to Expenses Fraud allegations had led to the lack of a credible deterrent - and a culture of impunity to lawbreaking being fostered within Political parties, which has widespread consequences for our democracy.

Given the substantial public interest arising from the systematic over-spending by Conservative candidates in marginal seats during the 2015 general election, please provide the following information outlining how the substantial "public interest" for thorough Police investigation and prosecution(s) where the evidence permits, is being translated into Police resourcing of the investigations into GE2015 over-spending.

Please provide in relation to the GE2015 Election Expenses investigation:

1) Total man-hours committed for the investigation(s) to date, both pre and post the 1 year extension granted by the courts in summer 2016.

2) A break down of time spent a) exploring existing information such as media reports already in the public realm, and b) actively investigating new leads and information.

3) The number of staff tasked to the investigation(s), their rank and experience.

4) The numbers of meetings and/or phonecalls held with the Electoral Commission to discuss progress on Election Expenses investigations throughout 2015 - 2016.

Yours faithfully,

Joel M Benjamin

Greater Manchester Police

1 Attachment

Dear Joel Benjamin,

Please see attached response.

Regards

Caroline

Caroline Barker
Information Compliance and Records Management Unit
Information Services Branch - Business Operations
Greater Manchester Police
c/o Openshaw Complex, Lawton Street, Manchester M11 2NS

External Tel: 0161 856 2532
Internal Extension: 62532
email: [email address]

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Joel M Benjamin left an annotation ()

Refused s40(2) personal data.

Paul Cardin left an annotation ()

Personally I would challenge the exemption quoted (Section 40 Personal data) and take it all the way.

I doubt the ICO or any subsequent tribunal would find any justification for its use.

Caution: The Act permits the data controller to change their choice of exemption at any time - which has the effect of drawing out the process. I would imagine that this would be the GMP's next port of call here.

In other words, God's in his heaven, zll's well with the world, tribunal judges are paid £107,000 per annum, and the public interest can go hang.

regards,

Paul Cardin

p.s. I lodged an FOI request with Merseyside Police asking for a description of the brick allegedly used to break Angela Eagle's constituency office window (later proven not to have occurred despite a loooong summer of #fakenews in all UK media outlets) - the police quoted as their exemption Section 40 - personal data. In other words, a brick with feelings. Could not make it up.

Dear Greater Manchester Police,

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

I am writing to request an internal review of Greater Manchester Police's handling of my FOI request '2015 General Election Expenses Fraud - Breakdown of staff investigation time by role and task(s)'.

In refusing to provide information regarding the man-hours worked by staff and the purposes or tasks undertaken in relation to the Election Expenses investigation, GMP have cited that the "information is not held."

I acknowledge that if specific information is not held in relation to Q2 re: duties/ tasks undertaken by investigating officers, Greater Manchester Police (GMP) are under no obligation to produce it afresh.

However, in relation to Q3, GMP have identified 4x officers who are performing the investigation - and at its most basic, I would expect the log books of these staff to readily confirm whether staff have been engaged in substantive work relating to the Election Expenses investigation, for each calendar month for the period covered by the inquiry.

If there are no entries for the respective month relating to Election Expenses work - I would expect GMP to record a "zero hours" entry for that month.

Where entries relating to Election Expenses are discovered, staff could simply be asked to estimate days of work undertaken in relation to this activity for each respective month, repeated for each of the 4 staff.

I would expect such a basic request to fall well within permitted cost grounds for this request.

As I have NOT requested the name, age, gender, officers badge number or other personal indentifiers for these investigating officers which could reasonably be interpreted to be "personal data" - I contest GMP's application of s40(2) exemption, on the basis that any response would not and should not contain personal data relating to a "data subject", merely the hours/days of work undertaken by four un-named police officers - information which does not have implications for the un-named officers privacy (see Durant vs Financial Services Authority [2003] EWCA Civ 1746).

Therefore in relation to Q3, I would expect within the scope of this request GMP to be able to produce confirmation of the months in which investigative work has not been conducted, and an estimate of the days work undertaken where it has.

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/2...

Yours faithfully,

Joel M Benjamin

Greater Manchester Police

Dear Mr. Benjamin,

Thank you for your email.

Please take this email as acknowledgement of your request for an internal review of your recent FOI request (our ref 3152/16).

Kind regards

Rachael Bigland
Information Compliance & Records Management Unit

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