Contingent Labour ONE call off contracts

The request was successful.

Dear Sirs

Please can you provide under the Freedom of Information Act a copy of any Call Off Contracts entered into by the Cabinet Office with Capita Business Services Limited, Brook Street (UK) Limited and Hays Specialist Recruitment Limited for the provision of services under the Contingent Labour ONE framework (RM960).

I am not seeking copies of the framework agreements entered into by Capita, Brook Street and Hays with Crown Commercial Services, or for any agreements relating to the provision of individual contractors. I am seeking the master call off contracts under the Contingent Labour ONE framework which allow the Cabinet Office to access the services of the three suppliers.

To avoid any concerns about Data Protection, please feel free to redact the Contact Reference, Account Manager and the Key Personnel from section 3.1.

I understand Government Digital Service is part of the Cabinet Office. If GDS has entered into any separate call off agreements with the three suppliers for the provision of services under Contingent Labour ONE, please can you include these within the scope of this request.

I look forward to hearing from you shortly.

Yours faithfully

Alan Jones

FOI Team Mailbox, Cabinet Office

CABINET OFFICE REFERENCE:  FOI324794

Dear ALAN JONES

Thank you for your request for information. Your request was received
on 21/6/2017 and we are considering if it is appropriate to deal with
under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

This email is just a short acknowledgement of your request.

If you have any queries about this email, please contact the FOI team.
Please remember to quote the reference number above in any future
communications.

Yours sincerely,

 Knowledge and Information Management Unit

Cabinet Office

E: [1][Cabinet Office request email]

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FOI Team Mailbox, Cabinet Office

1 Attachment

Please find attached further information regarding your recent FOI request

 

 

 

Regards

 

 FOI Team

Room 405

70 Whitehall,

London, SW1A 2AS

 

Email – [1][Cabinet Office request email]

 

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Dear Sirs

Your proposed use of section 43 is nonsense. I have made exactly the same request to 16 Government Departments and none of the others has considered this to be commercially sensitive - including HM Treasury with whom you work very closely. The wording of the generic call off contract is standard and mandated in the Framework Agreement, and there are a handful of specific fields which you would need to complete. A number of departments routinely publish such contracts on Contracts Finder. It seems most disappointing that the Cabinet Office would be the one department who does not wish to be transparent.

Assuming you have located the call off contracts in the past 20 working days, it should not take any appreciable time to determine what to redact. It is pointless to redact any of the generic call off terms and conditions as these have been published already and should be common across all framework users. So you are looking at a handful of customer specific fields over the first few pages of the documents. It surely will not take you another complete month to read these few pages?

Yours sincerely,

Alan Jones

FOI Team Mailbox, Cabinet Office

1 Attachment

Please find attached the reply to your FOI request

 

 

 

Regards

 

 

FOI Team

Room 405

70 Whitehall,

London, SW1A 2AS

E-mail -[1][Cabinet Office request email] 

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Dear Cabinet Office,

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

I am writing to request an internal review of Cabinet Office's handling of my FOI request 'Contingent Labour ONE call off contracts'.

I submitted a request to the Cabinet Office on 21 June for copies of any call off contract entered into with Capita, Brook Street or Hays under the Contingent Labour ONE framework. On 19 July I received a response saying that an extension was required to consider a section 43 exemption. In response I indicated that I had made exactly the same request to 16 Government departments and none of them had sought to invoke this exemption, and that it was disappointing that it was only the Cabinet Office that decided not to be transparent.

I today received a response from Sharon Carter. At the start of her email she states "The Cabinet Office holds current call off contracts with Capita Business Services Limited and Brook Street (UK) Limited under the Contingent Labour One framework (RM960)".

She then said that this was not being sent to me as she was invoking the section 22 exemption for future publication, as it was being published in the "near future". There was no mention of section 43 which appears to have been a smokescreen. Section 22 states that it must be reasonable to withhold information prior to publication. As part of this, the Information Commissioner indicates considerations on this can include whether withholding publication "is necessary to avoid the possibility of the requester gaining any advantage in obtaining the information prior to general publication", "the timetable properly requires internal or limited consideration of the information prior to its public release", "having decided to disclose the information, there would be real difficulties in extracting it prior to publication". It appears that your team has extracted the information for publication, there is no real advantage in releasing this to me in advance of general publication (and it would be disclosed on a public forum anyway on whatdotheyknow.com) and even if there is a need for internal consideration you have had an extra 20 working days to do so.

Furthermore, Ms Carter seems to have forgotten that section 22 is a qualified exemption and requires a consideration of the public interest. Given that there is genuine concern about whether there is a valid call off contract in place for this framework (which Ms Carter appears to be aware of by her response referencing that this is supposedly in place), and there is very limited public interest in withholding publication as it is supposedly due to be published very soon, I do not believe that the balance of public interest favours withholding this information. But there should at least be some consideration given to this.

In summary, I do not believe this request has been handled properly. Your team initially indicated that they needed an extension to consider a s43 exemption. They made reference to s22. Having considered s43 and realised that they could not justify this, they then just decided to invoke s22 with no consideration of the third part of it and without recognising it to be a qualified exemption and considering the public interest.

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

Yours faithfully,

Alan Jones

FOI Team Mailbox, Cabinet Office

CABINET OFFICE REFERENCE:  IR324794

Dear ALAN JONES

Thank you for your request for an internal review. Your request was
received on 11/8/2017 and is being dealt with under the terms of the
Freedom of Information Act 2000.

This email is just a short acknowledgement of your request.

If you have any queries about this email, please contact the FOI team.
Please remember to quote the reference number above in any future
communications.

Yours sincerely,

Knowledge and Information Management Unit

Cabinet Office

E: [1][Cabinet Office request email]

 

References

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1. mailto:[Cabinet Office request email]

FOI Team Mailbox, Cabinet Office

1 Attachment

Please find attached the reply to your IR request

 

 

 

Regards

 

 

FOI Team

Room 405

70 Whitehall,

London, SW1A 2AS

E-mail -[1][Cabinet Office request email] 

References

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