Dear Her Majesty's Treasury,

Please disclose the minutes, and any other recorded information, of all Loan Charge Review meetings which were held on the dates below -

18th September 2019
2nd October 2019

Yours faithfully,

A Finch

Dear FOI Requests,

Thank you for your recent reply of 14 June 2022, made in response to my request for information from Her Majesty's Treasury.

My request was very simple and straightforward, covering only two single dates as advised and asking for you to disclose the minutes, and any other recorded information you hold, of all Loan Charge Review meetings which were held on the dates mentioned. The Loan Charge Review was commissioned by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who has overall responsibility for the work of Her Majesty's Treasury.

Whether these were meetings held by Her Majesty's Treasury on the subject of the Loan Charge Review, or whether they were meetings held by one or more members of the Loan Charge Review team on either of those two dates is incidental. I have asked you to provide the minutes, and any other recorded information you hold, which relates to any of those meetings on the two dates mentioned. That recorded information will include printed documents, computer files, letters, emails, photographs, and sound or video recordings.

As per the terms of the Freedom of Information Act, I am under no obligation to explain my request any further. The front page of the ICO website is clear in its description that the main principle behind Freedom of Information legislation is that people have a right to know about the activities of public authorities, unless there is a good reason for them not to. This is sometimes described as a presumption or assumption in favour of disclosure. The Act is also sometimes described as purpose and applicant blind. This means 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;
- an applicant (requester) does not need to give you a reason for wanting the information. On the contrary, you must justify refusing them information;

The scope of this request is minimal, covering two dates only. Her Majesty's Treasury will already have a record of how many such meetings were held on those specific dates, who was in attendance and what was discussed and recorded. Please would you now provide the requested information.

Yours sincerely,

A Finch

Dear FOI Requests - HMT,

I sent you clarification of my request on 29 June, which you acknowledged on 30 June by issuing a new FOI reference number.

On 27 July, you sent an interim response informing me that you were extending the time for your reply due to your consideration of the public interest test under section 31 (law enforcement). You estimated it would take another four weeks to decide this.

On 24 August, you sent another interim response informing me that you were again extending the time for your reply for the same reasons set out above. You estimate that you now aim to respond by 22 September.

The view of the Information Commissioner's Office is that an authority should normally take no more than an additional 20 working days to consider the public interest, meaning that the total time spent dealing with the request should not exceed 40 working days. An extension beyond this should be exceptional.

You have now had 41 working days. If you delay until 22 September, that will be 60 working days.

Having already spent 41 working days considering the public interest under section 31, you will obviously be in a position to inform me of which subsections you believe are engaged, and why. Please provide this information today. If I do not receive this, I will escalate the delay in your response to the Information Commissioner's Office and ask them to intervene.

Yours sincerely,

A Finch

Dear HM Treasury,

I refer to your communication dated 14 September.

Following detailed correspondence on this matter to the Information Commissioner's Office, I have been informed by the Case Officer in the resultant exchanges that the Commissioner has accepted proof of my identity and that, in their most recent letter dated 19 October, HM Treasury had been contacted by the ICO with instruction to proceed with my case as normal.

As at 14 September, the delay to my Freedom of Information request was already 54 days. On the assumption that HM Treasury was contacted by the Information Commissioner's Office with the above information on 19 October at the very latest, another 27 days have now passed without a reply, which now represents a total delay of 81 days.

Please provide the information requested or I will have no option other than to escalate this once again to the Information Commissioner's Office.

Yours sincerely,

A Finch

Dear HM Treasury,

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

I am writing to request an internal review of HM Treasury's handling of my FOI request 'Meeting minutes and recorded information from 2019'.

I refer to your last letter dated 6 December 2022.

My original enquiry was made on 31 May 2022 and you provided the reference number FOI2022/10920 on 1 June 2022. You then wrote to me on 14 June 2022 asking for clarification. This was sent on 29 June 2022 and you provided a different reference number FOI2022/12985 on 30 June 2022.

In this letter, you confirm that HM Treasury does hold information within the scope of my request. It would have been possible, had you been prepared to helpfully demonstrate any hint of openness and transparency at this point, to list the meetings relevant to my request which took place on those two separate dates, who was in attendance, and the subjects under discussion. You chose not to. From your admission that information is held, I take it that this is information which would likely place HM Treasury under a scrutiny which it would find most unwelcome.

On 27 July 2022, you sent an interim response informing me that you were extending the time for your reply due to your consideration of the public interest test under section 31 (law enforcement). You estimated - inaccurately - that it would take another four weeks to decide this.

On 24 August 2022, you sent another interim response informing me that you were again extending the time for your reply for the same reasons set out above, estimating that you now aimed to respond by 22 September 2022.

On 25 August 2022, I wrote to you to again to reiterate the view of the Information Commissioner's Office that an authority should normally take no more than an additional 20 working days to consider the public interest, meaning that the total time spent dealing with the request should not exceed 40 working days. Any extension beyond this should be termed as exceptional. You had taken 41 working days at this point. By delaying until 22 September 2022, that would then amount to 60 working days.

I asked that as you had already spent 41 working days considering the public interest under section 31, you would obviously be in a position to inform me of which subsections you believe were engaged, and why. I asked you to provide that information and that if I did not receive this, I would escalate the delay in your response to the Information Commissioner's Office and ask them to intervene. You ignored the request and gave no reply.

On 1 September 2022, I escalated the lengthy delay to the ICO, asking it to intervene.

In this latest response, you very clearly state that on 29 June 2022, you refused my request. I received no communication from you on 29 June 2022 to that effect, rendering this claim completely false. You also state that it had come to your attention that I was using the full name ‘Atticus Finch’. At no time, and on no occasion have I used that name. Please provide full details and any evidence you hold which backs up that accusation in this internal review response. If you have no detail or can supply no evidence, then please withdraw the accusation and provide a meaningful apology.

On 14 September 2022, you wrote to me to inform me that you were refusing my request, but would continue to process it once a suitable verification of my identity had been provided. I considered that the sole arbiter on this point should be the Information Commissioner, to whom any complaint on your handling of this request would eventually be made. On 30 September 2022, the Information Commissioner's Office contacted me to confirm acceptance of my identity verification and informed me that all current cases and complaints would continue to remain open and eligible to proceed. You were also contacted on this date by the ICO with exactly the same information.

On 4 October 2022, I was again contacted by the ICO, referring to your letter dated 14 September 2022 which it had now seen and asking whether I was satisfied with the response. I replied to this on 6 October 2022, summarising the three separate complaints I had made to the ICO - which included the one I had raised with it on 1 September 2022 about your unacceptable delays in responding to this request and which had now been allocated an internal case reference number - and that all should now be proceeding as I had been previously informed, with a request that the most recent be treated as a priority investigation given those delays, which had far exceeded the limits set out in the ICO guidelines.

The ICO responded to me again on 19 October 2022, confirming that it had already contacted you with reference to one of the three cases above to explain that it had accepted my proof of identity and that you should proceed with my case as normal.

However, you make a statement in this latest response that HM Treasury did not receive communication from the Information Commissioner’s Office instructing you to proceed with the case. You then, in direct contradiction, confirm that HM Treasury did receive communication from the Information Commissioner’s Office to advise that they had verified my identity - which the ICO sent to you on 30 September 2022.

Your position seems to be that because the ICO's confirmation of my identity was communicated to you by use of a reference to a separate complaint, you somehow feel able to ignore that confirmation in relation to this ongoing request and claim that you "considered FOI2022/12985 to be closed as you had not responded to our email of 29 June 2022 asking for identification."

You should check your records. You sent no such letter to me on 29 June 2022.

My communication dated 25 November 2022 (not 28 November 2022 as you state) informed you that I would escalate this once again to the Information Commissioner's Office if the information was not supplied, as 81 working days had now passed. This action was taken on the same day, where I asked for the Information Commissioner's assistance in forcing compliance with the FOIA on the basis that you had already demonstrated a serious breach of section 10 at the date of my original complaint (1 September 2022).

On 5 December 2022, you were in receipt of a letter from the Information Commissioner's Office, asking you to provide a substantive response to this request within 10 working days and to copy that response to the ICO. Confirmation of this action/request was sent to me by the ICO on the same date.

In response to this request from the Information Commissioner's Office, you issued your letter dated 6 December 2022. This includes the statement "Since closing your request on 29 June 2022, more information within scope of your request has come to light. Please accept our apologies that these were not identified earlier."

You did not close this request on 29 June 2022. You provide no indication of when more information came to light. You give no estimate as to how much information has suddenly come to light. You offer no explanation as to why this information was not identified well within the 54 working days you had already spent considering the public interest test up to 14 September 2022.

You then refuse the request, claiming engagement of section 14(1) of the FOI Act.

According to the ICO, FOIA gives individuals a greater right of access to official information in order to make bodies more transparent and accountable. As such it is an important constitutional right. Therefore, engaging section 14(1) is a high hurdle.

I fail to accept that asking for the minutes from meetings which are relevant to my request over the course of only two specific dates, and the recorded information you hold arising from those meetings, is in any way disproportionate to the level of staff effort involved.

From the way you have dealt with this request and the manner in which you have consistently ignored the clear guidelines on time laid down by the regulator, there appears little to be gained by requesting an internal review - however, I am forced to do this as part of its due process before being able to take the complaint (which has been confirmed as left open) back to the Information Commissioner's Office.

Please do not go through the pretence of claiming on completion that it was balanced, or objective, or impartial. I have seen nothing to believe that could possibly be the case here, but would readily acknowledge that the grubby sleaze and brazen dishonesty which has mired central government for years will inevitably have led to these types of consequential behaviours and attitudes spreading across those organisations controlled and directed by the current administration - with HM Treasury at the forefront of that predictable pattern of misinformation and secrecy, and with your handling of this simple FOI request having all the hallmarks to prove it.

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

Yours faithfully,

A Finch