Dear Mr Blair

TfL Ref: 2160-1920

Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 16
October 2019 asking for information about the Michael Meech automated
announcements.

Your request will be processed in accordance with the requirements of the
Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy. 

A response will be sent to you by 13 November.

We publish a substantial range of information on our website on subjects
including operational performance, contracts, expenditure, journey data,
governance and our financial performance. This includes data which is
frequently asked for in FOI requests or other public queries. Please check
[1]http://www.tfl.gov.uk/corporate/transpar... to see if this helps you.

We will publish anonymised versions of requests and responses on the
[2]www.tfl.gov.uk website. We will not publish your name and we will send
a copy of the response to you before it is published on our website.

In the meantime, if you would like to discuss this matter further, please
do not hesitate to contact me.

Yours sincerely

Sara Thomas

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

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Dear Mr Blair

TfL Ref: 2160-1920

Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 16
October 2019 asking for information about the Michael Meech automated on
train announcements which were used on the Jubilee 1996 stock trains.

Your requests have been considered in accordance with the requirements of
the Freedom of Information Act and TfL’s information access policy. I can
confirm we do hold the information you require.

However we are not obliged to supply these audio files as the information
is subject to a statutory exemption to the right of access to information
under section 43(2). In this instance section 43(2) has been applied as
disclosure of the information requested would be likely to prejudice the
commercial interests of TfL and/or the company / voice artist used to
provide the recordings.

The recordings are solely to be used for the purpose for which they were
created and for broadcast on the London Underground network only. If TfL
were to disclose these recordings in response to an FOI request, it would
constitute an actionable breach of contract and would be likely to result
in a valid legal claim against London Underground or the license to use
the recordings being withdrawn, which would impose additional,
unnecessary, costs. TfL wishes to protect its commercial interests and
ability to participate in future commercial activity. The disclosure of
this information would be to the detriment of present and future business
activities for both parties.

The use of this exemption is subject to an assessment of the public
interest in relation to the disclosure of the information concerned. TfL
recognises the need for openness and transparency within public
authorities and the degree of public interest concerning London transport
announcements in light of the recent disclosure of iBus announcements.
However, in this instance this is outweighed by the damage that would be
done to TfL’s ability to use these recordings and any future contractual
negotiations that may take place regarding the London Underground
announcements.

For the sake of clarity, we did not release any announcements under the
previous FOI request that you referred to: 
[1]https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/m...

Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to
appeal.

Yours sincerely

Sara Thomas

FOI Case Officer

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

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Thank you for your request for an internal review which was received on 22 November 2019

You have stated that you are dissatisfied with the handling of your request for information under the Freedom of Information Act.

The review will be conducted by an internal review panel in accordance with TfL’s Internal Review Procedure, which is available via the following URL:

http://content.tfl.gov.uk/internal-revie...

Every effort will be made to provide you with a response by 23 December 2019. However, if the review will not be completed by this date, we will contact you and notify you of the revised response date as soon as possible.

Yours sincerely

Emma Flint
Principal Information Access Advisor
FOI Case Management Team
General Counsel

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Dear Mr Blair

I am contacting you regarding your email concerning the response provided
to FOI-2160-1920. Following your email of 22 November 2019 a review has
been carried out by an Independent Review Panel (‘the Panel’) consisting
of individuals who were not involved in the handling of your request.

You have disputed the application of s43(2) to refuse your request, which
was applied on the basis that disclosure would be likely to prejudice the
commercial interest of TfL.

To provide a little context regarding s43(2) of the FOI Act, it allows a
public authority to exempt information whose disclosure would, or would be
likely to, prejudice the commercial interests of any person (this can
include an individual, a company, the public authority itself or any other
legal entity).  There are many circumstances in which a public authority
might hold information with the potential to prejudice commercial
interests. This could include procurement activities in relation to the
purchase of goods or services, regulatory activities or an authorities own
commercial interests in relation to activities which generate income. 

The Prejudice Test.

In order to apply section 43(2), a public authority must satisfy itself
that disclosure of the information would, or would be likely to, prejudice
or harm the commercial interests of any person and in this instance the
public authority holding it. This is known as the prejudice test.  The
term “would…prejudice” means that prejudice is more probable than not to
occur (i.e. a more than a 50% chance of the disclosure causing the
prejudice, even though it is not absolutely certain that it would do so). 

The term “would be likely to prejudice” is a lower threshold which means
that there must be more than a hypothetical or remote possibility of
prejudice occurring. There must be a real and significant risk of
prejudice, even though the probability of prejudice occurring is less than
50% and a public authority must decide the likelihood of prejudice arising
on the facts of each case.

The Public Interest Test

Section 43 is a qualified exemption which means that a public authority
has to consider the public interest if the exemption is engaged because of
prejudice to commercial interests and has to decide whether the balance of
the public interest in maintaining the exemption outweighs that of
disclosing the information. Although there is a strong public interest in
openness, this does not necessarily override all other arguments.

You have stated in your email of 22 November that the "automated
announcements that I am referring to are produced by Ketech". However
whilst processing your original FOI request and during the internal review
we have been unable to confirm that this is a correct statement of fact. 
This assertion against other audio recordings has been made to us in the
past and we have been able to ascertain the statement to be incorrect and
so we are unable to take this to be accurate without verification. However
we have also been unable to confirm if they were produced under licence to
Global Services or any other company, agency or individual and given that
the announcements in question are no longer used and the voice artist has
since deceased, it has created a unique situation in regards to confirming
the licence conditions under which these announcements were provided for
use by TfL. That said these announcements would have been produced under
some form of legal licencing agreement allowing for the  broadcast on
London Underground and it is worth noting that the agreement under which
the announcements would have been made pre-dated the existence of
Transport for London as a public authority.

Given that we could not definitively confirm the licencing conditions
under which these announcements fall, in this instance s43(2) was applied
to your request based on the balance of probabilities that disclosure
would be likely to lead to some form of legal action being bought against
TfL. Whilst the panel make no suggestion that you would use this
information for anything other than you own personal interest, disclosure
of this information to you has to be regarded as a disclosure to ‘the
public at large’ which elevates the risk of legal action being bought
against TfL if this information were to be widely used by members of the
public for their own financial gain. As you may know, the majority of the
London Underground audio announcements do have prohibitions against
disclosure and so it must be considered there is a reasonable likelihood
that a similar prohibition would be in place in relation to these
recordings.

If legal action were to be bought against TfL for the public disclosure
and use of these announcements, the financial costs of legal resources
required to deal with legal cases can be significant.  In addition to
these legal costs there is also the imposed cost of any potential
compensation that would need to be paid to a third party service provider
if a court case was ruled in their favour.

As explained above, where qualified exemptions are cited, there is an
obligation on the public authority to carry out a consideration of the
public interest test. In this instance the Panel gave consideration to
whether the information being requested was of sufficient enough value to
the wider public to mitigate the costs to the public purse that any
potential legal action would incur.  However the Panel agreed that these
announcements would only be of value to a minimal amount of transport
enthusiasts and therefore the consideration for disclosure was outweigh by
the impact on public funds that would be required to provide legal
resources if legal action was bought against TfL.

Therefore in this instance your complaint has not been upheld.

The Panel appreciate that the above response will come as a disappointment
to you, however we hope the above response has provided a better clarity
in regards to the considerations given to the information requested in
FOI-2160-1920. If you are dissatisfied with the internal review actions to
date please do not hesitate to contact me or alternately you can refer the
matter to the independent authority responsible for enforcing the Freedom
of Information Act, at the following address:

Information Commissioner’s Office

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire SK9 5AF

A complaint form is also available on the ICO’s website
([1]www.ico.org.uk).

Yours sincerely

Emma Flint

Principal Information Access Adviser

FOI Case Management Team

Transport for London

[2][TfL request email]

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References

Visible links
1. http://www.ico.org.uk/
2. mailto:[TfL request email]
3. http://www.tfl.gov.uk/corporate/about-tfl/