Dear North East Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust,

1. Please provide details of the level training and experience of your Medical Director in the follwing specialities:

- pre-hopital immediate care
- emergency hospital medicine
- critical care medicine
- air ambulance medicine

Information should include:
- qualifications held in those specialties
- time spent in post in those specialties
- the highest grade worked at in each speciality
- the date of last working in that speciality.

In addtition please provide the following information:

2. Is your Medical Director an active pre-hospital doctor?

3. How many 999 calls does your Medical Director attend on average per year as a pre-hospital doctor?

Yours faithfully,

Dr Robert S. Coull

Dear Karen Greenacre,

I have not received a reply to my request within the statutory 20 working days, which is treated as a ‘refusal’ in law.

I would like to request an internal review of the refusal.

Yours sincerely,

Dr Robert S. Coull

Dear Karen Greenacre,

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

I am writing to request an internal review of your service's handling of my FOI request 'Pre-hospital / Emergency / Critical Care experience of Medical Director'.

You have stated that you hold the information that I requested, but that the information is exempt from disclosure as it is “personal information”. I take this to mean that you are claiming an absolute exemption under Section 38(1)(b) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 and that you have deemed that no public interest test is necessary for this exemption to be claimed.

There are three situations under which a Section 38(1)(b) exemption can be claimed.
1. Where disclosure would breach one of the eight data protection principals. There is no suggestion that this is the case here.
2. Where disclosure would breach Section 10 of the Data Protection Act 1988. This requires a public interest test, which you have not applied and I therefore assume this is not the basis for your claim that the information is exempt.
3. Where the data held is “sensitive personal information”.

What is and is not sensitive personal information is defined by the Data Protection Act 1988:
“Section 2 Sensitive personal data.
In this Act “sensitive personal data” means personal data consisting of information as to—
(a)the racial or ethnic origin of the data subject,
(b)his political opinions,
(c)his religious beliefs or other beliefs of a similar nature,
(d)whether he is a member of a trade union (within the meaning of the M1Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992),
(e)his physical or mental health or condition,
(f)his sexual life,
(g)the commission or alleged commission by him of any offence, or
(h)any proceedings for any offence committed or alleged to have been committed by him, the disposal of such proceedings or the sentence of any court in such proceedings.”

The information requested relates to the professional medical qualifications and training of the most senior licensed medical practitioner in your organisation charged with making vital management decisions which affect patients lives. That information does not meet the above definition of ‘sensitive personal information’.

The Scottish Information Commissioner has produced a flowchart to aid us in deciding what information to exempt in these cases.
http://www.itspublicknowledge.info/nmsru...

Following that flowchart we obtain the following answers:
-> does the information meet the definition of ‘sensitive personal information’ -> no
-> would the subject have the right to access the information? -> yes
-> does the requester have a legitimate interest (in this case the information has been asked of all the ambulance services in the UK and relates to the quality of medical direction for patient services provided by UK ambulance services) -> yes
-> is disclosure necessary for the legitimate interest? -> yes
-> would disclosure cause unwarranted prejudice to the subject? -> no
-> is processing otherwise lawful? -> yes
-> exemption 38(1)(b) does not apply

Furthermore, as you have 2 MDs you could provide the information in a combined manner which does not cover a particular individual.

It should be noted that several other ambulance services have provided identical requested information regarding their MDs.

I therefore believe the information is not exempt, should be disclosed, and request an internal review.

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/4...

Yours sincerely,

Dr Robert S. Coull

Dear Karen Greenacre,

Update to request for review

Apologies, I sent you the information regarding the Freedom of Infrmation (Scotland) Act 2002 as I am based in Scotland.

As you are an English NHS body, you stated that you are claiming an exemption under Section 40 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. As this is not my personal data, I take this to mean that you are claiming an exemption under Section 40(2) of the Act.

The principals of my request for review, and the references to the Data Protection Act 1988 (which is UK wide legislation) is unchanged.

However, in England, the advice followed when processing an FOI and claiming a s40 exemption is slightly different. It comes from the ICO and is available here:
https://ico.org.uk/media/for-organisatio...

Please note my original comments that there is no suggestion my request breached Data Protection Principals, and the English guidance emphasises this mainly applies to the first principal that release of the information would be ‘unfair’ to the individual. It is unlikely that a licensed physician with responsibilities for clinical care which and patient safety could claim that release of professional details of their experience and training for the post are ‘unfair’. Certainly, as a licensed physician myself, I would provide public details of my professional training and experience as related to my professional role whenever requested. This is especially true where the person requesting the information did so as part of a process to improve patient safety by compiling data on current best practice.

Yours sincerely,

Dr Robert S. Coull

Dear North East Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust,

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

I am writing to request an internal review of North East Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust's handling of my FOI request 'Pre-hospital / Emergency / Critical Care experience of Medical Director'.

You have stated that you hold the information that I requested, but that the information is exempt from disclosure as it is “personal information” under Section 40 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. You have not provided details of any public interest test you have applied, or your reasons for not applying a public interest test. I take this to mean that you are claiming an absolute exemption under Section 40 that you have deemed that no public interest test is necessary. However, as you have not stated the subsection you are relying upon when claiming the exemption, and the reasons for relying on that subsection, your refusal is automatically invalid.

Personal information exemptions under Section 40 are covered by the following ICO advice:
https://ico.org.uk/media/for-organisatio...

There are three situations under which a Section 40(2) exemption can be claimed where third party data is requested.

1. Where disclosure would breach one of the eight data protection principals. Most commonly this refers to the principal of fairness. That is to say, would it be fair to release the third party data? When judging fairness, one must take into account:

i. the expectations when the data was collected
ii. the nature of the information.
iii. whether the information has been or remains in the public domain
iv. the FOIA principals of transparency and accountability
v. whether there is any legitimate public interest in the information and the balance between this and the rights and freedoms of the data subject.

In this case, the data was collected as part of the process of judging the suitability of candidates for a senior role as a public servant. The subject is a licensed medical practitioner and my expectation is that they would view public disclosure of their professional experience, training, and activity levels as a normal part of their day to day professional role. The nature of the information is professional experience, training, and activity directly and solely related to the subject’s ability to cary our their role which directly impacts patient safety. Some of the information may already be in the public domain, as it relates to work and training as a public servant in high profile roles/cases. The requested data has a strong element of transparency and accountability, in that it is requesting transparency over the level of training and experience of the most senior licensed physician(s) in your organisation related to direct patient care, and the public interest in this is very strong in that ensuring the highest level of training and experience in ambulance service medical directors is a critical area for improving patient safety and reducing avoidable deaths.

2. Where disclosure would breach Section 10 of the Data Protection Act 1988.

3. Where the data held is “sensitive personal information”.

What is and is not sensitive personal information is defined by the Data Protection Act 1988:
“Section 2 Sensitive personal data.
In this Act “sensitive personal data” means personal data consisting of information as to—
(a)the racial or ethnic origin of the data subject,
(b)his political opinions,
(c)his religious beliefs or other beliefs of a similar nature,
(d)whether he is a member of a trade union (within the meaning of the M1Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992),
(e)his physical or mental health or condition,
(f)his sexual life,
(g)the commission or alleged commission by him of any offence, or
(h)any proceedings for any offence committed or alleged to have been committed by him, the disposal of such proceedings or the sentence of any court in such proceedings.”

The information does not meet the above definition of ‘sensitive personal information’.

It should be noted that several other English ambulance services have provided identical requested information regarding their MDs without claiming exemptions.

I therefore believe the information is not exempt, should be disclosed, and request an internal review.

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

Yours faithfully,

Dr Robert S. Coull