Dear Attorney General's Office,

You responded to a FOIA request here https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/7...

In that response you stated "I have now been able to consider your request and can confirm that the Attorney General has
not made any decisions in relation to consent to prosecute cases for wearing a political uniform
in the period 2019 to 2020. "

My attempts to speak to the author of that response by telephone were blocked by the call handling staff of the AG's office so I am making this request.

Please specify where the information is stored i.e. on which system / software the records of consent to prosecute by the AG, and the nature of the offences is held.

Please specify which department and the contact details for that department , maintains and or operates the system / software where this information is stored.

Please specify if this system / software is the same system / software used by the CPS if known.

Please explain if possible, how the system can be interrogated for consent to prosecute cases i.e is there a field on the system specifically for AG consent or is it a direct interrogation of the underlying data sets which allowed the author to respond?

If it is the latter can you provide any information on how this was achieved in relation to time and cost provision please?

Yours faithfully,

W Hunter

Dear Attorney General's Office,

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

I am writing to request an internal review of Attorney General's Office's handling of my FOI request 'Response clarification please'.

The response provided has not addressed the questions asked and you have deliberately withheld information in breach of section 77 of the FOIA.

As the original response issued by the AGO stated,
"Section 1 of the FOIA places two duties on public authorities. Unless exemptions apply, the first
duty (contained in section 1(1)(a)) is to confirm or deny whether the information specified in a
request is held. If confirmed, the second duty (contained in section 1(1)(b)) is, unless one or
more of the exemptions contained in Part II of the FOIA applies, to disclose the information that
has been confirmed as being held. "

1) Please specify where the information is stored i.e. on which system / software the
records of consent to prosecute by the AG, and the nature of the offences is held.

You have failed to confirm that the information is held, whilst failing to provide any information regarding the computer system or hardware used whilst also failing to provide any information regarding the identification of the software on those systems.

Your response that you use a "Spreadsheet of Applications" is utterly meaningless in that a spreadsheet is a text based storage system, i.e. Excel, in which the fields record text or minor functions affecting other fields within the spreadsheet.

You have failed to specify what the "Applications" are, failed to specify the name of the application provider and or nature of the software application at all.

2) Please specify which department and the contact details for that department ,
maintains and or operates the system / software where this information is stored.

Your response has failed to confirm the information is held whilst failing to identify a department or individual within the AGO which deals with the database administration and maintenance whilst withholding the contact details for them.

Since the department / person is known and a telephone and email address for them exists within the AGOs office, then under FOI you were required to disclose these records unless there was a lawful exemption for not doing so, and AG policy is not a lawful exemption.

3) Please specify if this system / software is the same system / software used by the CPS
if known.

Your answer specifies that your system is internal and not accessed by the CPS but to clarify, the question was does the CPS utilise the same type of system and software i.e. are the CPS records held in the same format using the same software to make record and information sharing between the CPS and AGO compatible?

4) Please explain if possible, how the system can be interrogated for consent to
prosecute cases i.e is there a field on the system specifically for AG consent or is it a
direct interrogation of the underlying data sets which allowed the author to respond?

Your response "In response to your fourth question, I can confirm that the spreadsheet only holds details of
applications for consent to prosecute that we have received and can be sorted to identify
categories of cases. As such, your fifth question is not applicable. " has not addressed the question asked.

You have specified that the "Spreadsheet" holds the details of applications for consent to prosecute that have been received, without specifying if this consent is in a discrete field on the system which would allow all cases to be sorted to produce a result set for all consent cases at the push of a single button, or whether it is only by the interrogation of the underlying data in other fields which would allow the AGO consent information to be accessed.

The original FOIA request identified in my request to you via the link provided, clearly resulted in a response stating that "I have now been able to consider your request and can confirm that the Attorney General has
not made any decisions in relation to consent to prosecute cases for wearing a political uniform
in the period 2019 to 2020. "

Was this information based upon a single "consent to prosecute for any reason" search of your system, or did a search of that nature produce results which then required a member of staff to access the consent to prosecute records to establish the reason for the individual consent in each case?

5) If it is the latter can you provide any information on how this was achieved in relation
to time and cost provision please?

Whilst you claim question 5 is not applicable, in which case please specify whether in relation to question 4, does the "Consent to Prosecute" record / field on your system contain only the request or is it sub divided to also specify the reason for the request so that a search can be refined? or having located the consent to prosecute records would it then require a member of staff to manually sift the results to establish the underlying reason for the request?

Please register this as a formal internal review request and also a complaint regarding breach of the FOIA as you have failed in your response to comply with the requirements of the act as specified by your own office.

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

Yours faithfully,

W Hunter