Reference : T3547/10

Thank you for your e-mail enquiry of 20/02/2010 4:48:20 PM

A reply is attached.

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Reference : T4476/10

Thank you for your e-mail enquiry of 10/03/2010 10:41:07

A reply is attached.

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Dear “Sarah Goldsmith”,

I write further to your email of the 20^th April 2010 which you submitted
via the whatdotheyknow.com website concerning the police use of Taser.

Your original email to the Home Office, dated the 20^th February 2010, was
not handled as a valid request under the Freedom of Information, but as
normal correspondence to the department in which you asked us a number of
questions.  

The Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the Act) provides a general right of
access to information held by a public authority. A valid request under
this Act must indicate what information you would like released. This is
provided under Section 8(1)(c) which states that a valid request must
describe the information requested.  The Act places two key duties on
public authorities that are subject to it.  These are provided in section
1(1) of the Act and state that any person making a [valid] request for
information is entitled to be informed (in writing) whether it holds the
information requested (section 1(1)(a)) and, if information is held, to be
provided with that information (section 1(1)(b)) unless that information
is considered to be exemption information.  In other words, if a request
or question does not ask us about recorded information that is held by the
department, we are unable to meet out duties under section 1 of the Act –
we can’t answer a question under FoIA that doesn’t ask us about
information we might hold.

Whilst stating a desire to make an FoI request in any correspondence is a
clear indication of your intent, it does not necessarily mean that that
letter / email / correspondence is a valid request. Whilst some questions
can be considered as part of a valid FoI request, the onus is on the
receiving authority to correctly identify the appropriate legislation that
might apply to any piece of correspondence – i.e FoIA, the Data Protection
Act, the Environmental Information Regulations, Reuse of Public Sector
Information Regulations 2005, and so on.  

Your letter of the 20^th February 2010 asked two questions as to whether
the use of Taser is lawful. Both questions started with, “Is it…” and did
not indicate at any point that you were asking for the Home Office to
search for and release any recorded information that is holds.  As such,
your email was not treated as a valid FoI request and was instead passed
to the appropriate policy unit in the Home Office to answer your
questions.  The Public Order Unit in the Home Office’s Crime and Policing
Group provided an answer to your questions on the 2^nd March 2010.  This
was entirely in accordance with our correspondence handling guidelines. 

You then submitted some follow up questions by email on the same day. For
the same reasons as I have described above, these two were handled as
normal correspondence and not as a request for information under the
Freedom of Information Act.  A response was provided by the Public Order
Unit on the 15^th March 2010 which also, in my opinion, answered your
questions.  I also consider that the questions you pose in your email of
the 15^th March 2010 have been answered in our correspondence of the 2^nd
and 15^th March 2010.

Because we have not handled any of your previous correspondence on this
topic under the provisions of the FoI Act, we can not conduct an Internal
Review.  

However, in the hope it’ll help address the questions you have posed about
the relationship between Common Law, Statute Law and Acts or Parliament, I
have provided links below to several websites that, in my opinion, clearly
describe Common Law and Statutory Law and the difference between them.  

In essence, Statute law is written law that refers to law that has been
created by Parliament in the form of legislation. Common Law is
essentially the way in which judges interpret the law using their
knowledge of legal precedent and common sense and by applying the facts of
the case they are hearing to those prior decisions. This means, as far as
I understand it, that Acts of Parliament (such as the Criminal Law Act
1967, the Firearms Act 1968 and the Freedom of Information Act 2000)
constitute as statute law.

[1]http://www.courtroomadvice.co.uk/common-...

[2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law

[3]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law

[4]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statutory_law

[5]http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/resource...

[6]http://www.legal-explanations.com/defini...

[7]http://www.legal-explanations.com/defini...

If you would like to make a request for information under the Freedom of
Information Act, please indicate what information you would like us to
locate and release and we will be happy to progress it in accordance with
our obligations under the Act. 

Sincere regards,

Ian

Ian Lister
Information Access Consultant
Information Access Team

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Communications via the GSi may be automatically logged, monitored and/or
recorded for legal purposes.

References

Visible links
1. http://www.courtroomadvice.co.uk/common-...
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statutory_law
5. http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/resource...
6. http://www.legal-explanations.com/defini...
7. http://www.legal-explanations.com/defini...