Lord Stuart Rose's February 2014 Review Report of NHS Management

A.E. made this Freedom of Information request to Department of Health and Social Care This request has been closed to new correspondence. Contact us if you think it should be reopened.

The request was refused by Department of Health and Social Care.

Dear Department of Health,

if you haven't already, please publish Lord Stuart Rose's February 2014 Review Report of NHS Management and provide a URL to the webpage or PDF that it is published on as a matter of urgency, and most certainly well before the 2015 elections.

The report is referenced here: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/...

Yours faithfully,

A.E.

D. Speers left an annotation ()

Thank you for asking.......any idea why its not been published?

D. Speers left an annotation ()

So you're A.E eh!!

Department of Health and Social Care

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Dear Department of Health,

you replied:

" You requested your correspondence to be treated under the Freedom of Information Act. However, as your correspondence again asked for general information, rather than requesting recorded information or documentation, I should advise you that on this occasion the Department has not considered your correspondence under the provisions of the Act.

Lord Rose submitted his report to the Secretary of State for Health on 23 December in line with the original terms of reference. Since then, the remit of the review has been expanded to take into account NHS England’s ‘Five Year Forward View’, which was published after Lord Rose’s review had begun. Consequently, further work is being undertaken before the final report can be published,. Therefore, no date for publication has yet been agreed."

I do not consider the information to be "general" as I ask for access to a specific report.

(1) Are you claiming that there is no "recorded information or documentation" of the report in any form? I would find this extremely hard to believe. If not, please explain why not.

(2) Please explain in simple terms, what the "original terms of reference" were.

(3) Even if Lord Rose's report were submitted in hard copy, it would have been scanned on to some electronic system or other. If it has not, please can you as a matter of priority, scan it or convert it into an electronic format and attach it as a direct response to this FOI. This is irrespective of any subsequent remit or expansion of future plans or intentions.

(4) Just to make this crystal clear, this FOI relates in it's entirety to the full and specific content of Lord Rose's report (however lengthy) in it's entirety.

Yours faithfully,

A.E.

Dear Department of Health,

in addendum to my previous reply, if the report is in oral format (highly unlikely), please can you have it transcribed as a matter of urgency.

Yours faithfully,

A.E.

Peter Bowyer left an annotation ()

They're not obliged to create a written report where none exists - although it seems unlikely that it doesn't. Good luck!

A.E. left an annotation ()

Yes, I would find it very hard to believe a written report doesn't exist.
In any case Freedom of Information should include all forms being made available in an accessible format, it's still information! And we still have a right to it.

Dear Department of Health,

it appears Jeremy Hunt is accused of covering up this report so that it doesn't see the light of day before the elections: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015... so it is imperative that the report is made available in full asap. As Dr Wollaston states, this report was paid for by public money. We want to see what we paid for.

Yours faithfully,

A.E.

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Our ref: DE00000925684 
 
Dear Sir, Madam, 
 
Please find attached the Department's response to your recent Freedom of
Information request.
 
Yours sincerely,
 
Graham Sale
Freedom of Information Officer
Department of Health
 

show quoted sections

Dear Department of Health,

You state:

"Information on aggregating requests is also set out in Section 12(4)(a) of the FOI Act which states that:

“… where two or more requests for information are made to a public authority by one person the estimated cost of complying with any of the requests is to be taken to be the total cost of complying with all of them.”

My response to this is:

This is contradictory as this FOI is in the public domain for far more than one person to see or benefit from the response or information.

You state:

"However, it is being withheld under Section 22, which states that public bodies are not obliged to disclose information that is intended for future publication.

Section 22 is a qualified exemption, and we are required to assess as objectively as possible whether the balance of public interest favours disclosing or withholding the information.

In general, there is a strong public interest in information being made as freely available as possible. However, further work is currently taking place on the review to reflect an expanded remit to take into account the NHS Five Year Forward View publication.

Our view that Section 22 applies to your request is based on the judgement that the public interest will be better served by general publication, in due course, of information describing the outcome of the review when it is complete rather than by disclosure now, to a single individual, of incomplete and therefore potentially misleading information.

As such, we consider that releasing this information before its expected publication date would not be in the public interest. The full report will be published in due course. "

My response to this is:

(1) the law (https://ico.org.uk/media/for-organisatio...) states that "in all the circumstances it is reasonable to withhold the information prior to publication." I believe that DoH is abusing this Section as it is *not* reasonable to withhold the information (see (2) ).

(2) There is no reasonable basis to consider it preferable for public interest to delay releasing the information - the public wants this information now. As before stated, irrespective of the remit or future plans it is the *findings* of Lord Rose's report that the public have a right to know. Findings are based on past performance, the intentions of DoH to address any failings in the future follows on from that, but is not the same information being requested. DoH's view is biased - it is not the view of the general public who you serve and who pay for you to exist. Bias means your view is *not* reasonable therefore cannot be "as objective as possible" or the limits of "as possible" are not neutral enough. It is not misleading if DoH makes it clear that plans to address failings exist, the public does not need to know the specifics of what the plans are to avoid being misled. It is far more misleading to hide this report from the public when knowledge of it's existence is out there and there is already a wealth of information on NHS failings in the public arena, by organisations such as the Patients Association and Healthwatch, hence Parliamentary inquiries into said failings.

(3) Please give a time limit on what you mean by "in due course". This is a vague statement and is widely open to abuse.

(4) A representative of an independent organisation needs to see the report to ascertain whether your use of Section 22 is valid. I would suggest the head of the Patients Association.

Yours faithfully,

A.E.

D. Speers left an annotation ()

Thank you for chasing AE . All very best wishes and will await outcome.....with interest!!

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Peter Bowyer left an annotation ()

Sadly predictable.

A.E. left an annotation ()

We must challenge this predictable fobbing off and show we are aware of the law and not allow them to misuse it to their own ends, however.

Frank Lodge left an annotation ()

s22 is a qualified exemption and here the balance of public interest weighs very clearly in favour of releasing this information prior to the general election. Sadly, if the department sticks to their guns as seems likely, the internal review process will not see this information released in time and an ICO complaint will be concluded after the election.

[Name Removed] (Account suspended) left an annotation ()

'As such, we consider that releasing this information before its expected publication date would not be in the public interest. The full report will be published in due course'.

Dates have been avoided.

So they have an expected publication date..and presumably had one pre the Rose investigation.

Ask them what was the expected publication date when Lord Rose signed up to do the report - since none is mentioned in answer to your request.

What were the reasons stated for delaying the report?

And what is the projected publication date now?

Department of Health and Social Care

1 Attachment

Our ref: DE00000926197
 
Dear Sir, Madam,

Please find attached the Department's response to your recent Freedom of
Information request.

Yours sincerely,

Graham Sale
Freedom of Information Officer
Department of Health
 

show quoted sections

Dear Department of Health,

you erroneously state my response was a new request. IT WAS NOT. It was further clarification regarding my one original request. Therefore you have misused the following paragraph of Section 14(2) of the FOI Act you cite:

"Where a public authority has previously complied with a request for information which was made by any person, it is not obliged to comply with a subsequent identical or substantially similar request from that person unless a reasonable interval has elapsed between compliance with the previous request and the making of the current request."

You have not satisfied in full all the criteria:
"in *all* the circumstances it is reasonable to withhold the information prior to publication."

I repeat, I request under FOI a copy of Lord Rose's report, in whichever form it has been recorded as per my original request.

Yours faithfully,

A.E.

Department of Health and Social Care

Thank you for contacting the Department of Health.
This is an acknowledgement - please do not reply to this email.
Where a reply is appropriate, we aim to send one within 18 working days,
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If your enquiry is about a medical matter, please contact NHS 111 or visit
[2]NHS Choices, or contact your GP surgery.

For general health information you may also find it helpful to refer to
[3]GOV.UK, which includes the Department of Health's [4]'What we
do' section.
Please note that the Department of Health does not process complaints
about the NHS or social services. If you wish to make a complaint about a
healthcare professional, an NHS organisation or a social care provider,
please visit the [5]'Complaints procedure' page on the GOV.UK website.
 
You can find out more about the Department’s commitments from our
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D. Speers left an annotation ()

Still battling A.E?.....no surprises then!

Department of Health and Social Care

1 Attachment

Our ref: DE00000930435 
 
Dear Sir, Madam, 
 
Please find attached the Department of Health's response to your recent
Freedom of Information request.
 
Yours sincerely,
 
Graham Sale
Freedom of Information Officer
Department of Health
 

show quoted sections

Dear Department of Health,

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

I am writing to request an internal review of Department of Health's handling of my FOI request 'Lord Stuart Rose's February 2014 Review Report of NHS Management'.

I do not believe it is for the DoH to arbitrarily decide what the balance of public interest is, it is for the public to decide how interested we are in the information.

I repeat my statement that DoH has misused sections of the law to avoid providing the information as all the criteria have not been met.

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

Yours faithfully,

A.E.

Dear Department of Health,

I would also add that as you have stated it is intended for future publication date, what date that was set at and when this date was decided.

Yours faithfully,

A.E.

FreedomofInformation,

Dear Sir/Madam

Thank you for your email below in which you requested an Internal Review into the handling of your original request (DE930435).

We will aim to reply to you within the next 20 working days.

Yours sincerely

Tony Doole

show quoted sections

Dear FreedomofInformation,

Well, you have grossly missed the deadline on the internal review. Am I to take it this is the requested report?

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/sy...

Yours sincerely,

A.E.

Doole, Tony,

1 Attachment

Dear “A E”

 

Please find attached (above as pdf) the outcome of your Internal Review.

 

Yours sincerely

 

Tony Doole

Senior Casework Manager

Freedom of Information Team

Department of Health

show quoted sections

Incoming and outgoing e-mail messages are routinely monitored for
compliance with the Department of Health's policy on the use of electronic
communications. For more information on the Department of Health's e-mail
policy click here http://www.dh.gov.uk/terms

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Dear Doole, Tony,

I direct you to this: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/help/priv...

"Can I make an FOI request using a pseudonym?

Technically, you must use your real name for your request to be a valid Freedom of Information request in law. See this guidance from the Information Commissioner (October 2007).

However, the same guidance also says it is good practice for the public authority to still consider a request made using an obvious pseudonym. You should refer to this if a public authority refuses a request because you used a pseudonym."

Also this:

"Why are there anonymous requests on the site?

Some public authorities are using mySociety's FOI Register software in order to use WhatDoTheyKnow as a disclosure log for all their FOI activity. When people make requests to the authority their names will usually be withheld from publication just as they would in an authority disclosure log on an authority website. "

When something is in the public interests and relevant to all, it serves no purpose to use identity or lack thereof, of the name of the requester. This is yet another diversionary tactic, plain for all to see.

As regards your response, nothing you have said washes with the public. You withheld a document that was in the public interest, clearly doing so avoided it being public before the elections.

Once the document was public in June 2015, as per the link I provided, you did not respond with it to the FOI, but left me to find it coincidentally via a 3rd party. This is abuse of power and deliberately misleading. You have allowed the report to be in the public domain for at least a month, but not publicised sufficiently that it was in said domain.

Added to all the above, you missed legal deadlines for responding, in breach of the Data Protection Act 1998. So it's highly hypocritical that you are trying to cite elements of the Act to avoid responding adequately either here or to future DoH requests. You are on very shaky ground.

I leave members of the public reading this to make their own minds up as to your handling of this matter in view of all the correspondence and leave you to consider how that affects public confidence in DoH.

Yours sincerely,

A.E.

Doole, Tony,

Dear A E

Thank you for your reply.

The Department has nothing further to add to the Internal Review reply issued to you today.

Yours sincerely

Tony Doole
Senior Casework Manager
Freedom of Information Team
Department of Health

show quoted sections

A.E. left an annotation ()

And Chinese spam on this request just about sums up the respect shown overall to the request...

Dear Mr Doole,

if I could be bothered I would follow the advice here https://ico.org.uk/concerns/getting/ but like I said, I will just leave the public to draw their own conclusions as to your handling of this request and the fact that even when the report was in the public domain, even then you did not deign to provide it.

Yours sincerely,

A.E.

Mail Delivery System,

This message was created automatically by mail delivery software.

A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:

[email address]
SMTP error from remote mail server after RCPT TO:<[email address]>:
host mail.electricsu.com [120.27.55.171]: 554 5.7.1 <[email address]>:
Recipient address rejected: Access denied

show quoted sections

Peter Bowyer left an annotation ()

To be fair, the chinese spam is MySociety's problem, not the DHs. But your other points are spot on.

Ganesh Sittampalam left an annotation ()

I've deleted the spam and blocked new correspondence to this thread.

We try to keep the email addresses for responding to a request hidden so only the authority can respond, but sometimes they leak out and are harvested by spammers.

Ganesh - WhatDoTheyKnow volunteer

A.E. left an annotation ()

Thanks Ganesh. Although I could think of people far less deserving of hacking and spam than the DoH.

[Name Removed] (Account suspended) left an annotation ()

Supplying your name :

This is what the Act says:
8Request for information.
(1)In this Act any reference to a “request for information” is a reference to such a request which—
(a)is in writing,
(b)states the name of the applicant and an address for correspondence, and
(c)describes the information requested.
(2)For the purposes of subsection (1)(a), a request is to be treated as made in writing where the text of the request—
(a)is transmitted by electronic means,
(b)is received in legible form, and
(c)is capable of being used for subsequent reference.

NB It does not say that the entire legal name of the applicant must be supplied.

Indeed, it is the choice of many people to leave out their middle names when corresponding.

So logically you could just provide your first name.. As its 'the name of the applicant ' because you answer to it - if someone calls it out.

::::

In addition, as far as I can see, you can change your legal name by deed poll to 'AE' if you wish.

(As it's not a number or a symbol).

The criteria is that you can't change your name in order to commit a deception.

Presumably the responder has checked all the official MoJ registers to ensure that no 'AE' exists as an official name.

::::

Certainly the WDTK address is accepted as an response address.

It's not your home address for the purpose of identification. So on that logic,why would the FOIAct require you to identify yourself by giving your entire name?

Or is the ICO assuming that it can pick the parts if your entire name that it assumes are 'your name'?

:::

So the ICO 'guidance' on supplying names on FOIA requests seems to be at odds with the law, if the instruction to provide both first - and possibly second - and surnames is not within the FOIAct.

::::

The fact that he has replied anyway would seem to point to the knowledge of the shakiness of the ICO guidance on this matter.

It is, after all, only guidance.

[Name Removed] (Account suspended) left an annotation ()

Supplying your name :

This is what the Act says:
8Request for information.
(1)In this Act any reference to a “request for information” is a reference to such a request which—
(a)is in writing,
(b)states the name of the applicant and an address for correspondence, and
(c)describes the information requested.
(2)For the purposes of subsection (1)(a), a request is to be treated as made in writing where the text of the request—
(a)is transmitted by electronic means,
(b)is received in legible form, and
(c)is capable of being used for subsequent reference.

NB It does not say that the entire legal name of the applicant must be supplied.

Indeed, it is the choice of many people to leave out their middle names when corresponding.

So logically you could just provide your first name.. As its 'the name of the applicant ' because you answer to it - if someone calls it out.

::::

In addition, as far as I can see, you can change your legal name by deed poll to 'AE' if you wish.

(As it's not a number or a symbol).

The criteria is that you can't change your name in order to commit a deception.

Presumably the responder has checked all the official MoJ registers to ensure that no 'AE' exists as an official name.

::::

Certainly the WDTK address is accepted as an response address.

It's not your home address for the purpose of identification. So on that logic,why would the FOIAct require you to identify yourself by giving your entire name?

Or is the ICO assuming that it can pick the parts if your entire name that it assumes are 'your name'?

:::

So the ICO 'guidance' on supplying names on FOIA requests seems to be at odds with the law, if the instruction to provide both first - and possibly second - and surnames is not within the FOIAct.

::::

The fact that he has replied anyway would seem to point to the knowledge of the shakiness of the ICO guidance on this matter.

It is, after all, only guidance.

Passport guidance ...
Single names

There is no law preventing you from being known by a single name, or mononym — that is, a surname only, with no forenames — and HM Passport Office should accept such a name, although they may be more sceptical of your application.

On a passport, a single name will be shown in the surname field, with XXX (i.e. three X's) shown in the forename field. They may also include an official observation explaining the situation.

You should bear in mind that HM Passport Office may be sceptical of anyone applying for a passport in a single name — if they consider the change of name to be frivolous, they will not accept it (see more about frivolous name changes above). However, there are cultures — for example, in Burma, Java, and parts of East Africa — for which the use of two names (i.e. forename and surname) has not become common practice. If you are part of one of those cultures, then clearly HM Passport Office has no reason to consider the name frivolous, though it will help to make this point clear on your application.

Your should also bear in mind that having a single name may make it more difficult to establish your identity, not just for HM Passport Office but for any organisation. At the least, it may make your passport application or any process of updating your records take longer.

And you should also consider the obvious practical difficulties of updating your records with record holders, particularly with computer systems that insist on both forename and surname.

https://deedpolloffice.com/changing-your...

[Name Removed] (Account suspended) left an annotation ()

Sorry that's part duplicated.. difficulty in posting first part .

A.E. left an annotation ()

Quite. And as per my link and quote on 21st July they are making false claims about use of a pseudonym. If people were not allowed to use pseudonyms there would be no fields in official forms for people to enter their "preferred name." If it was illegal to use pseudonyms all sorts of people such as authors and actors would be done for defrauding the public. As there is no intention to defraud or mislead anyone here, they are talking tosh and have clearly sat frantically racking their brains (what little there is) to deflect, with excuses which don't wash anyway. The point here is that this information was/is in the public interest and it was withheld for nefarious reasons. They must think we are all stupid.

Alexander Adcock left an annotation ()

Why did you purposefully slice up the guidance in the FAQ so that you can try to make a point? You completely ignored the part after what you quoted:

"Use a different form of your name. The guidance says that "Mr Arthur Thomas Roberts" can make a valid request as "Arthur Roberts", "A. T. Roberts", or "Mr Roberts", but not as "Arthur" or "A.T.R."."

A.E. left an annotation ()

If you are referring to me, I quoted relevant sections and there is no need to quote wholesale, entire pages of information, and quite aside from that it makes no difference, as you will see from my last comment. Your purpose of commenting is lost on me, but I do not intend to enter into further discussion anyway. This FOIA is about a deliberately withheld piece of information the public had a right to know (until after the elections of course when it would do far less damage to the Government's reputation), it's not the only report that has been blocked for deliberate and spurious reasons and quibbling about FAQs is sidestepping the important purpose of this FOIA.