“We do have the evidence… but it would cost too much…”
As DoD readers will be aware, we have been attempting for almost two years now to find the presentable evidence of We the People’s obligation to adhere to government Acts & Statutes. After drawing a blank from the Scottish Government, we recently drew a blank from the UK Government’s Ministry of Justice.
Yesterday we received the internal review of the MoJ’s recent, wholly-inadequate FOI response (see previous article).
To give FOI reviewer Jane Wignall, Interim Deputy Director – Legal Operations her due, she was gracious enough to admit that the response from Sian Jones LLB (Head of Legal Operations) “was ‘not compliant’ as I believe that the recorded information is held.”
So far so good – we could almost hear a drumroll in anticipation of finally receiving the ever-elusive evidence of obligation…!
Ms Wignall continued, “However, due to the UK’s constitution being written in thousands of Acts of Parliament, court cases, and in document conventions then Section 12(1) of the FOIA needs to be applied. Section 12 means we do not have to respond to a request where we estimate it would cost more than £600 […] I have undertaken a cost estimation on how much it will cost to locate, retrieve and extract the information requested. I have applied a low end estimation (estimated numbers will be much higher) of 1000 manual files with an estimate time of 5 minutes per a file/record…
“… This provides a low estimated total of 83.33 hours, coming to a cost of £2,083.33 basing it on the above hourly rate.
“These costs are estimated at more than £600 and therefore to provide these records, would be deemed unreasonable in terms of cost, under Section 12 of FOI. In conclusion, the initial response you received to your initial FOI request on the 9 June was not complaint as it stated that we do not hold the records. However, upon further investigation, I am satisfied that the MoJ is not obliged to comply with your request, based on excessive costs.”
So, they ‘believe’ they have the evidence, but it is way too much expense and hassle to provide it. This seems like the white flag of surrender, but unfortunately for the Ministry of Justice, DoD will NOT be waving the white flag of surrender any time soon.
Watch this space.
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