Tweet
I was telling Celestine the other day about this letter and thought I'd post it up.
Early last year I began working with Wild Billy on a Freedom of Information Act request to the Office of Fair Trading to find out just how the OFT managed to decide on the ludicrous credit card defualt charge threshold of 12 quid. In particular, we want to see the 'model' the OFT used for the calculation of the £12 figure.
We sent the original request off in March 07 and they refused to release any of the information we asked for and a subsequent internal review reached the same conclusion. I then asked my MP to intervene and he received a 4 page letter from John Fingleton himself giving the OFTs reasons why the information should not be released.
Our complaint has been with the Information Commisioner's Office since August and due to the backlog at the ICO it has yet to be assigned to a case worker.
This particular letter is to the OFT's internal review dept. Such was Wild Billy's knowledge of all things OFT, we knew that the lawyer who would be conducting the review was the same person who advised on rejecting the original request and he would essentialy be reviewing his own work and was hardly likely to change his mind. Therefore the letter was really for the consumption of the Information Commisioner.
It's one of the best written and funniest letters I've ever read. Enjoy!
Dear OFT Internal Review Coordinator,
cc: Miss J Slocombe
cc: Mr J Fingleton
Request for an Internal Review
Your Reference EPIC/ENQ/L/3692
I refer to Miss Slocombe’s letter of 21 June in response to my letter of 17 May. At seven pages in length, I certainly appreciate the effort and creativity that has been expended in crafting the letter. However, I am seriously dissatisfied with the response and I would now like an Internal Review carried out. To be absolutely clear, I fully intend to complain to the Information Commissioner if the information is not forthcoming as I am confident, on the basis of precedent, that at least some of it should be released.
You should also be aware that I have also now written to Ian McCartney MP to highlight some of the arguments in Miss Slocombe’s response. Her contention that there is no mechanism to record how many complaints there have been about credit card default charges demonstrates the ineptitude of the OFT and I trust Mr McCartney will want to look at this very closely. But let me turn to the arguments in Miss Slocombe’s letter that I would like you to review.
You acknowledge that all the information is held but essentially argue that it is too costly to find because it is spread across so many files. This is somewhat laughable and a transparent attempt to avoid releasing the information. Is the OFT seriously saying that the questions I asked would cost more than £600 to find? The questions I asked, purposefully, were very straightforward and basic. If it genuinely takes so long for the OFT to find this information then it raises some very serious questions about whether the OFT is “fit for purpose” and this is a question I have asked Mr McCartney MP to review in light of Miss Slocombe’s response. Let me remind you of the questions I asked:
1. How many OFT staff and/or man-hours were dedicated to the credit card investigation?
I would have thought this is a standard piece of management information that would be easily obtainable. Otherwise, how does the OFT know whether it is using its resources effectively? If the OFT does not capture this information then it raises serious questions about the management at the OFT, at all levels, and whether the taxpayers’ money is being used efficiently. This is a question I believe Mr McCartney may wish to consider.
A more general point, which I will make repeatedly, is reference to the number of files is a smokescreen and certainly not something you should be using to withhold information. The suggestion is someone would have to look through each and every file but that, plainly, is not the case. Anyone contributing to the investigation would have a fair idea of where to find the information, even if the paper files are not indexed, and I would also assume someone in senior management would have been presented with this information already. If that assumption is correct, then it is fair to believe the information could be found very quickly. I also assume your electronic system has some sort of indexing system or search functionality that would bring up a smaller number of files which could then be searched far more quickly.
As I said, the implications of the OFT not being able to provide me with this information bring into disrepute the way it conducts its investigations and how it keeps track of its use of taxpayers’ money. I will leave this for Mr McCartney, and the Treasury, to consider.
2. On what date was the decision made to begin an investigation into these charges? Who made that decision? Please supply the advice recommending an investigation and documentation that confirms this decision, redacting any information that you feel is exempt.
How long can it take to find the date on which the decision was taken to investigate!? You do not need to look through all the files for this, only those dated a few days/weeks before the press release. I simply do not accept this would take more than 5 minutes to find.
As part of this question, I asked who took the decision. I had assumed it was Mr Fingleton but your response suggests otherwise, which is interesting in itself. I accept it would not be wise to put a specific name into the public domain so I will refine this request to ask for the position of the person taking the decision. If it wasn’t the Chief Executive then who was it? The Chairman? Again, this information would not take long to find and the number of files you hold is neither here nor there as you should have a good idea where to find it. It is difficult to understand why Miss Slocombe doesn’t know this without having to refer to the files.
The desperate attempt not to release the advice is lamentable and the incorrect use of section 36 belies this. Section 36 can only be invoked if it holds in the view of a “reasonable person”, which the DCA’s guidance indicates is usually a Minister. The OFT is a non-ministerial department so I assume you have sought the views of the Chairman or the Chief Executive. Did you? Can I see proof of this?
DCA’s guidance also says section 36 can only be used where section 35 does not apply. You have therefore acknowledged it does not apply, which is a point I will note. But, as I highlighted in my recent letter, there is precedent for releasing policy advice. The most high profile of these is Gordon Brown releasing policy advice about his decision to abolish the tax dividends in 1997, which he was compelled to release after 2 years of trying to prevent disclosure. As I understand it, he had to release it because of a decision taken by the Information Commissioner in a case against the DfES. So, are you seriously saying this is different? I feel quite sure that Brown would not have released that advice had there been any way to prevent it and I do not see the difference here. Neither will the Information Commissioner. Although the advice in this instance is more recent, the decision has still been taken so whether it is 1 year or 10 years ago is immaterial. Neither can you suggest with any credibility that your policy advice is any more sensitive.
3. Please supply the documents outlining advice/recommendations provided to you or others in senior management about agreeing to a £12 investigation limit, redacting any information that you feel is exempt.
Same points as above. It really doesn’t matter if you have 23 files, 15 files or 5 files as someone at the OFT will have a rough idea of when the recommendation was made. My guess is a month or two prior to the press release, maybe sooner, so you can concentrate on those files. I would stress again that I assume this is one document so shouldn’t be hard to find.
Neither do I agree with the attempt to invoke section 31. This is just nonsense. I specifically encouraged you to redact any information that you feel would be exempt. Anything in the advice or recommendations about future action could be redacted- I just want the advice relating to the information about the £12 decision.
4. On what date did the investigation begin?
Again, I assume this is quite an easy thing to find whether there are lots of files or not. I suggest you work back from the date of the press release.
5. How many complaints did the OFT receive about credit card default charges in the 24 months prior to taking the decision to investigate? Please provide this by month or quarter, whichever is easier. If information for that period is not available, please supply the number of complaints over whatever period featured in your consideration.
Miss Slocombe’s response is astonishing! This is another area I have asked Mr McCartney to consider. Does the OFT really have no idea about how many complaints it gets about particular topics?! How does it decide what to investigate? How do you know if your action is successful? I am genuinely shocked by this revelation.
6. How many complaints did Consumer Direct receive about credit card default charges in the 24 months prior to taking the decision to investigate? Please provide this by month or quarter, whichever is easier. If information for that period is not available, please supply the number of complaints over whatever period featured in your consideration.
As above.
7. How many complaints have been received by the OFT and Consumer Direct about credit card default charges since the OFT’s announcement that £12 is the threshold for action? Of these, how many relate to charges in excess of that threshold? (The Unfair Contract Terms Regulations (sic) place a duty on the OFT to consider complaints it receives so please explain why it did not consider taking action sooner).
As above.
8. (I accept that an oversight means I did not include the question I intended to ask. I shall not pursue this now but may return to it in the future)
9. Please give dates of external meetings held during the course of the investigation and who attended. This is not a request for details of discussion at these meetings. If you feel individual persons cannot be named then I am happy to receive a list of organisations attending each meeting.
I simply don’t accept the arguments made. How does telling me who you met with and when you met them prejudice future action? I have specifically not asked for details of the meetings to avoid your attempt to exempt this information.
10. Please give dates of correspondence between the OFT and those credit card lenders you were consulting with.
At risk of boring myself, I have asked for dates, not the letters themselves. Does it really take a long time to look through files and note a some dates?
11. Please provide any models used by the OFT to calculate that £12 should be the threshold for action. This is not a request for any information supplied by the credit card lenders to populate the model
I’ve got no idea why you haven’t released this as you haven’t specified anything beyond the blanket cost argument. Are you seriously telling me you have to look through 23 files to find the model you used to make the calculation? Are you seriously telling me you don’t have this to hand? This is either laughable or the OFT is even more incompetent than its actions suggest.
I would therefore ask that you review Miss Slocombe’s decision not to release any of this information. I would remind you that the OFT is there to serve the public and its attempts to obstruct the release of this information is very disappointing. More widely, the OFT should be taking a good long look at itself if, as Miss Slocombe has suggested, it does not hold certain records or account for the amount of resource dedicated to this investigation.
I await your response, and that of Mr McCartney MP, with interest. I also suspect the media might be interested in Miss Slocombe’s revelations. Let me emphasise once again that I fully intend to complain to the Information Commissioner if I am not satisfied with the response.
Yours sincerely,
Early last year I began working with Wild Billy on a Freedom of Information Act request to the Office of Fair Trading to find out just how the OFT managed to decide on the ludicrous credit card defualt charge threshold of 12 quid. In particular, we want to see the 'model' the OFT used for the calculation of the £12 figure.
We sent the original request off in March 07 and they refused to release any of the information we asked for and a subsequent internal review reached the same conclusion. I then asked my MP to intervene and he received a 4 page letter from John Fingleton himself giving the OFTs reasons why the information should not be released.
Our complaint has been with the Information Commisioner's Office since August and due to the backlog at the ICO it has yet to be assigned to a case worker.
This particular letter is to the OFT's internal review dept. Such was Wild Billy's knowledge of all things OFT, we knew that the lawyer who would be conducting the review was the same person who advised on rejecting the original request and he would essentialy be reviewing his own work and was hardly likely to change his mind. Therefore the letter was really for the consumption of the Information Commisioner.
It's one of the best written and funniest letters I've ever read. Enjoy!
Dear OFT Internal Review Coordinator,
cc: Miss J Slocombe
cc: Mr J Fingleton
Request for an Internal Review
Your Reference EPIC/ENQ/L/3692
I refer to Miss Slocombe’s letter of 21 June in response to my letter of 17 May. At seven pages in length, I certainly appreciate the effort and creativity that has been expended in crafting the letter. However, I am seriously dissatisfied with the response and I would now like an Internal Review carried out. To be absolutely clear, I fully intend to complain to the Information Commissioner if the information is not forthcoming as I am confident, on the basis of precedent, that at least some of it should be released.
You should also be aware that I have also now written to Ian McCartney MP to highlight some of the arguments in Miss Slocombe’s response. Her contention that there is no mechanism to record how many complaints there have been about credit card default charges demonstrates the ineptitude of the OFT and I trust Mr McCartney will want to look at this very closely. But let me turn to the arguments in Miss Slocombe’s letter that I would like you to review.
You acknowledge that all the information is held but essentially argue that it is too costly to find because it is spread across so many files. This is somewhat laughable and a transparent attempt to avoid releasing the information. Is the OFT seriously saying that the questions I asked would cost more than £600 to find? The questions I asked, purposefully, were very straightforward and basic. If it genuinely takes so long for the OFT to find this information then it raises some very serious questions about whether the OFT is “fit for purpose” and this is a question I have asked Mr McCartney MP to review in light of Miss Slocombe’s response. Let me remind you of the questions I asked:
1. How many OFT staff and/or man-hours were dedicated to the credit card investigation?
I would have thought this is a standard piece of management information that would be easily obtainable. Otherwise, how does the OFT know whether it is using its resources effectively? If the OFT does not capture this information then it raises serious questions about the management at the OFT, at all levels, and whether the taxpayers’ money is being used efficiently. This is a question I believe Mr McCartney may wish to consider.
A more general point, which I will make repeatedly, is reference to the number of files is a smokescreen and certainly not something you should be using to withhold information. The suggestion is someone would have to look through each and every file but that, plainly, is not the case. Anyone contributing to the investigation would have a fair idea of where to find the information, even if the paper files are not indexed, and I would also assume someone in senior management would have been presented with this information already. If that assumption is correct, then it is fair to believe the information could be found very quickly. I also assume your electronic system has some sort of indexing system or search functionality that would bring up a smaller number of files which could then be searched far more quickly.
As I said, the implications of the OFT not being able to provide me with this information bring into disrepute the way it conducts its investigations and how it keeps track of its use of taxpayers’ money. I will leave this for Mr McCartney, and the Treasury, to consider.
2. On what date was the decision made to begin an investigation into these charges? Who made that decision? Please supply the advice recommending an investigation and documentation that confirms this decision, redacting any information that you feel is exempt.
How long can it take to find the date on which the decision was taken to investigate!? You do not need to look through all the files for this, only those dated a few days/weeks before the press release. I simply do not accept this would take more than 5 minutes to find.
As part of this question, I asked who took the decision. I had assumed it was Mr Fingleton but your response suggests otherwise, which is interesting in itself. I accept it would not be wise to put a specific name into the public domain so I will refine this request to ask for the position of the person taking the decision. If it wasn’t the Chief Executive then who was it? The Chairman? Again, this information would not take long to find and the number of files you hold is neither here nor there as you should have a good idea where to find it. It is difficult to understand why Miss Slocombe doesn’t know this without having to refer to the files.
The desperate attempt not to release the advice is lamentable and the incorrect use of section 36 belies this. Section 36 can only be invoked if it holds in the view of a “reasonable person”, which the DCA’s guidance indicates is usually a Minister. The OFT is a non-ministerial department so I assume you have sought the views of the Chairman or the Chief Executive. Did you? Can I see proof of this?
DCA’s guidance also says section 36 can only be used where section 35 does not apply. You have therefore acknowledged it does not apply, which is a point I will note. But, as I highlighted in my recent letter, there is precedent for releasing policy advice. The most high profile of these is Gordon Brown releasing policy advice about his decision to abolish the tax dividends in 1997, which he was compelled to release after 2 years of trying to prevent disclosure. As I understand it, he had to release it because of a decision taken by the Information Commissioner in a case against the DfES. So, are you seriously saying this is different? I feel quite sure that Brown would not have released that advice had there been any way to prevent it and I do not see the difference here. Neither will the Information Commissioner. Although the advice in this instance is more recent, the decision has still been taken so whether it is 1 year or 10 years ago is immaterial. Neither can you suggest with any credibility that your policy advice is any more sensitive.
3. Please supply the documents outlining advice/recommendations provided to you or others in senior management about agreeing to a £12 investigation limit, redacting any information that you feel is exempt.
Same points as above. It really doesn’t matter if you have 23 files, 15 files or 5 files as someone at the OFT will have a rough idea of when the recommendation was made. My guess is a month or two prior to the press release, maybe sooner, so you can concentrate on those files. I would stress again that I assume this is one document so shouldn’t be hard to find.
Neither do I agree with the attempt to invoke section 31. This is just nonsense. I specifically encouraged you to redact any information that you feel would be exempt. Anything in the advice or recommendations about future action could be redacted- I just want the advice relating to the information about the £12 decision.
4. On what date did the investigation begin?
Again, I assume this is quite an easy thing to find whether there are lots of files or not. I suggest you work back from the date of the press release.
5. How many complaints did the OFT receive about credit card default charges in the 24 months prior to taking the decision to investigate? Please provide this by month or quarter, whichever is easier. If information for that period is not available, please supply the number of complaints over whatever period featured in your consideration.
Miss Slocombe’s response is astonishing! This is another area I have asked Mr McCartney to consider. Does the OFT really have no idea about how many complaints it gets about particular topics?! How does it decide what to investigate? How do you know if your action is successful? I am genuinely shocked by this revelation.
6. How many complaints did Consumer Direct receive about credit card default charges in the 24 months prior to taking the decision to investigate? Please provide this by month or quarter, whichever is easier. If information for that period is not available, please supply the number of complaints over whatever period featured in your consideration.
As above.
7. How many complaints have been received by the OFT and Consumer Direct about credit card default charges since the OFT’s announcement that £12 is the threshold for action? Of these, how many relate to charges in excess of that threshold? (The Unfair Contract Terms Regulations (sic) place a duty on the OFT to consider complaints it receives so please explain why it did not consider taking action sooner).
As above.
8. (I accept that an oversight means I did not include the question I intended to ask. I shall not pursue this now but may return to it in the future)
9. Please give dates of external meetings held during the course of the investigation and who attended. This is not a request for details of discussion at these meetings. If you feel individual persons cannot be named then I am happy to receive a list of organisations attending each meeting.
I simply don’t accept the arguments made. How does telling me who you met with and when you met them prejudice future action? I have specifically not asked for details of the meetings to avoid your attempt to exempt this information.
10. Please give dates of correspondence between the OFT and those credit card lenders you were consulting with.
At risk of boring myself, I have asked for dates, not the letters themselves. Does it really take a long time to look through files and note a some dates?
11. Please provide any models used by the OFT to calculate that £12 should be the threshold for action. This is not a request for any information supplied by the credit card lenders to populate the model
I’ve got no idea why you haven’t released this as you haven’t specified anything beyond the blanket cost argument. Are you seriously telling me you have to look through 23 files to find the model you used to make the calculation? Are you seriously telling me you don’t have this to hand? This is either laughable or the OFT is even more incompetent than its actions suggest.
I would therefore ask that you review Miss Slocombe’s decision not to release any of this information. I would remind you that the OFT is there to serve the public and its attempts to obstruct the release of this information is very disappointing. More widely, the OFT should be taking a good long look at itself if, as Miss Slocombe has suggested, it does not hold certain records or account for the amount of resource dedicated to this investigation.
I await your response, and that of Mr McCartney MP, with interest. I also suspect the media might be interested in Miss Slocombe’s revelations. Let me emphasise once again that I fully intend to complain to the Information Commissioner if I am not satisfied with the response.
Yours sincerely,
Comment