Dr Lofthouse

Sent by e-mail

4 September 2014

Our ref:4599IR/22/14

Dear Dr Lofthouse

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT 2000 REQUEST – INTERNAL REVIEW

I refer to your request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (“the FOIA”) which was received on 18 April 2014; Mrs Walsh’s response of 15 May 2014 and your request of the same day for an internal review of the Crown Prosecution Service's handling of your FOI request with reference 4599. I apologise for the delay in dealing with your request.

I have now conducted an internal review of the decision. I can confirm that I had no involvement in that decision.

Your initial request under the FOIA related to''Annex B - Equality and Diversity Impact Assessment'' published as part of the CPS Consultation on prosecutions in ‘Assisted Dying’ cases. You asked the following questions:

(i) Could you tell me who the 12 permanent members of the CAF were then (organisation AND person), and who they are now.

(ii) Who the other organisations representing 'disabled and/or older people' were (organisation AND the person representing them).

Mrs Walsh provided the names of the organisations represented in the CAF but withheld the names of individuals on the basis of section 40(2).

In response to the second question, Mrs Walsh set out the volume of material held by the CPS and the work that would be required to answer this part of your request. The conclusion was that s12 applied.

In your request for an internal review you point out that we have refused to name individual people under the DPA but your request asked for the names of organisations who the CPS decided were elected to represent the elderly and disabled. In the interests of clarity I should explain that we only applied section 40 in relation to your first question, i.e. the members of CAF. We withheld the names of individuals but we did provide the names of the organisations. I uphold that decision; disclosure of the names of individuals would be unfair and would therefore breach the first data protection principle.

In response to question 2, which seems to be the question you are referring to, we did not apply section 40; instead we applied section 12 on the basis that it would take more than 3.5 days to answer your question.

Paragraph 10 of the Equality and Diversity Impact Assessment states

“10.The CPS also specifically targeted a number of organisations, including several representing disabled or older people during the consultation exercise.”

The policy advisor who had responsibility for the consultation exercise has left the CPS and the current policy advisor has no knowledge of how CPS specifically targeted a number of organisations representing disabled or older people during the consultation exercise.

It is only possible to answer your question by retrieving all the material related to this consultation exercise and examining it. As explained in Mrs Walsh’s response there were over 3000 organisations and individuals who responded and consequently there is a significant amount of information. We estimate that the time required to carry out this exercise would exceed the appropriate limit and we are therefore not obliged to answer your question by virtue of section 12(1) of the FOIA.

I appreciate you will disappointed with this but it follows that I uphold Mrs Walsh’s original decision.

If you are not content with the outcome of this internal review, you have the right to apply directly to the Information Commissioner for a decision. The Information Commissioner can be contacted at: The Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF.

Yours sincerely

Mr P Willman

Information Management Unit

Tel: 020 3357 0899

E-mail:

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