X-JONES-COMPLAINT-DELAY

13 September 2006

Dear Mr Medawar,

Re: REVIEW OF FOIA REQUESTS: 06/038; 06/181; and 06/236

Your request for a review of delays in answering FOIA requests dated 9^th August refers. Further to my e-mail message to you last evening, I am now able to send you my completed report on the review in relation to these delays.

I am copying this report to Mrs Thyer and Ms Wark for information. It is also being copied to the Department for Constitutional Affairs.

I have found instances of unnecessary delays and must apologise on behalf of the Agency for these. There are lessons we can take away from these instances and action is already in place in some areas to try and prevent this happening again.

If you remain dissatisfied with my reply, you may make a complaint to the Information Commissioner at: The Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF

Yours sincerely

Sue Jones
Policy Division
Room 16-106

Tel: 020 7084 2652

CC: Mrs A Thyer MHRA
Ms S Wark MHRA
Mr Goldfinch MHRA
DCA Clearing House

CLICK HERE TO READ COMMENT - or scroll down to read the MHRA review

REVIEW OF FOI REQUESTS: 06/038; 06/181; and 06/236

1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 In a letter dated 9^th August 2006, Mr Charles Medawar requested a review of the delays to responses by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) to his requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) dated 17^th February, 26^th April and 10^th July (I have looked at the FOI requests numbered 06/038, 06/181 and 06/236 as being the requests to which he refers). The Agency had provided information to Mr Medawar in relation to these requests but all had been subject to delays in responses beyond the 20 working days target.

2. PURPOSE OF INTERNAL REVIEW
2. The purpose of this internal review is to determine whether the MHRA dealt properly with Mr Medawar’s requests under the FOIA. The terms of reference of this review are:

2.1. To read all relevant correspondence between Mr Medawar and the Agency, and other relevant correspondence and enclosures;

2.2 To form an opinion on the handling of the correspondence by the Agency;

2.3 To advise whether the action taken by the Agency in reaching their decisions is justified under the FOIA;

2.4 To make recommendations for further action by the Agency if appropriate; and

2.5 To prepare a report of the review for the Agency and Mr Medawar.

2.2. This review is limited to looking at the reasons for the delays in responding to a number of FOIA requests rather than the content of the replies as this is the specific complaint made by Mr Medawar on this occasion.

3. CONSIDERATION OF THE ISSUES
3.1 Mr Medawar has asked a number of questions under the FOIA since it became law in January 2005. The two FOI requests numbered 06/038 and 06/181 were requesting detailed information in relation to the SSRI Expert Working Group. Request 06/181 was a combination of a request for an internal review of the handling of 06/038 and new questions that needed to be treated as a new FOIA request.

3.2 Dealing firstly with 06/038 which was a request dated 17 February to which a full reply was sent on 7^th April. I note that an initial holding response was given on 20^th March although the 17^th March was the 20 working day deadline. This request required co-ordination of contributions from a number staff around the Agency in different divisions to supply the information requested. From my review of the papers and e-mails linked to this request, it appears that data-gathering activity did not begin on this case until 17^th March. Several requests for further data were made to different divisions around the Agency on that date. During the period between 17^th March and 6^th April, there was significant activity involved in putting together the information requested and no further delays were identified. The final reply was sent on 7^th April. I have asked Dr Williams if there was any specific reason for the data gathering activity not to begin until one month after receiving the request, but she was unable to give any specific reason apart from pressures of work. The Agency was introducing a new IT pharmacovigilance system in this area of the Agency at that time which, taken with a reorganisation of the bulk of the Agency, involved a good deal of management time and unfortunately, some deadlines were not met.

3.3 Request 06/181 was received on 26^th April and consisted of a request for a review of the handling of request number 06/038 plus some new questions. These new questions were not immediately identified either by my staff or the central unit who log the FOIA requests in. Had the new questions been identified, the letter would have been recorded both as a review request and as a further new FOI request immediately, but they were not. The new questions were not fed into the logging system until 1^st June when you made enquiries with the Central Enquiry Point. Once again, the replies to the questions required co-ordination of data from various other parts of the Agency and so took a few days to collate. On review of the associated e-mails I can confirm that work to collect the data you asked for was being followed up in the intervening period.

3.4 I should say that under normal circumstances, requests for reviews of FOI enquiries are passed directly to me and Sean Fletcher to address. The majority of requests do not contain further new questions, although one or two have done. In these cases, we have normally undertaken our review and, as in this case, identify in the report further questions that have been asked that are not within our remit to answer. The new queries would then need to be taken up as new FOI requests. There have probably only been two occasions (including this one) when further questions have been asked that have not been relevant to the review.

3.5 Request 06/236 was dated 10^th July 2006 and combined questions about the background of a member of staff who conducted the review (Mr Fletcher) of the earlier FOI request (06/038) combined with a number of further technical questions relating to the SSRI requests. I note that Mrs Thyer responded to the questions relating to the background of the member of staff within the 20 day deadline (4^th August) but that the technical questions had not been dealt with. Mrs Thyer apologised for this delay and admitted that this was due to oversight. The technical questions needed to be referred to the appropriate experts to answer and I believe that a letter dated 4^th September from Ms Wark now covers the answers to these questions. Ms Wark has also apologised in this response for the delay in sending to Mr Medawar, the review report undertaken by Mr Fletcher which was dated 8^th June.

4. Conclusion and Recommendations
4.1 Having reviewed the correspondence between the Agency and Mr Medawar, and perused the internal e-mails relating to the three FOI requests made by Mr Medawar I conclude that there have been unnecessary delays in dealing with some of the questions raised by Mr Medawar for which we apologise sincerely. There are lessons to be learned and the Agency is taking positive steps, and introducing new measures, to combat the issues highlighted by Mr Medawar through this review.

4.2 Request 06/ 038 was delayed by one month before work began to collect the data requested. Reasons given are pressures of work within that particular area of the Agency. There is a very limited pool of staff with the expertise in this area to be able to answer detailed questions about the SSRI Working Group. There is no dedicated team of staff to answer FOI requests and so time has to be made to answer them in the course of the other work they undertake. There were a number of internal operational changes underway which would have taken management time from this task and others at the time the request was received. However, this is not an acceptable reason for delaying dealing with an FOIA request. This part of the Agency has since created two new posts specifically to co-ordinate FOI requests across the Division, the appointments were made in May. Their role is to ensure that FOI Requests are tracked properly within the Division and are answered by the experts on time.

4.3 Requests 06/181 and 06/236 were delayed for other reasons. 06/181 because new requests for information were lost within a request for a review and the significance and urgency of the new questions was not identified by my staff or the central FOI logging team. I apologise for this. Mrs Thyer also apologised for the delay in referring other technical questions raised in request 06/236 which was caused by her oversight. In future, we will ensure that any new questions raised in any requests for reviews of earlier FOIA requests are identified at the outset and referred to the central point to be registered as new FOIA requests immediately. We will also ensure that we advise the enquirer that we have done this, before we undertake our reviews.

Sue Jones
MHRA Executive Support
13^th September 2006