HMRC tax record special categories - request for FOIA Internal Review

From: [email]
To: ccp.disclosure@ir.gsi.gov.uk
Cc: [firstname.secondname]@hmrc.gsi.gov.uk
Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2008 16:42:58 +0100

HM Revenue & Customs

HMRC FOI Team,
Room 4/52,
100 Parliament Street
London SWIA 2BQ

cc via email:

[civil servant] [fiestname.secondname]@hmrc.gsi.gov.uk

ccp.disclosure@ir.gsi.gov.uk

Michael Armstrong via web email form
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/about/foi.htm

Tuesday 11th March 2008

Dear Sirs,

I wish to formally ask for an Internal Review of my Freedom of
Information Act Request - Reference 1075/08

(The text of my original FOIA request and the HMRC reply is
attached inline below for convenience)

I was not asking for individual information
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The claims of exemptions under

Section 36: Prejudice To Effective Conduct Of Public Affairs

Section 38 Health and Safety exemption

both seem to stem from the assumption that somehow *individuals* in the Special Categories could be personally identified if general details about the Special Categories themselves, and the Special Category Policy were made public.

[1) Please list these special "categories of individual for whom security is a higher priority".)]

I find it impossible to envisage how, for example, naming a Special Category such as "Members of Parliament" in any way puts the Health and Safety of an individual MP at any risk whatsoever.

[2) Approximately how many people are in each special category?]

If the Intelligence and Security Committee reports and various Home Office, Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence press releases and Parliamentary Written Answers can give approximate or even accurate numbers of secret intelligence agency or military units, without compromising national security or personal privacy, then why should HMRC be more secretive than they are ?

As I was only asking for approximate figures, what justification can there be for withholding such figures for the Special Categories not covered by the claimed exemption under Section 23:
Information Supplied by, or Related to, Bodies Dealing with Security Matters ?

If there are Special Categories with only a very few individuals in them, then the usual FOIA and Written Parliamentary Answer practice is to aggregate the totals of several such small groups together into a sub-total which obscures the identity of individuals, e.g. when answering Parliamentary Questions about how many staff are employed by a small Government Office like 10 Downing Street, according to each pay grade.

[3) Who exactly makes the decision to put someone into one of these special categories?]
[4) When, if ever, is an individual removed from such a special category?]
[5) Does a special category extend to an individual's family as well?]
[9) What about the previous 24 year tax record history of an individual, before they became a "celebrity" or politician etc.?]

I was not asking for the name of an individual civil servant, but just an idea of whether this is done solely by HMRC or if there are formal procedures involving other Departments or agencies, and at what level of seniority such decisions are made.

I am at a loss to understand how answering these general policy questions, would put any of the individuals covered by the Special Categories at any risk of harm.

Secrecy must mean that some people entitled to Special Category status are unknown to HMRC.
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How can the public be sure that all the people who are "at risk", are actually known to HMRC, and are being protected under their Special Category procedures, if those general Categories are not made public ?

If, for example, a battered wife who has fled her family home to escape a violent partner, or the social and charity workers at a Women's Refuge who may be assisting her, do not actually know that, a "Battered Wives category" exists, and that she should be entitled to HMRC Special Category status, then how exactly will HMRC officials ever be informed about such a person ?

Or are such people either not given Special Category status at all, or only on an arbitrary "Post Code Lottery" basis, inconsistently throughout the country, at the whim of junior officials ?

Unnecessary secrecy breeds suspicion and mistrust in the minds of the general public, something which HMRC badly needs to counter as soon as possible.

Consideration of Public Interest
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A minor point:

The Information Commissioner has ruled in several Decisions, and has issued Guidance regarding the amount of time over and above the statutory 20 working days laid down in the Freedom of Information Act 2000 for a substantive reply which is acceptable.

Compared with some other Government Departments, HMRC's response was speedy, but it still took 9 days longer than the statutory 20 working days.

Technically, if the consideration of the Public Interest was going to take longer than the 20 working days, then HMRC should probably have responded with the information which was free to be disclosed, or to mention which of the absolute exemptions you were making use of, and that fact that some further time was needed for balancing up the competing Public Interests in the qualified exemptions, giving an indication of approximately how much time this might take.

You would have had another period of time, not exactly specified in the Act, but according to the Information Commissioner it might be reasonable to allow up to another 6 weeks or so, in the most complicated cases, to consider the Public Interest test.

Finding the correct FOIA submission contact details is not easy:
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HMRC website FOIA publicity suggestions:

When will a properly integrated HMRC Freedom of Information Act contact web page be published ?

It takes the use of the www.hmrc.gov.uk website's search facility, or hunting through four levels of menus, to track down the still separate former Inland Revenue and former HM Customs & Excise FOIA pages

I cannot tell from your reply whether the correct email address for FOIA submissions was via the Michael Armstrong web form, indirectly via

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/about/foi.htm

or via the

ccp.disclosure@ir.gsi.gov.uk

email address published on

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/freedom/foi-02.htm

Neither method seems to provide an email read receipt or automatic email acknowledgement responder, standard email features which would be trivial to configure those particular email accounts to make use of.

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I await the results of the Internal Review with interest,

yours faithfully

[name]
[address]

[email]