The text of our Request for a Freedom of Information Act 2000 Internal Revue, to Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, in response to:
Text of our email Internal Review Request:
The text of our Request for a Freedom of Information Act 2000 Internal Revue, to Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, in response to:
Text of our email Internal Review Request:
The Bill of Rights 1689 a historical piece of the English Constitution, which was intended to preserve the rights and freedoms of the public and of Members of Parliament from abuses by the Executive branch of Government, which, in the 17th Century was:
Whereas the late King James the Second by the Assistance of diverse evill Councellors Judges and Ministers imployed by him did endeavour to subvert and extirpate the Protestant Religion and the Lawes and Liberties of this Kingdome.
If you replace "the late King James the Second" with."Tony Blair"or "Gordon Brown", the words fit just as well.
We are astonished and furious, that this Bill of Rights, is being abused in the High Court to try to weasel out of having to disclose the early (and now very out of date) Gateway Reviews of the Home Office's Identity Cards Programme (as it was then, circa 2002 / 2003), by the lawyers for the Government's Office for Government Commerce, supported by, incredibly, lawyers for the Speaker of the House of Commons, in their Appeal against the Decision of the independent Information Tribunal, which ordered full disclosure, in the public interest.
Are the Government and their lawyers desperate, or evil ?
Why is the Speaker of the House of Commons helping the Executive branch of Government, to suppress freedom of speech and transparent open government, in a matter of huge public interest ?
[hat tip to UK Liberty for spotting this before us]
Bill of Rights 1688 ( "Act declared to be a Statute by Crown and Parliament Recognition Act 1689 (c. 1)")
That the Freedome of Speech and Debates or Proceedings in Parlyament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any Court or Place out of Parlyament.
See the history of this long running Freedom of Information Act disclosure suppression in our OGC Gateway Reviews of the Identity Cards Programme blog category archive.
We have had a response and a very partial disclosure by her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, to our sent by email and via a web form on 28th January 2008 i.e. a substantive response in 28 working days, which is technically in contravention of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, which specifies 20 working days, without exception
.
This is still a substantially better FOIA response performance than , for example the Home Office, although HMRC do not make it easy to find the appropriate contact page on their website, which requires a search engine query rather than a link from the home page, to find http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/about/foi.htm
The actual response below, addresses all of the 11 numbered Questions which were asked, each to a lesser or non-existent degree.
HMRC are pretending that the request was for individually identifiable information, when it was only asked for high level, general categories of supposed VIPs and alleged Celebrities, who are being given special treatment regarding their income and perhaps corporation and value added tax returns. This situation was highlighted by the inability of Members of Parliament to file their tax returns to HMRC over the Government Gateway web page.
See HMRC tax record security only for a minority of the privileged, but not for the rest of us
Almost no information has been disclosed, in response to this request, except
10) Are these special category tax records included in the datasets handed over, through the statutory gateway, to the DWP Longitudinal Study? http://www.dwp.gov.uk/asd/longitudinal_study/ic_longitudinal_study.asp[...]
Item 10): No, the data is not included in transfers.
Apparently "two Commissioners of HM Revenue and Customs have considered your request "
HMRC does not know neither who authorised the policy on Special categories in the first place, nor how long it has actually been in place, nor how much it costs to handle these Special Categories of tax returns.
How do they know that they are actually complying with the original Policy on Special Categories ? How can the public be re-assured that this Policy has not deteriorated into wasteful bureaucratic red tape, and function creep, and is now being applied to far more people than it was originally intended ?
How can the public be re-assured that people at risk who should be given more security to protect their identity and address details, are actually being included in the HMRC Special Categories at all ? e.g. are all the battered wives who have fled their violent partners being given the same protection as MPs or celebrities > If so, then who informs the HMRC of their "at risk" status ?
This FOIA response is also another example of a Government Department or public body trying to claim an exemption under "Health & Safety", which has got nothing to do with anything which comes under actual Health and Safety laws or regulations, no personal details are being requested.
Should we ask for an Internal Review ?
MySociety.org have made some improvements to their new, still under development, Freedom of Information ACt request website, which we commented on recently - foi.mysociety.org FOIA request submission and publication website seems to be operational
As expected, the suggestion we made about a Preview facility, so that people could check the formatting and spelling of their FOIA request before firing it off, was taken to heart, and, within only a few days, was implemented, together with an online spelling checker.
The website now has its own Domain Name, to add to the stable of essential MySociety.org tools like TheyWorkForYou,com, or PledgeBank.com. or FixMyStreet.com etc.
You can now access foi.mysociety.org via WhatDoTheyKnow.com
What is WhatDoTheyKnow for?To help you find out inside information about what the UK government is doing.
How does the site work?
You choose the public body that you would like information from, then write a brief note describing what you want to know. We then send your request to the public body. Any response they make is automatically published on the website for you and anyone else to find and read.
Why would I bother to do this?
You pay taxes, and then Government does things with the money. All sorts of things that affect your life, from healthcare through to national defence. Some it does badly, some it does well. The more we find out about how Government works, the better able we are to make suggestions to improve the things that are done badly, and to celebrate the things that are done well.
Why would the public body bother to reply?
Under Freedom of Information law, they have to respond.
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