Further evidence submitted by Dr Nigel
Dudley
CORRESPONDENCE REGARDING
AN FOI
REQUEST
DETAILS
OF EMAIL
SENT TO
KINGS COLLEGE
IN RESPONSE
TO THEIR
EMAIL OF
5 MARCH 2007
Thank you very much for your response and clarification
as to why such information is not able to be provided. I am sure
that King's College is aware that there is a very long backlog
of cases with the Information Commissioner; that means if I did
take up your kind offer of contacting the College's legal compliance
unit, wait for its response, and then when not satisfied with
that response—as is on the balance of probability likely
to be the case judging from this response and the NAO's use of
the confidentiality clause to block access to e-mails that would
be very helpful in bottoming issues of concern—proceed to
contact the Information Commissioner, the College knows as well
as I do that many more months, if not years will have elapsed.
The whole point of the Freedom of Information
Act was to enable openness of Government; it is disappointing
that the NAO's contract clause is being used in this manner; I
expect that was not the intended purpose of that particular clause.
Going through the legal motions with the Information Commissioner
to show that to be the case is not a good use of my time when
openness is needed in all of the circumstances of this case so
that if information in the public domain is in error that this
can be corrected or withdrawn.
The Constitutional Affairs Committee is looking
at how the Freedom of Information Act is being used and abused
and the tactics that are coming into play to make it more difficult
to access information. I expect that the Committee would be slightly
surprised to learn that the NAO appears to be less than willing
in this particular case to be more open with information, especially
information that is not commercially sensitive. I did flag this
matter up briefly to the Committee when I submitted a response
that has been published by the Committee in its evidence. This
update may be of interest to the Committee.
My request to you at King's College was made
so as to see what exchanges took place between NAO staff and King's
College staff about the figures and statistics in the NAO's and
Committee of Public Accounts stroke reports. The spreadsheets
and other information obtained from the NAO would strongly suggest
that the figures in the two reports about stroke outcomes and
savings do not bear the weight of the interpretation placed on
those spreadsheet data. This does have a public interest angle
as the King's College research paper clearly identified that it
could impact on how decisions were made about resource allocation;
if the figures in the two reports are not supported by the assumptions
and calculations there is a potential for the public, politicians
and those commissioning stroke services on behalf of the public
to pursue investment of limited health resources in areas of a
stroke service that will not offer the best value for money. Under
those circumstances money will not have been spent wisely or well
and that is a matter of public interest especially as it is the
main function of the NAO to see to it that taxpayers' money is
put to best public use.
Thank you for your assistance with this matter
and for all of your help over the past several months.
Dr Nigel Dudley LLM FRCP
Details of email received from Kings College in
Relation to an FoI Request: 5 March 2007 09:12
Dear Dr Dudley,
The College has carefully considered your request
for information under the Freedom of Information Act. Thank you
for giving us an additional two weeks in which to do this. I can
confirm that there are no emails or correspondence that we can
send you that fall between the periods of the requests.
There is a confidentiality clause in the contract
with the National Audit Office which
precludes us from forwarding any emails from
them (and in any case the correspondence was primarily that to
and from yourself, which you will have already seen). There is
no relevant correspondence from Professor Wolfe in existence.
The College has a system whereby emails in inboxes are deleted
automatically after six months unless they are printed off or
saved elsewhere.
If you have any complaints over the way this
matter has been handled, you may take this forward by contacting
the college's legal compliance unit at the address given at this
website: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/iss/archives/legal/foi/whatfoi.html
Senior Assistant Registrar (Quality Assurance),
King's College London
| 
